Guide to working on an international SEO strategy

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1. What do we open, a country or a language?
Opening a country or a language, although it may seem the same, is very different.

The main difference is that when you open a country, you usually geolocalize the content in the country, either by domain, Search Console…

Instead, we can have the website in one language that works for multiple countries .

Example with the English language:

As you may know, English is a practically universal language, although each country has its own small variations in vocabulary in England, Australia, the United States...

When we open a country, what we should do is use the language of that country, applying the nuances of the language of the country in question. On the other hand, when we open a language, the ideal is to use the most neutral language, since what we want to do is focus on all English-speaking countries.

Perhaps with this explanation, you have been wondering, how does Google know if the language of the website we use is for the British, for the Australians, for the Americans or for the English public in general?

Well, the answer is quite simple, through the Google Webmaster Tools tool . And the way to do it is even simpler, all you have to do is enter the tool, select the option “Old tools and reports”, and then “International segmentation”.

Once directed to the old report of the Search Console tool, we can indicate if the website is oriented to any country in question:

Google Search Console International Targeting
Note: By default, Google follows the instructions in this section, but there have been cases where a website was ranked in a country other than the one indicated in its own tool. Many of the links that the website received were from other countries, so Google assumed that the real location was the origin of the links.

But then, which option is best, language or country?

As always, everything will depend on the project itself and the strategy to follow , investor leads email database but keep in mind that the same language can have very important variations in different countries, so many times, and whenever the budget allows, it is interesting to adapt the website to each language variation, in order to achieve more accurate geolocation.

Practical example:

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We have a car dealership that we want to internationalize to Latin America. Although most Latin American countries speak Spanish, the way of calling things can vary.

For example, in Spain we have the word “coche”, and in Latin America the word coche can be called in different ways: carro, auto, automobile, vehicle and even nave, it all depends on the country.

It should be noted that each user searches for the term in their own dialect, so the ideal is to adapt our text to the dialects we are going to focus on .

Finally, keep in mind in international projects the seasonal patterns , and who our user is going to be.

When we talk about seasonal patterns, we are referring to climatic issues. For example, a website for the entire Hispanic market can be a bit difficult to manage, since we can find countries where it is summer and others where it is winter, and depending on the product we have, this can be a problem.

Regarding the type of user, it must be taken into account that a website can be targeted in various ways, depending on the origin of the user. Example:

Let's suppose that we want to sell a house in Mallorca. It is very likely that, for Spanish users, this house is for summer vacations, but it may be that, for international users, this house is more of an investment issue, so we have the same product, but with two totally different approaches that we must take into account.

2. In which search engine will I position myself?
The Internet does not only live on Google , there are currently many search engines, although none with the volume of traffic that this one handles.

However, there are countries where Google has major competitors, or it may even happen as in China, where Google cannot be present for political reasons, and practically all the market share is taken by the Chinese search engine Baidu.

If we look outside of Google, we can find Bing, owned by Microsoft, Yandex, which has a significant share in Russia, Naver, which is the main search engine in Korea, or, for example, Seznam, the main search engine in the Czech Republic.

We can continue investigating and find hundreds of search engines, some with more strength in their respective countries, and others trying in one way or another to increase their share.

In any case, this post is aimed at the Google search engine, but if you want us to talk about other search engines, let us know in the comments and we will prepare it.

3. Domain, subdomain or folder?
Domain, subdomain or folder architecture?

This decision is really complex, and we will have to carefully analyze the situation of the project we are working on.

We explain the different options that may arise:

A ccTLD or a gTLD?

Whether you choose a ccTLD (country code Top Level Domain) or a gTLD (Generic Top Level Domain), the decision is more or less simple.

A ccTLD ranks well in the country of the domain, whereas a gTLD can rank in any country.

So which one to choose?

As always, it depends on your business. If it is only in Spain, you can use “.com” or “.es”.

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If it is international, you can only use “.es” for Spain. Therefore, this selection is not a good option.

Subdomains or subdirectories?

Once we have selected the domain, we must consider our architecture, and here we have several alternatives: domains by language, subdomains, subdirectories or even domains with different names.

Of the four options, the most recommended is to use subdirectories, since at the SEO level it is where we can get the most benefit.

Here the selection of one option or another will be defined mainly by technical issues, although we will detail the strengths and weaknesses of each option.

Subdomains (es.domain.com, en.domain.com…)

They are easy to implement.
They allow you to geolocate them through Google Webmaster Tools.
We can easily have different servers for each country.
At the On Page positioning level, the strength of the main domain, that is, (www.domain.com), is not distributed as well among the subdomains.
These last two options are very similar, although as we have already mentioned, the recommended option at the SEO level is to have a very strong “.com” domain that is distributed at the folder level.

If we use subdirectories ( www.domain.es/subdirectory )

We can distribute the force more evenly than with a subdomain.
Subdirectories can be geolocated with Google Webmaster Tools.
It is technically more difficult to separate each country into different servers.
If we use language domains ( www.domain.fr, www.domain.de, www.domain.it )

Each of these sites is completely independent.
It can be geolocated from the Search Console tool.
Allows you to have servers for each country.
For a Link building strategy, the cost is higher since links will have to be created for each country in question.
If we use domains with different names ( www.mydomain.uk, www.mondomain.fr , www.ilmiodominio.it )

Completely independent sites.
More costs with tasks such as Link building.
Better presence in each country, and greater flexibility at the local level.
4. How can we geolocate a domain?
To geolocate a domain we have several techniques, some of which do not even require any work on our part.

Using a geolocated domain : If we use a domain geolocated by Google, it automatically geolocates it in the country of the domain.
Search Console : Through the Google tool we can orient a domain to a location. Keep in mind that, if we are orienting our strategy to languages ​​and not to countries, this option should not be used, since the Webmaster Tools option only orients to Countries.
Local indicators : Google can target a domain based on addresses, phone numbers, etc., that is, signals that make Google think about the location of the domain.
Links : Google may move a domain's location based on the origin of the links. That is, if most of the links on a domain are from a certain country, Google may move the geolocation of that domain to that country.
5. How should we treat countries with the same language?
We have already mentioned at the beginning that the same thing can be said in different ways in different countries.

Therefore, if we create the same text for different countries, Google could consider this text as duplicate content , since practically all the texts for the different countries would be the same. Example: