7 Ways Not to Fail at International SEO

#INTERNATIONALSEO BY @ALEYDA FROM #ORAINTI
7 Ways Not to Fail at
International SEO

* I’m Aleyda Solis SEO Consultant & Founder at Orainti
* SEO Speaker at +100 Events in +20 countries
* Author “SEO. Las Claves Esenciales.”
* Crawling Mondays Video & Podcast Series Host
* #SEOFOMO Newsletter Wrangler
* Maker LearningSEO.io
* European Search Personality of the Year in 2018
* remoters.net Co-Founder
I’m Aleyda Solis, SEO Consultant
& Founder at Orainti

Targeting
International
markets can be a
great way to scale
your business
online

However,
ranking across
competitive
industries in
international
markets can be
tough

There are very common well known challenges
that are critical to avoid to not fail in the process
LAUNCHING IN
TOO MANY,
NON-
PROFITABLE
MARKETS
CHOOSING
THE WRONG
INTL
TARGETING
FOR YOUR
BUSINESS
NOT
LOCALIZING
YOUR
INTERNATION
AL CONTENT
INCORRECTLY
SETTING
HREFLANG
ANNOTATIONS
CHOOSING
THE WRONG
WEB
STRUCTURE
FOR YOUR
INTL MARKETS
REDIRECTING
USERS (AND
BOTS)
AUTOMATICAL
LY BASED ON
THEIR IP
ONLY RELYING
ON HREFLANG
ANNOTATIONS
TO
GEOLOCATE

1. Launching in too
many non-profitable
markets

You don’t need to target *all* international markets
just because your industry leaders are doing it so

Or enabling all language versions for every country you
target since most won’t bring meaningful search traffic

This is how you end up having this too very common
problem when doing International SEO
“I don’t have enough resources to localize
and optimize for all the markets”
- Someone who enabled too many international Web versions

Validate your starting point, market search potential
as well as the relevance from a business standpoint
COUNTRY AND
LANGUAGE
CURRENT
ORGANIC
SEARCH
TRAFFIC
SEARCH
COMPETITION
LEVEL
SEARCH VOLUME
OPPORTUNITY
SEARCH
TREND IN
MARKET
SEARCH
ENGINE
USED
CAPACITY TO
PERFORM
BUSINESS
OTHER
TRAFFIC
DRIVES
Canada in
English
300 per month High
2,000,000 searches
per month
Positive Google High Affiliate
USA in English 500 per month Medium
3,000,000 searches
per month
Negative Google Medium
Social
Affiliate
USA in Spanish 200 per month Medium
2,500,000 searches
per month
Positive Google Low
Social
Affiliate
… … … … … … … …

Assess if there’s a minimum of search traffic potential
for profitability using current conversions data
https://www.aleydasolis.com/english/international-seo-tools/roi-calculator/

2. Choosing the wrong
international targeting
for your business

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/specialty/international/managing-multi-regional-sites
Google supports language and country targeting,
but not “continent level” one

What countries
should this EU
version in English
target if there’s
already a UK
version in
English?
If you use a .eu version you will have a harder time
geolocating it and end up running into duplication issues

Yes No
Yes No
IS LOCATION A FACTOR THAT INFLUENCES YOUR WEB OPERATIONS?
COUNTRY TARGETING LANGUAGE TARGETING
IS THERE ENOUGH TRAFFIC & CONVERSIONS TO
TARGET EACH COUNTRY?
An online
shop will
likely be
country
targeted
It’s critical to correctly identify your international
targeting, to make *everything else* consistent
A Tech blog
will likely
language
target

Search demand behavior should be identified and
*compared* per market to assess similarities/differences

brand.eu/es-es/
brand.eu/fr-fr/
brand.eu/de-de/
brand.eu vs
If you really need to use .eu domains, use them as if they
were gTLDs, with country folders/subdomains with them

Like Patagonia
does here

3. Choosing the wrong
Web structure for your
International Markets

Many Internationally
targeted sites are
held back
by their
international Web
structure, since all
have pro’s and con’s

No
Yes
Is the language of
the new market
different than the
one of your
current site?
Is the audience
purchase/search
behavior/preferences
(terms,
trends/seasonality,
etc.) of the new
market different than
the current one?
No
No
Is your site product
offering going to be
very different for the
new market
(availability,
conditions, pricing,
etc.)?
YOU MIGHT NOT NEED A
DIFFERENTIATED WEB
STRUCTURE FOR YOUR NEW
MARKET
YOU NEED A
DIFFERENTIATED/NEW
INTERNATIONAL WEB STRUCTURE
FOR YOUR NEW MARKET
Yes
Yes
Check first if you really need a new/differentiated Web
structure to target your new international markets

Not the best to
scale targeting
multilingual or
localized
search
potential
Good first step
for
international
shopping
support
For example, SoleRebels supports international shipping
& multi-currency w/ the same URL structure

Depending on industry/biz model & language variation,
you might prefer to language rather than country target

