Last Update: 17 June 2026

International SEO is not just about choosing ccTLDs versus subfolders. It’s a complex process requiring some serious thinking and above all, planning.

Your international SEO activities may break into pieces in any phase. I’ve gathered my best practices and created this 56-point checklist that will help you prepare your website for international visitors.

Checklist Contents

• What is International SEO
• Decision-Making Phase
• Preparation Phase
• International Team Basics
• Evaluation Phase

Supporting Content

• iSEO Tools
• How to Track
• Models by Growth Stage
• Get Support or Outsource

What is International SEO?

International SEO is the process of optimizing your website to gain visibility across multiple countries and languages, ensuring it ranks effectively in different search engines or localized versions of the same search engine. Beyond simply expanding into new markets, international SEO requires a structured approach that includes continuous tracking, regular audits, and a well-defined strategy tailored to each region.

International SEO program and audits typically include:

• Technical SEO Setup – Implementing hreflang tags, optimizing site structure, and ensuring proper indexing across multiple search engines.
• Content Localization & Translation – Adapting content to regional preferences, cultural nuances, and local search intent.
• Performance Tracking – Monitoring organic traffic, rankings, and user engagement across different markets.
• SEO Audits & Compliance Checks – Identifying technical, content, and structural issues for each target region.
• Backlink & Authority Building – Developing region-specific link-building strategies to improve local domain authority.
• Competitor & Market Analysis – Assessing local competitors’ strategies to refine SEO approaches.
• Search Experience Optimization – Adapting your content for different search experiences, including traditional search engines, AI-powered search, vertical search platforms, and regional search ecosystems.
• Structured Reporting & Adjustments – Reviewing performance regularly and making data-driven optimizations.

Benefits of International SEO

iSEO offers a plethora of advantages that go beyond the boundaries of traditional SEO. Here are some compelling reasons to consider adopting an international SEO strategy:

• Expanded Brand Reach: Going global with SEO enables you to tap into new markets and languages. For instance, there are over 1.5 billion English speakers and 460 million Spanish speakers worldwide, presenting enormous opportunities.
• Low Competition Environment: By targeting less competitive international markets, you can often achieve quicker and more sustainable ranking improvements.
• International Mindset: Adopting an international SEO strategy requires the entire organization to think beyond local strategies and consider cultural differences, local customs, and buying behaviors.
• Frequent Traveling: One of the less obvious benefits of international SEO is the opportunity it offers for frequent travel to different markets for research and relationship-building.
• Language Learning: Understanding the nuances of different languages can provide unique insights into keyword selection and content creation.
• Market Insights: Naturally gained insights from different markets can help you adapt and evolve your strategies for better performance.
• High ROI: Compared to paid campaigns, SEO often delivers a higher ROI, and this is especially true for international SEO where the competition may be less fierce.

Decision-Making Phase

✓ Why Do We Want to Go International?

This is about your business strategy. If you don’t have one, international SEO or marketing won’t help you. You should know why you want to enter new markets.

🌐 Examples of poorly defined business objectives: “We want to approach users in the UK because they are generally willing to spend more money.” or “We chose to approach Spanish speakers because we have a Spanish translator on board.”

🌐 Examples of clear business objectives: “We’ve had a growing number of enquiries from Mexico” or “Web designers in Brazil lack proper educational materials in Brazilian Portuguese.”

✓ Is There Potential to Sell Internationally?

This point verifies your presumptions. Check your Google Analytics geo-traffic, look at your current customer base, check the trends in particular markets and check the situation on those markets: geo-political, economical, tax and legal.

✓ Language or Country Targeting?

Language targeting is useful when you want to approach users speaking the same language in different countries. For example, same-language countries, users who travel a lot or field specialists who are used to reading in foreign languages. On the contrary, targeting users in a particular country is usually more precise and efficient than targeting users by their language.

🌐 Example: You decide to approach users in South America with a Drupal template you have developed. Spanish-speaking users in different countries will use the template the same way and it will give them a solution to the same needs, so language targeting will be the best option.

🌐 Example 2: You sell German wines. You decided to enter new markets like Norway and Switzerland, but you are also dealing with local distribution channels and specific tastes of local consumers. Country targeting will definitely be the option here.

