A technical guide to international SEO strategy

International SEO strategy can be a challenging exercise in managing complexity. Whether you’re launching a new website, migrating or consolidating existing ones, there are important considerations to be made so that you don’t miss out on organic opportunities in your target countries and languages.

Managing websites across multiple geographies can sometimes result in a bit of a patchwork digital presence; with inconsistent domains and subdomains, overlapping content and unclear targeting. This unfocused approach often results in search engines struggling to serve the right page to the right user. This means poor experience and missed opportunities.

In this post, we’ll look at the key considerations for a website project that target multiple geographies, including:

• What makes an effective international SEO strategy
• How international SEO strategy shapes website structure
• Setting up your site to target multiple languages and/or countries
• Strategic considerations beyond technical setup

What makes an effective international SEO strategy?

International SEO enables you to make your website’s content visible and discoverable to search engines in other countries, and target the relevant country with the appropriate version of your content.

Fundamentally, an effective international SEO strategy is one that:

• Focuses on targeting users in countries where there is an existing market for your services/products.
• Enables you to tailor content to each region, whether that’s through automated translation or bespoke, country-specific content.
• Creates a foundation and structure for seamless growth and future expansion into more regions.

As with any SEO strategy, there are multiple facets to international SEO – which keywords you’re targeting, off-site work (link building, etc), and content. But at the most basic level, when embarking on a website project, you must consider some key factors around how you’ll be set up to present your website’s content in other languages and countries.

International SEO & website structure

When you’re looking at launching a website that will target multiple geographies, there are a number of key technical and strategic considerations during the planning or discovery phase that will shape the direction you take in terms of set up and structure.

There are a few ways to approach structuring your website and the different language versions, depending on a few factors:

• The number of languages and countries you’re targeting
• Whether any of the countries you’re targeting also have multiple languages
• How much you need to differentiate content and look and feel between versions

Single site with translations

The first possible approach is a single site, with translated versions for each language you wish to target. It is possible to manage translations “in-browser” (i.e. there is no alternate version of each page and the content is auto-translated in the frontend by something like a Google Translate plugin) but this approach doesn’t allow you to have distinct URLs which search engines can crawl and index for the correct language or region.

A more robust approach is to use a plugin which will allow you to create translated versions of your content in the backend, which is then pushed to the frontend as distinct pages.

Single site, multiple languages for Basel Area

In the example below, shows the structure of the multi-language website we built for Basel Area. The main site is in English, and there are two alternate versions: German and French. The user can switch between them in the frontend, and there are signals in the code that tell search engines how and when to index the different versions.

You can usually manage translations for this kind of site by using a plugin in the backend. This will enable you to either translate the content automatically or manually, as well as tweak content slightly for the different versions – for example different contact details, addresses, or even different messaging for different languages or regions. With this approach, you’re not able to change anything visual or structural between versions; just the content.

Multisite

Some multi-geography projects require a little bit more complexity, but if set up in the right way should be intuitive to navigate from the frontend and straightforward to manage in the backend.

A multisite is a setup where multiple websites can be managed from the same CMS instance. These websites will share themes and plugins, ensuring consistency and easier management whilst allowing for a bit more flexibility in terms of content and visual and structural elements that can be changed.

You might need a multisite in the following scenarios:

• You’re looking to target multiple countries and multiple languages within each or some countries. For example, you’re targeting Switzerland and therefore want to have a version for Switzerland in French, German and Italian.
• You need to make structural or visual changes as well as text-based changes between different versions of the site. For example, adding different branding (logos/colours), new pages, different menu structures, etc.

Example of multisite structure

In the example below we’ve imagined a site structure where the main site is in English, targeted at the UK, then there are multiple versions branching off, with one targeting both English and Spanish in the USA, and another targeting French, German and Italian in Switzerland.

You can see a similar setup and structure live on the multisite we built for Liberty Steel Group. They have a global site, in English, and then sites targeting multiple countries, where the language can be switched on each one. There are differences in the content, imagery and navigation between each country site, which the multisite structure enables.

