8 Questions Every SEO Should Ask Themselves in an International SEO Strategy
Posted: Wed Jan 22, 2025 8:38 am
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 normally geolocalize the content in the country, either by domain, webmaster tools…., whereas we can have the website in a language that works for several countries.
Example:
Let's take the English language, as you know English is a practically universal language, although each country has its 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 we have to do is enter the tool, select the Search Traffic option and then International Targeting, and from here we can indicate if the website is oriented to a particular country.
Note: By default, Google pays attention to what is indicated in this section, but there have been cases in which a website was positioned in a country other than the one indicated in the webmaster tools, since a large part of the links that the website obtained were from other countries, so Google assumed that the real location was the origin of the links.
Which option is best, language or country? As always, it will all depend on the project itself and the strategy to be followed, 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 variant, in order to achieve more accurate geolocation.
Example:
We have a car dealership that we want to internationalize to Latin America. Even though most Latin American countries speak Spanish, the way we call things can vary. For example, in Spain we have the word “coche” (car), and in Latin America the word coche is said: Carro, Auto, Automóviles, Vehículo and even Nave (car), it all depends on the country, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Peru…, and even though it may be that all users from different countries understand each other, we must take into account 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 for international projects seasonal patterns, and who our user is going to be.
When we talk about seasonal patterns, we are referring to climatic issues, that is, a website for the entire Hispanic market can be a little 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 users.
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, 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?
Grow with us!
The Internet does not live on Google alone . There are currently many search engines, although none with the volume of traffic that this one handles. Even so, there are countries where Google has major competitors, or it can even happen like in China, where Google cannot be present for political reasons, and practically the entire 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, and so on, we can find hundreds of search engines, some with more strength in their respective countries, and others that try 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 a comment and we will prepare it.
Therefore, which search engine should we use? As we have said, it will depend on the country, so we can easily find that a project has several strategies depending on the search engine. To find out which search engine is the main one in the countries where we operate, we have several tools that can help us and that present periodic reports on the market share hotmail email database of each search engine: Experian , Forrester Research , ComScore , Yandex, or China Internet Watch .
3.Domain, subdomain or folder?
Which is better, a 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, but we will explain the different options.
A ccTLD or a gTLD?
Whether you want 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, that is, a .es ranks in Spain, not outside the country, whereas a gTLD can rank in any country. So, which one to choose? As always, it depends on your business. If it's only in Spain, you can use .com or .es, but if it's international, you can only use .es for Spain. So this choice is not a good option.
Examples:
Projects that use ccTLDs include TripAdvisor and Amazon .
Grow with us!
Subdomains, subdirectories or other weird stuff..?
Once we have selected the domain, we must consider our architecture, and here we have several alternatives: subdomains, subdirectories or even parameters in the URL or cookies. Of the four options, the least recommended is to use parameters (www.domain.com/country=es), and the one that should never be used is cookies, since we do not identify the location through the URLs, so we are going to focus exclusively on domains with folders and subdomains, which are the best options.
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.dailymotos.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.
They use subdomains for example Wix and WordPress.com
These last two options are very similar, I personally prefer to have a very strong .com domain that is distributed at the folder level, but it's all a matter of taste.
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.
They use subdirectories for example Spotify and EA
Finally, we also have IDN domains (Internationalized Domain Names). These domains allow the use of special characters such as accents and ñ in the domain name itself. Personally, I do not recommend these domains at all.
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 normally geolocalize the content in the country, either by domain, webmaster tools…., whereas we can have the website in a language that works for several countries.
Example:
Let's take the English language, as you know English is a practically universal language, although each country has its 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 we have to do is enter the tool, select the Search Traffic option and then International Targeting, and from here we can indicate if the website is oriented to a particular country.
Note: By default, Google pays attention to what is indicated in this section, but there have been cases in which a website was positioned in a country other than the one indicated in the webmaster tools, since a large part of the links that the website obtained were from other countries, so Google assumed that the real location was the origin of the links.
Which option is best, language or country? As always, it will all depend on the project itself and the strategy to be followed, 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 variant, in order to achieve more accurate geolocation.
Example:
We have a car dealership that we want to internationalize to Latin America. Even though most Latin American countries speak Spanish, the way we call things can vary. For example, in Spain we have the word “coche” (car), and in Latin America the word coche is said: Carro, Auto, Automóviles, Vehículo and even Nave (car), it all depends on the country, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Peru…, and even though it may be that all users from different countries understand each other, we must take into account 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 for international projects seasonal patterns, and who our user is going to be.
When we talk about seasonal patterns, we are referring to climatic issues, that is, a website for the entire Hispanic market can be a little 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 users.
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, 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?
Grow with us!
The Internet does not live on Google alone . There are currently many search engines, although none with the volume of traffic that this one handles. Even so, there are countries where Google has major competitors, or it can even happen like in China, where Google cannot be present for political reasons, and practically the entire 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, and so on, we can find hundreds of search engines, some with more strength in their respective countries, and others that try 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 a comment and we will prepare it.
Therefore, which search engine should we use? As we have said, it will depend on the country, so we can easily find that a project has several strategies depending on the search engine. To find out which search engine is the main one in the countries where we operate, we have several tools that can help us and that present periodic reports on the market share hotmail email database of each search engine: Experian , Forrester Research , ComScore , Yandex, or China Internet Watch .
3.Domain, subdomain or folder?
Which is better, a 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, but we will explain the different options.
A ccTLD or a gTLD?
Whether you want 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, that is, a .es ranks in Spain, not outside the country, whereas a gTLD can rank in any country. So, which one to choose? As always, it depends on your business. If it's only in Spain, you can use .com or .es, but if it's international, you can only use .es for Spain. So this choice is not a good option.
Examples:
Projects that use ccTLDs include TripAdvisor and Amazon .
Grow with us!
Subdomains, subdirectories or other weird stuff..?
Once we have selected the domain, we must consider our architecture, and here we have several alternatives: subdomains, subdirectories or even parameters in the URL or cookies. Of the four options, the least recommended is to use parameters (www.domain.com/country=es), and the one that should never be used is cookies, since we do not identify the location through the URLs, so we are going to focus exclusively on domains with folders and subdomains, which are the best options.
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.dailymotos.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.
They use subdomains for example Wix and WordPress.com
These last two options are very similar, I personally prefer to have a very strong .com domain that is distributed at the folder level, but it's all a matter of taste.
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.
They use subdirectories for example Spotify and EA
Finally, we also have IDN domains (Internationalized Domain Names). These domains allow the use of special characters such as accents and ñ in the domain name itself. Personally, I do not recommend these domains at all.