Launching your business into a new or different territory can be exciting and daunting in equal measure, with a whole world of logistical challenges that you’ll no doubt be focused on. The amount of work from an SEO perspective is often overlooked or underestimated though, and can sometimes be the deciding factor as to whether your international launch is a success or not.
I’ve seen plenty of businesses struggle when it comes to international SEO, and even create new problems for the country that they operate and were successful in previously. It all comes down to making sure that search engines understand the difference between various versions of your website and users are served the correct result for their location.
Sounds simple. When you consider how much work it is to manage one website though, you’re essentially duplicating this for every country and language that you want to target going forward, and there aren’t many shortcuts to do this properly.
Decisions will need to be made about your platform and the set up of domains to correctly target these countries and/or languages, whether you opt for a country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) like domain.fr for France, subfolders like domain.com/fr/, or even subdomains such as fr.domain.com. You’ll need to implement hreflang tags to tell Google about all these different versions and their relationships, which is one of the trickiest aspects of technical SEO. And finally, all of your content will need to be translated and localised to address cultural norms, local idioms, and regional preferences, including text, images, symbols, and other multimedia assets.
This is potentially all before you’ve even made a sale in that country, so getting the right SEO support is imperative.
Regional URLs & Hreflang
Getting your technical SEO set-up right to launch internationally can bring tricky decisions and complications around regional-specific URLs and hreflang tag implementation. It’s a case of more languages, more problems.
Translation & Localisation
One of the big mistakes when it comes to international SEO is doing the bare minimum with content, potentially using Google Translate or a plugin. You need to serve these new customers properly and speak their language, in all aspects.
Backlinks
If you’ve already invested in backlink acquisition or digital PR in one country, this should be obvious but sometimes isn’t. If the German version of your website doesn’t have links from German domains, relevancy will be a challenge.
Frequently asked international SEO questions
How do you manage and optimise country-specific URL structures (e.g., ccTLDs, subdomains, subdirectories) for international SEO?
The first decision that needs to be made about international SEO is the set up of your domain and/or URLs. Depending on your website or platform, you may not have much choice, but you should consider each available option both from an SEO perspective and management of your online store, such as stock, logistics etc. For SEO, you need to provide clear signals to Google about your domain, and my job is to make this as effective as possible.
What strategies do you use to target different countries and regions effectively?
Each country or region that your business serves should be given its own focus. You essentially require an SEO strategy for each, whilst trying to make this as efficient as possible when it comes to resources and budgets, which all comes down to prioritisation.
How do you manage hreflang tags and other technical aspects of international SEO?
Hreflang tags can be one of the trickiest aspects of technical SEO to get right. A lot of platforms will now support with this implementation, but it requires a thorough approach to not only get this live, but to make sure that Google is correctly understanding and considering these tags and a lot of businesses don’t focus on the latter.
How do you handle multilingual SEO to ensure our content ranks well in different languages?
Ranking well in different languages comes down to several different aspects, from technical SEO to content and backlinks. My approach is to get the technical set up right first, and then use native or fluent speakers of each language for content, before then considering backlinks. Simply put, if it’s not done in this order, you’re unlikely to rank well, or maybe even at all.
How do you handle cultural differences and language nuances in keyword research for international markets?
This is usually the most common error that businesses make. If you’re serious about growing your business in another country, you have to serve these potential customers and provide the best experience over any competitor in that market. Freelance translators that are local to that country or region can provide a lot of value, before then being able to consider the SEO aspects.