Summary of international site structures

A single site will work if:

• You want to target multiple languages and/or countries with the same fundamental website content, just translated/slightly tweaked.
• You don’t need to target multiple languages within multiple countries.

You’ll need a multisite if:

• You require more flexibility in terms of changing content, navigation, and visual elements between different versions of the site. This could be useful if for example your company uses a different brand name in another country (think Vauxhall and Opel or Walkers and Lays), or if you offer different products/services in different countries
• You want to be able to target multiple languages for each or some countries, all under the same “umbrella” of sites and all manageable in the same backend.

Other international SEO considerations

Laying the foundations in terms of the structure of your website (or websites) is the most fundamental part of a good international SEO strategy, but there are a number of other considerations too.

Domain & URL structure

There are several ways you can “point to” the different versions of your site, or website within your multisite. How you configure your domains and URLs could depend on a number of elements from the structure of your wider organisation to the technical limitations of your site’s architecture.

A top-level domain (TLD) is the highest level in the hierarchical structure of your website – an example would be “.com” or “.co.uk”. A sub-domain is the next level in the hierarchy, and sits before the TLD in your URL, e.g. “www.” or “blog.”. A sub-folder or sub-directory, is the next level on the hierarchy, usually used to point at specific categories or pages within your site.

You can use either of the three to distinguish between different versions of your website for different countries and languages.

For example, three different ways of approaching serving a French version of your website might look like:
Option 1: yoursite.fr
Option 2: fr.yoursite.com
Option 3: yoursite.com/fr/

Which one is best for you might come down to personal preference, but there might be some examples where a particular approach is a better fit. For example, if you had a multisite targeting different countries and multiple languages, it may be optimal to have distinct domains for each country, with subfolders for each language. So if you had a Swiss site, you might have yoursite.ch as the TLD, and the subfolders for each language: yoursite.ch/fr/, yoursite.ch/it/, yoursite.ch/ge/.

Ultimately, if the technical setup/architecture behind the scenes is correct, you can point domains, sub-domains or sub-folders at whatever you want or need to. It’s basically about giving search engines a distinct URL or folder to crawl and index for that specific country and/or language.

Hreflang tags

A hreflang tag is a HTML attribute which specifies to search engines the language of a webpage and the region it’s targeting. This ensures the correct version is shown in the correct country and/or language, and also avoids issues with keyword cannibalisation across multiple versions of your content.

There are two main types of hreflang tag:

Language-only – specifies the language of the page, but not a specific country. So all users searching in that language will be served that page, no matter their location. For example:
<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”fr” href=”https://yourwebsite.fr”>

Language and region – specific both the language of the page and a specific target country. So users searching in that language in that country would be served that version of the page. For example, this targets French speakers in Switzerland:
<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”fr-ch” href=”https://yourwebsite.ch/fr/”>

There is also a “default” tag, which this serves as a fallback language should the user’s language/location not match any of the specific versions. It’s best practice to include one on multi-language sites. For example:
<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x-default” href=”https://yourwebsite.com”>

This is an important consideration, particularly when considering how you’re going to be targeting users in different countries. Using language and region tags enables you to be more focused in your targeting, but could also be restrictive in tying you down to one particular region.

Country-specific strategies

Good international SEO strategy doesn’t end with the technical side of course. Simply setting up translated versions in the languages and countries you want to target is a good start, but to unlock more potential growth, it may be worth developing specific content and optimisation strategies for each distinct region or country.

It may be advisable to engage with an international SEO agency that can cover multiple regions, or with a specific SEO agency in a region you want to target, who will be able to help you with targeting keywords in the native language of that region.

Ultimately, as long as you have set up the structure/architecture of your website correctly, you can bring this all together and manage it under one CMS, even if you have multiple parties collaborating on it.

Hitting the ground running with international SEO

Thinking carefully about where you are now and where you want to get to with the international targeting and your website is vital at the planning stage of your project. How you need and want to approach international SEO can significantly impact the timelines, scope and time investment required to create and upload content.

Considering a multi-geography or multi-language website project? Get in touch and let’s talk about how we could help.