✓ Pre-select Your Target Markets

Before making any decision regarding which markets you will focus on, go through your historical sales data, competitive data, search data and market data to identify which markets to focus on. You may be surprised that the best markets for you don’t have to be the ones you originally thought about.

✓ Are We Able to Build an International / Multilingual Team, or Would it Be Better to Outsource That?

Once you start your multilingual SEO campaign, you should ensure the smooth running of it. Sudden cut down of the campaign is a bad sign for users and search engines. Make sure you have capacities available before launching your international SEO activities.

✓ Are We Able to Manage International Projects Ourselves, or or Would it Be Better to Outsource Them?

International project management’s specifics include:

• Dealing with different cultures and different working habits
• Frequent miscommunications and misunderstandings
• Time zone differences
• Software inconsistencies (character sets, text direction)
• Different delegation strategies: Be aware that you will not be able to apply the same delegation strategies (e.g. hiring a local SEO provider) in every country and expect the same results
• Different costs: the costs of a local SEO company in India and in Germany can differ substantially.

✓ Which Languages Are We Able to Cover in Help Desk?

The languages in which you provide customer support may have a direct impact on customer retention or even acquisition.

✓ Will We Have a Budget if the Work Is Outsourced?

Plan your budget in advance to ensure the outsourced work will be continuous under any circumstances.

✓ Do Keyword Research

Before using any tools, get insights from a local native about how your product / service is perceived and searched for by local users. You may realize that local users are used to a certain way of using it and search data may reflect that. Once you have a true idea of the behaviour, collect search data using both native speakers and automated tools like Google Ads, Yandex.Direct or Microsoft Advertising (formerly Bing Ads) or even tools like Marketing Miner, SEMrush or Ahrefs.

Think negatively

One of the upsides of having a native speaker is that he/she is able to identify an alternative meaning of the given word, in other words, negative keywords. These negative keywords can help you optimize your campaign before you launch it.

An eshop selling toy dolls might consider adding a negative keyword -baby, as a baby doll stands for a negligee. #oops

Regional dialects

A pavement or a sidewalk? Online pharmacy or online drugstore? Such peculiarities do not only exist in major languages. 

For instance in Polish, the word rower means a bicycle, while in Silesia (south of Poland) they call it koło, which stands for a wheel/circle in standard Polish. Tricky, huh?

Word modifications

German is an agglutination language, i.e. known for merging words together to make a new one. Funilly enough, some Germans make searches of split phrases, hoping to get more relevant results – e.g. textil wirtschaft instead of textilwirtschaft.

This also occurs in other agglutination languages such as Hungarian, Korean, Finnish or Turkish.

Sometimes they don’t spell it rihgt

Some misspellings are so tricky that no sophisticated tool can make the connection to the original term: this is yet another opportunity for a native analyst.

Especially in languages with accents, when the keyword without the accent stands for a different thing. For instance the word krtiny in Czech (meaning molehills) is a frequent subsitute for the accented word křtiny (christening). I wouldn’t put these two together, to be honest.

Speaking about German again, words written without umlauts (ä, ö, ü) where should be umlauts are meant to be different words: Losung is a different word from Lösung, since the former means a motto, and the latter, a solution. The umlaut could be transcribed with the letter e, making it Loesung, eventually.

Slang and colloquial words

Germans call a doughnut a Berliner, which baffled JFK when he called himself this fantastic piece of pastry during his famous speech Ich bin ein Berliner in 1963. There are certainly many keywords like this in many languages, which the best speakers with the best counsellors can not identify.

Your audience is also mutlilingual

So, what languages would you actually target when approaching the users in the Netherlands? Dutch? Don’t fool yourself. There are pretty big search volumes in English, German and French, too. Some words are even typed in because there is no equivalent in Dutch, or simply because of someone searching for something abroad.

These results appeared in SEMrush when searching for keywords Prague (English) and Praag (Dutch) for Google Netherlands. Note the lower search volumes for the keyword cluster in Dutch (“Praag” 51k, “Prague” 64k).

Prague:	Praag:

Not another planet, yet a different world

Remember that even keywords reflect the cultural background of the particular market. Some keywords are untranslatable, some have tens or even hundreds of equivalents in another language.

