And this SEO topic, again…
The Persistent Challenge of International SEO
Many times throughout my career in international marketing, I have encountered the same challenge: how to correctly set up SEO for multilingual or multi-location websites?
The first time I faced this was 15 years ago at my very first job, which also involved one of my initial professional tasks. Back then, when part of the website was in HTML and another part in Flash (yes, Flash), we simply translated the “.com.br” version into English and added “/en” at the end of the domain. Easy-peasy, next task please!
SEO in the Early Days
Did we understand SEO back then? I doubt even the web development agency did. I recall dealing with many unfriendly internal links and poorly managed meta descriptions. All that comes to mind is my manager asking the agency, “How do we appear on the first page of Google?”. No one had a clear answer to her question.
(Funny aside: at that time, as a Journalism student, we had an assignment called “new technology and digital media,” where debates focused primarily on bloggers and new forms of journalism in the era of the internet. We used to speculate whether radio would ever die. Is that still valid? Well, that’s a topic for another post).
Since then, things have evolved significantly and continue to change every day. The phrase “update or die” – the title of a blog I adore – has never been truer.
What About the Strategic SEO Planning for International Websites?
Yes, let’s get back to the topic. As I said before, throughout my career, I have faced this situation multiple times, prompting me to write this blog post. I won’t cover everything needed to set up a website for international success – Google is replete with great content and step-by-step processes (my favorite is one from Neil Patel’s blog). Instead, I want to highlight what we need to keep in mind, ideally before creating a website from scratch.
1. Is your business forever local, or do you plan to expand in the future?
One thing to have in mind before creating your website is the type of business you currently run or plan to run. This will determine the type of domain you will initially acquire. Is your business local (a bar, restaurant, service or product company with no plan of international expansion), or do you have higher hopes for your organization and want to land in other countries? If you plan to stay local, you can get a ccTLD (country-code Top Level Domain), which is already geotargeted for your local audience, and problem solved.
If the latter is your case, the second question you need to ask yourself is: “will I have multi-language or multi-location websites?”
Let’s say you are a law firm or a financial service company, and you have different laws and regulations for each market that you target – then, of course, you will need to have specific content per location on your website. Or if you are a CPG company with different assortments per region – then it would also be smart to think about geotargeting your pages (all of that, ideally, will need to be attached to the business strategy as a whole).
But if you are a SaaS company that offers exactly the same type of service everywhere in the world? Maybe all you need is to have multi-language websites, with your content translated into different languages, as some of them might serve many regions. Spanish serves Spain and the majority of Latin America, for example, as well as French, might work not only France but also part of Canada, Mali, Belgium and other regions).
And, based on that, what would be the best option?
Choosing the Right Domain Structure
There are 3 types of domain you may want to acquire: ccTLD, subdomains with gTLD (generic top-level domain) and subcategories with gTLD (you can also work with URL parameters which are not recommended by Google).
- ccTLD – these are the country level domains (.ca, .br, .uk, .fr, etc.) and are the best ones to keep your website geotargeted to your local audience. However, they are more expensive (you will need to maintain several domains, which is costly), require more infrastructure. You will have to dedicate a lot of effort to create the popularity and authority of new domains from scratch since they don’t inherit the popularity that your main website already has.
- Subdomains with gTLD – these are the ones that bring the country code before the gTLD domain (ca.example.com) and are very easy to set up while still allows separation of sites. They are ideal for companies in which international websites are managed by different teams of third parties.
However, users might find it challenging to recognize geotargeting from the URL only as in the example “es.example.com”: the “es” may refer both to the language Spanish and the country Spain. Another disadvantage is that you still might need to work on the website authority since Google usually sees it as an independent domain.
- Subdirectories with gTLD – the country code comes at the end of a domain (example.com/ca). It is easy to set up as well but doesn’t state clearly if the code refers to the country or the language. The advantage of this version, though, is that it inherits the authority that the main website already has, which saves you a lot o effort with SEO and SEM strategies.
The best option will depend on the type of business, the region, the strategies and the way you will organize the website management. For small teams and simple management structures, my preferred option would be the Subdirectories. But if a given organization has its international websites managed by independent groups or third parties, the Subdomains allow more flexibility and autonomy. It is also essential to study your market before, as, in certain regions, where there is no much competition, or no one does SEO, it may be worth starting with a ccTLD, instead of subdirectories or subdomains.
2. How to deal with duplicated content?
First of all, localize your content as much as you can to avoid duplicate material. For some businesses, the content is particular to a given country, and in this case, it is easier to avoid duplicates. However, as in the example I gave before, if you are a SaaS company, you might have precisely the same material for all of your regions.
If you cannot avoid duplicate texts on international websites, make sure to tell Google (and other search engines) to what country and language that content refers to using “hreflang” tags. This will also ensure that your website is delivered to the right audience, helping it rank higher on Google.
If you have duplicate content within one website, you can tell what is your preferred URL for Google to index by canonicalization. Be careful with this one, though, as you might hide valuable content from your website – make sure you understand the effects it will bring to your site before applying this technique.
3. Did you perform keyword research and are you writing SEO friendly content?
Another way to escape the duplicate content issue is to perform keyword research when writing for a new audience (this, by the way, is something you need to do regularly, even for your main website #justsaying). It is vital to make sure to use vocabulary that your audience uses, and this may vary even for countries that speak the same official language (like Portuguese for Brazil and Portugal, or Spanish for Latin America and Spain).
Optimizing your content based on local search intent will help your website to get a better rank position on Google for given searches. Tailoring content to local search terms remains critical. There are a bunch of tools and platforms for keyword research, which have become more and more advanced. The AI integration provides deeper insights and automate parts of the process, making it more efficient to gather and analyze keyword data relevant to different locales.
Speaking of AI, there has been a significant improvement lately given the help that AI tools can give in automating repetitive tasks and generating content ideas, for example, which saves us a lot of time. However, it’s important to ensure content remains original and engaging, respecting the tone of voice of the blog or writer.
4. Are your working with local Link Building and Link Baiting?
I could never stress the importance of this enough. Everybody knows how value Link Building is to your SEO strategy, right? When you work with international SEO, ensuring you are localizing your link building is fundamental to the success of your website. And, in order to earn these links, make sure your content is manually translated as it will better resonate with the audience if you do it that way. Links help you to build the authority of a page, which is one of the criteria that Google uses to create its ranking. When you do that regionally, you are increasing the authority of your recently created international website.
Keep in mind that great content will always be a potential candidate for Link Baiting. When you write your material (and it doesn’t matter if it is an eBook, a white paper, or a blog post), if it is complete enough and educational enough, there is a good chance it will get links from other websites organically. You will also take the “good risk” of earning links from .edu websites, which will leverage even more the quality of your pages in the eyes of Google.
Always, always, always write your content based on SEO best practices. SEO is not just about back-end, metadata, and URLs. What you write and, more importantly, the way you write will play an essential role in the result of your page rank.
Learn, Test, Iterate, Repeat.
There is a lot to think about when it comes to International SEO, and the internet is full of great content and step-by-step tutorials. However, no matter the approach you take, always make sure that you did your market, competition and keywords research before, and that you are following the business strategy as a whole.
And, lastly, always keep yourself and your team updated in the latest trends, as the digital world might come with a “surprise” at any time. SEO has changed a lot since I had my first contact with it in 2005, and I am more than sure that it won’t stop her, especially in the era of AI, but this is a topic for another blog post. 😉