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URL slug / path / structure in gTLDs vs ccTLDs

Hey Tine Dudek , what a great question and you caught me during a break, so I'll start answering right away — I hope no one will be jealous :)

The URL structure is critical, it is one of the signals that search engines consider. While meta titles are direct SEO signals, meta descriptions are indirect signals that, if written well, will impact the Click-Through Rate (CTR), meaning more users will click and enter your website if you have a great meta description.

Some SEOs would probably disagree, but, speaking from experience, the URL structure / slug (also called "Permalink" on WordPress) is closer to a direct SEO signal, such as the meta title.

The keywords at the left of the "URL slug" are the most important, they have more weight than keywords at the end of the URL (right side). It makes sense: you start with what is the most important, as usual!

Using the right keywords could have an impact on CTR!

Regarding content structure, a URL slug could also help crawlers create a topically relevant cluster and help "silo" the content. And usually, some of the URLs will be seen by human users (although the layout has recently changed a lot, especially on mobile devices).

When using ccTLDs, it sounds logical that the content will be homogenized into a given language, for instance on a domain name using the German country code extension .de, all the content, from the meta titles to the URL slugs, should be in German.

So when going with domain.gTLD/subdir/url-slug instead of using ccTLDs, it is absolutely essential to use URL slugs as yet another positive SEO signal and include the relevant keywords in the targeted language.

In other words: it is vital to use the keywords relevant to the users located in the geographical area you are targeting! This means translating is essential, but even going beyond and understanding a word's cultural and linguistic differences in a given language.

Some marketing campaigns went wrong because the teams just "translated" without understanding the cultural references and the hidden meaning of words :)

Take Apple as a counter-example :)

Apple[.]fr redirects to Apple[.]com/fr/, Apple did not use the right SEO strategy

Because it is Apple, a global brand that earned users' trust and, therefore, the trust of search engines. Because trust is the most important factor online, large established brands have an unfair competitive advantage.

This means "normal" brands should NOT copy their SEO strategies because large brands will get away with things considered mistakes for a small business!