Let’s say you would like to target black tea distributors in China. You literally translate the word black tea as 黑茶. Surprisingly, in China, black tea isn’t that black. It’s red. So, the correct word is 红茶, literally meaning red tea.

International keyword research checklist

1. Negative keywords

Are there any hidden meanings of the primary keywords you already have?

2. Regional dialects

Are there any regionally specific words describing the same thing?

3. Word modifications

Are there any other options how users can type in their search query? Additional spacing, removing accents, misspellings, word order changes…

4. Slang and colloquial words

Are there any words used in informal speech? Generalized brand names, abbreviations, acronyms…

5. Different languages

Are they using keywords in other languages? Are there any ethnic groups among the target audience? Is your audience using another language in hope to get more relevant results?

6. Cultural specifics

Are there alternative keyword topics around your industry in the desired language? What is the situation like in the industry? What are your users’ expectations? Is the offer related to what they already know?

7. Conversational and informational intent

Are users searching with full questions or conversational phrases, particularly in AI search environments? What informational queries around your product or service are specific to this culture and language?

8. Keyword research in the LLM eraDon’t overestimate the role of GEO in keyword research. Good SEO keyword research already covers user language, search intent, cultural nuances, and topical coverage. The methodology hasn’t changed much. What has changed is the toolbox.
   1. Extend your research with query fan-outModern keyword tools such as Marketing Miner, SEMrush, and Ahrefs can expand a seed keyword into hundreds of related questions, comparisons, and modifiers (often referred to as query fan-out). Use these suggestions to identify additional search intent and content opportunities. They don’t replace traditional long-tail keyword research—they simply help you discover more of it.
   2. Use LLMs to fill the gapsLLMs can help where traditional keyword tools struggle, especially in niche B2B industries and low-maturity or emerging markets with limited keyword data. Their value lies in generating ideas and uncovering context, not estimating search volume.A good prompt should include:
      • Business name
      • Website URL
      • Short business description
      • ICP / target audience
      • Target country and language
      • Existing seed keywords

      Ask the LLM to generate:

      • Customer questions
      • Related topics
      • Industry terminology
      • Pain points
      • Comparison queries
      • Regional vocabulary

      Avoid translating keywords directly. Treat the output as research material and validate it using native speakers and keyword tools before making decisions.

      Remember: Search volume is only one piece of the puzzle. Focus on understanding how your audience talks about the topic. This becomes increasingly important as traditional keyword datasets become less complete. For example, Google Search Console anonymizes low-volume queries and reports only a subset of available search queries.

✓ Do Competitive Keyword Research

Direct or indirect competitors may give you a lot of additional data. However, never copy your competitors: they’ve probably earned their rankings for a reason. Get inspired and extend your content by the country-specific keywords found to make it more valuable for your audience. Research topics that are not covered by the competitors and fill the gap.

✓ Monitor Social Media Buzz

Use the insights provided by the native speaker to search for social media buzz. What social media platforms are used? You can find out using eMarketer or find your favorite tool here: 20 Free Buzz Monitoring Tools.

✓ Is There Clear Demand for Our Product? If Not, Can We Wait for It to Grow?

Based on the keyword research, you should find out in which phase your audience is: See – Think – Do – Care. Are they clueless about your product and how to use it? See phase. Are they aware of it (social media buzz) but not searching for it yet? Think phase. Are there product-related keywords? Do phase. Do the keywords mirror their difficulties in using the product? Care phase. The earlier the phase, the lower the competition but the more time required to get the audience used to it. The later the phase, the greater the competition, but the faster the response.

✓ Define Your Key Markets

Now when you have all the necessary data available, clearly define your key markets you want to target. Country targeting is generally more precise and efficient than language targeting when you have the resources to serve market-specific content. If you have a purely global product, define your buying personas for each market separately.

✓ Ecommerce Integration

Decide if you want to implement e-commerce into your website. This will affect the subsequent analytics implementation, as well as the strategy.

