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  1. /λαδοκολλα-περι-ανεμων
  2. /ladokolla-peri-anemon

In the first URL I'm using the same business name, while in the second one I have converted the business name to Latin characters.

We know that the non ASCII characters harm the URL because in older browsers may not be able to follow links or load images, and It may make URLs ugly and hard to read since browsers may percent encode some of these characters before displaying them in the location bar.

But reading the answer here confusing me! Why is ID in the URL a bad idea?(When a search term is located in the actual URL, it is weighted much more heavily than the content of the page, etc.).

Now, which one is more SEO friendly?

unor
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Pasta
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  • ...it is weighted much more heavily than the content... No. Weighted more, but only a bit more. The URL is a signal, however, searches match content. – closetnoc Feb 23 '18 at 16:39
  • The language is Greek, same language of the first url – Pasta Feb 23 '18 at 16:59
  • When a search term is located in the actual URL, it is weighted much more heavily... That was written in 2009 and it was true then. That is no longer the case. For a more up to date take on this see: Are keywords in URLs good SEO or needlessly redundant? – Stephen Ostermiller Feb 23 '18 at 18:56
  • Google rewards the one that users like better. It is hard for me to answer as a non-native speaker of your language. The answer will be whichever looks right to users such that more users would click on it. Or if search engines display both of them the same way in the search results, it doesn't matter at all. – Stephen Ostermiller Feb 23 '18 at 19:30
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    I have pages indexed in foreign languages. One is example.com/अजमेर . I think if you're trying to target users who are typing non EN alphabet characters into Google search then you'd probably want the actual characters of their language in the URL – Michael d Feb 23 '18 at 20:21
  • @michaeld Thank you, that's very helpful and i'm going to take your advice and keep the URL with it's language characters – Pasta Feb 24 '18 at 14:11

2 Answers2

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never mind:) do it on the way, your users like better. Google is able to understand both of Latin and Unicode urls. In countries like Russia there are since many years three url types - latin, cyrillic (unicode) and transliterated. And Google understands and ranks all of them.

Do some measurements and research on your users: from where they are coming, is there much direct traffic, are they mostly living in greece or abroad? So you get understanding about how they input your page urls to navigate them, whether they have only usa/uk keyboard layout or the greece layout too, and so on. After you understand it you will adjust your urls so, if they are most comfortable for your users.

Evgeniy
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I'd probably use your keywords report from Search Console. In case visitors are searching in Greek and there is a high chance to have those keywords in your URL then I'd go with λαδοκολλα-περι-ανεμων

Otherwise I'd use converted.

But all in all it might be not a big deal anyway. E.g. in Russian market both search engines are pretty good in converting letters both ways and the only researches I came across were about "how the user search your website? Do they switch keyboard layout?" and so on.

George
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