Korean URLs vs. English URLs: Please, Stop Using Korean URLs!

Hi, this is Isaac from WPlaybook. Today’s post is a special SEO guide for our beloved but sometimes stubborn WPlaybook community members. When people first create their WordPress blogs, many beginners—whom we like to call “blog newbies”—usually write their posts using Rank Math. They’ve heard things like, “This is supposed to be amazing for SEO!” or “If you use this, you’ll rank #1!” and end up catching what I jokingly call the “Rank Math Syndrome.” Now, that’s all fine—Rank Math is great—but because of it, there are people who insist on using Korean URLs. This post is for those people.

Korean URLs vs. English URLs

This post has one main point, and it’s simple: English URLs win! 🙂

If you’re already using English URLs—just hit the back button, you’re good to go. But if you’re using Korean URLs, let me explain why that’s a bad idea.

Please, stop using Korean URLs. Use English URLs instead!
WPlaybook: WPlaybook

Wapple:WPlaybook

The Misunderstanding About Korean URLs

A lot of people use Korean URLs because Rank Math checks whether the keyword is included in the URL. So in an effort to include the focus keyword (and boost their SEO score), they end up using Korean URLs.

Let me ask you one question. Does including Korean keywords in your URL actually help with rankings? The answer is: half true, half false. Why? Because the question itself is flawed. The correct question should be:

Does including keywords in the URL help with rankings?

And the answer to that is: Yes, it does.

See the difference? Foreign bloggers—since Google is basically the only search engine they use (no Daum or Naver like we have; over 90% of searches go through Google)—are constantly researching how to rank better on Google. These are the people we call SEO experts. 🙂

So, what did a foreign SEO research group do? They created posts with the same keyword on different domains—one with the keyword included in the URL, and one without—and compared how they ranked in search results. Here’s what they found.

I’m like, “Oh, it’s actually having an impact,” because it’s actually showing up for the actual keyword. But then John Mueller, the head of Google’s search team, tweets. John Mueller, the head of Google’s search team, tweets the following.

Don’t bother with keywords in the URL. It’s not even visible on mobile!

John Mueller: Google Search Team Lead

WPlaybook’s Interpretation of Keywords in URLs

So, what’s the truth? One thing many people from Google’s search team have mentioned is that it’s good for the URL to reflect the meaning of the content. In other words, when Google crawls your page and determines rankings, it also tries to understand the meaning conveyed by the page’s URL.

Now here’s the question: do you think Googlebot can understand the meaning of a URL written in Korean as well as it does one written in English? You know the answer, right?

So, if you use an English URL that accurately reflects your content, there’s no reason you’d be penalized in Google rankings. In fact—just my personal opinion—but I think English URLs might actually rank better.

• Look at WPlaybook: we stick to English URLs, and our posts show up just fine at the top of Google rankings, don’t they?

Disadvantages of Korean URLs

There are honestly so many downsides to using Korean URLs. 😅 One of the most obvious is that the URL breaks when you try to share it.

But is that the only issue? Absolutely not. Did you know that using Korean URLs instead of English ones can even affect the revenue of your blog?

This is something I explain in our AdSense optimization course, but since you’ve made it this far, here’s a little hint: AdSense provides a feature where you can register your URLs and track how much revenue each URL generates. The problem is, if you use Korean URLs, they get all messed up in that system too. In other words, it becomes a real headache to figure out which posts on your blog are actually making you money.

This will be the subject of a separate post.

In Conclusion

Today, we talked about why you shouldn’t use Korean URLs. We also looked at how you should be writing your URLs. Starting today, make it a rule—always, without exception—use English URLs, and make sure they clearly reflect your post titles. Don’t forget!