International SEO strategy: from one market to several

An international SEO strategy has five parts: choose the markets that can pay back the work, pick a URL structure Google understands (subfolders, country domains or subdomains), connect the versions with hreflang, write each version from search terms researched in that country, and earn links and mentions from each market. Then measure per country and per language, and add markets one at a time.

Most sites that try to rank abroad translate their pages and stop there. Google indexes them, and they rarely rank, because the words people search in Lyon or Leipzig are not the translation of the words in the home market, and nobody in those countries links to the new pages. This guide follows the order we use when we take a site into new countries, with what Google itself documents at each step.

1. Choose the markets

Start from where you can sell, not from where search volume is largest. For each candidate market, ask: can we deliver and support customers there, in their language? Is there demand for what we offer, measured with search terms from that country? Who ranks there today, and how strong are they? A market where you have customers, a sales contact and weaker competitors beats a larger market where you have none of the three.

2. Pick a URL structure

Google documents three structures and works with all of them; the choice is about authority, signals and the work you can carry.

For most businesses entering a few markets, subfolders on one domain are the best start: every link to any version strengthens all of them, and you run one site. Country domains pay off for businesses with a local entity, team and marketing per country. Google retired the international targeting setting in Search Console in 2022, so the structure, hreflang and content now carry the country signal. Picking a domain in the first place is covered in how to choose a domain name.

3. Connect the versions with hreflang

Hreflang annotations tell Google which version of a page is for which language or country, so a searcher in Brussels sees fr-BE and one in Paris sees fr-FR. Every version lists every version, itself included, plus an x-default for everyone else. Use language codes from ISO 639-1 and region codes from ISO 3166-1: en-GB, not en-UK. Our hreflang tag generator writes the tags, the sitemap entries or the HTTP header for you and flags the usual mistakes; the term itself is explained in hreflang.

Keep a canonical tag on each version pointing to itself, not to the home-language version, or Google may drop the translations as duplicates.

4. Research search terms per market

This is where international SEO is won or lost. Research each market in its own language and country: Google's autocomplete with the right country and language settings, the keyword tools of the search engines, the words your sales people hear from customers there, and the pages that rank today.

Write each version from those terms: titles, headings, the first paragraph and the internal links. A good translator who knows your trade is part of the job; machine translation without an editor shows. How we approach a site in two Belgian languages is in a website in French and Dutch.

5. Earn links and mentions in each market

Links from your home market help every version, but rankings in a country follow links and mentions from that country: local directories and trade associations, partners and distributors, local press, events and trade fairs, local business profiles. Plan a few per market per quarter rather than a campaign once.

6. Measure per country

Set up Search Console with your versions visible separately, by folder or domain, and watch impressions and clicks per country and per page. Measure requests per market on the site itself. Give each market three to six months before you judge it, and add the next market when the first one pays back. How long SEO takes in general is in how long does SEO take.

Answers in AI search, in every language

AI assistants answer questions in the language they are asked, and draw on pages in that language. A clear answer in the first sentence of each section, facts with a date, and structured data help them cite you in every market, the same way they help Google. What we do there is on found in ChatGPT.

Common mistakes

• Translating the home-market keywordsinstead of researching each market.
• One canonical for all languages,which tells Google the translations are duplicates.
• Automatic redirectsby IP address that hide versions from Googlebot.
• Mixed languages on one pagemenus in English, content in German, a cookie banner in Dutch.
• Only the home page translated,so the versions have nothing to rank with.
• No local links,so the new versions have no authority in their own country.

Local proof beyond translation

Buyers in a new country look for signs that you serve them: prices in their currency, delivery terms to their country, a contact in their language, references or partners from their market, and the legal pages their country expects, such as an Impressum in Germany. Search engines read the same signals in the content. A version that only translates the home page reads as foreign to both.

A plan per quarter

International SEO works best in quarters, one market at a time. In the first quarter, set up the structure, the hreflang and the core pages of the first new market, written from local search terms. In the second, add the pages buyers in that market ask about and the first local links. In the third, measure what ranks and what brings requests, and decide whether the next market follows. A business that adds three markets at once usually ends up with three half-finished versions.