Are your top
competitors in
new target
markets using
ccTLDs?
Yes
Yes
USE A NEW
CCTLD FOR THE
NEW COUNTRY
MARKET
No
No
USE GEOLOCALIZED
SUBDIRECTORIES IN
YOUR CURRENT GTLD. IF
YOU CAN’T, USE
SUBDOMAINS IN
CURRENT GTLD.
You’re using a ccTLD
You’re using a gTLD Are you using
a gTLD or
ccTLD for
your existing
market?
Yes
Yes
No
No
USE GEOLOCALIZED
SUBDIRECTORIES IN A
NEW GTLD. IF YOU
CAN’T, USE
SUBDOMAINS IN NEW
GTLD.
Is the
popularity/authorit
y of your
competition very
high/well
established?
Are your top
competitors in
new target
markets using
ccTLDs?
Is the
popularity/authori
ty of your
competition very
high/well
established?
USE A NEW
CCTLD FOR THE
NEW COUNTRY
MARKET
If you need a differentiated Web structure to target a new
country, what should be it?

JS Sports target countries via ccTLDs, which
are by default geolocated to each country

Asos does it with sub-directories under a gTLD

Avoid migrating your already established market when
targeting a new one, do it only if really necessary
.com/uk/
.co.uk
.com/us/
.com/au/
.co.uk
.com
.com/au/
.com/us/
or
Don’t Do

It’s also critical to be consistent with the Web
structure referring the user to the relevant URL

4. Not Localizing
your International
Content

Going native can
make or break
global sales and
your international
site rankings!
https://www.shopify.com/enterprise/international-ecommerce-issues

The localization of your content is key to connect with
your international audience preferences/behavior

Overlooking it will give a bad search and user experience,
negatively impacting rankings and CTR

The goal is to
localize the
different user
facing areas and
indexable
content of the
site

While taking into consideration each market search behavior
for each version content optimization

It’s about having an iterative/incremental approach,
from translation to localization up to transcreation

Establishing multi-country patterns to generate
the main content elements for each page type

5. Redirecting your
users (and bots)
automatically based
on IPs locations

Whatever the
international Web
structure, avoid
automatic redirects
based on the IP
location

Automatic
redirects can
harm crawlability
of some of your
international Web
versions

Suggest the
relevant Intl Web
version instead,
and save the
value to redirect
the user based on
saved preference

Always allow the user to switch (and the bot to find your
alternate versions) too with a crawlable navigation

6. Incorrectly Setting
Hreflang annotations

Hreflang provide a method to signal Google about each
page and their alternates language & country target

It tends to be complex to implement since pages need
to self-refer and then refer to each other

It’s not only complex but also Google has deprecated
the hreflang report from Search Console

Hreflang itself continues working though

Most hreflang
implementation
issues happen
because we add
them to all pages,
we shouldn’t

Focus on those that have misalignment issues, ranking
in non-relevant markets and indexable alternates

Google.com for “womens socks” Google.co.uk for “womens socks”
<link rel="alternate" href="https://shop.lululemon.com/c/women-socks/_/N-8rc" hreflang="en-us" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://www.lululemon.co.uk/en-gb/c/womens/socks" hreflang="en-gb" />
For those hreflang that you actually need, only map the
alternate pages with the issues, rather than all versions

Use internationalization tools that automate
the hreflang implementation process
Weglot Hreflang Builder Hreflang Tags Generator

Validate Hreflang with SEO crawlers before/after release
and monitor in real time with SEO monitoring tools
Screaming Frog
ContentKing

7. Only relying on
hreflang annotations
to geolocate

● ccTLDs
● Country in metadata
● Country, Address and Phone
numbers in pages copy
● Local language & currency
● Backlinks from local sites
● Connected Business Profile
● Hreflang specifying
alternates from stronger
same language country
version
Well aligned ccTLD Not Well aligned ccTLD
There are many more geolocation signals, which should
be as aligned as possible for consistent geolocation

● ccTLDs
● Country in metadata
● Country, Address and Phone
numbers in pages copy
● Local language & currency
● Backlinks from local sites
● Connected Business Profile
● Hreflang specifying
alternates from stronger
same language country
version
Well aligned gTLDs
This is also applicable to subdirectories/subdomains
under gTLDs, and not only to ccTLDs too!

By doing all of these activities is how you will avoid
these very common challenges and maximize success
LAUNCHING IN
TOO MANY,
NON-
PROFITABLE
MARKETS
CHOOSING
THE WRONG
INTL
TARGETING
FOR YOUR
BUSINESS
NOT
LOCALIZING
YOUR
INTERNATION
AL CONTENT
INCORRECTLY
SETTING
HREFLANG
ANNOTATIONS
CHOOSING
THE WRONG
WEB
STRUCTURE
FOR YOUR
INTL MARKETS
REDIRECTING
USERS (AND
BOTS)
AUTOMATICAL
LY BASED ON
THEIR IP
ONLY RELYING
ON HREFLANG
ANNOTATIONS
TO
GEOLOCATE

7 Ways Not to Fail at International SEO

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