Preparation Phase

✓ Conduct an International SEO Audit and Opportunity Report

An International SEO Audit and Opportunity Report is a vital step in understanding your website’s global performance and identifying areas for improvement. Key areas to focus on during this audit include:

• Website structure and information architecture

• International URL structure (ccTLDs, subdomains, subfolders)

• Hreflang implementation and language targeting

• Crawlability and indexation

• Internal linking and navigation

• Content quality, localization, and duplication

• Keyword targeting and search intent

• Backlink profile and regional authority

• Structured data implementation

• Core Web Vitals and mobile usability

• Search engine and AI visibilit

• Analytics implementation and KPI tracking

In addition to identifying issues, an Opportunity Report should highlight untapped markets, keyword opportunities, content gaps, competitor advantages, and technical improvements that can support future international growth.

✓ Study specific regions

Every market has its own search behavior, competitive landscape, digital maturity, and cultural specifics. Before entering a new market, research how people search, buy, communicate, and discover new brands. A strategy that works well in one country may fail completely in another.

Useful resources:

• DataReportal – Internet penetration, digital adoption, device usage, social media, and consumer behaviour by country.

• Google Trends – Compare search demand, seasonality, and regional interest for keywords across countries.

• Think with Google – Consumer insights, purchase behaviour, and market research by region and industry.

• Hofstede Country Comparison – Compare cultural dimensions that influence communication, trust, and buying behaviour.

• World Bank Data – Economic indicators, demographics, internet usage, and market maturity.

✓ Choose Your Communication Languages

Choose the official communication language(s) to avoid future misunderstandings. This language should be fluently spoken by key team members.

✓ Research Local Payment Methods

Payment methods vary substantially from country to country. PayPal is rather common in the US and Western Europe, while Eastern Europe prefers cash on delivery (Russia, Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine). In some countries like Germany, users prefer invoices and deferred payments: they only pay in advance when they get a discount from the overall price. In China, the most frequently used payment gate is AliPay, while in the Middle East, Payfort is preferred. eMarketer provides comprehensive data regarding the most frequent payment methods by country.

✓ Local Helpdesk

Does your product/service require customer support? Don’t assume your customers will be willing to speak your language, especially when targeted in their local language. An upset customer may ruin your reputation on local discussion forums pretty easily and you may not get a chance to respond. Decide who on your team will be given this responsibility or consider hiring a local help desk provider.

Resources:

• Zendesk resources
• HubSpot’s customer service resources

✓ Set-Up Local Alerts

Local alerts allow you to monitor new mentions about your brand or desired keywords. Use Google Alerts or Mention.com.

✓ Choose a TLD Structure

Your TLD structure should reflect whether or how much your business tends to be local:

1. You are a purely global business with a centralized approach

Your product is perceived by global users very similarly: e.g. you are targeting a specific group of users (Drupal developers, golf players or brain surgeons).

Best TLD solution: Use a single TLD and communicate in one language that prevails within your audience. You can later add subfolders e.g. /de/, /ru/ to provide multilingual content.

🌐 Examples: apple.com, drupal.org, nasa.gov

2. You are a global business with local aspirations

This means you want to target local users individually, as you may be providing local support or simply want to cover their individual, locally specific needs. You realize that country-specific traffic dominantes on the language versions of your website (e.g. users landing on your German website are mostly from Germany or generally convert better).

Best TLD solution: ccTLDs or gTLDs that work particularly in the target market.

*DE domain for Germany
*PL domain for Poland
*COM domain for the USA
*COM.AU domain for Australia

etc.

Check what TLDs appear in local SERPs for the keywords you are targeting.

🌐 Examples: amazon.com, skoda-auto.com, ikea.com

3. You are a local business with global aspirations

You may be a local attraction, a hotel, restaurant, university or a local ticket reseller.

Best TLD solution: Keep a single ccTLD. You can add multilingual content in subfolders. If your business is located in France, keep a *FR domain. If you are in India, keep an *IN domain. You will appear for local specific queries more likely. For more information on local SEO for global businesses, read my SEMrush blog post: Think Globally, Act Locally: 5 Local SEO Strategies for Global Businesses

Case Study: How Amazon and IKEA Approach International SEO with URL Structures

One of the most critical decisions in international SEO is choosing the right URL structure for targeting different markets. Major global brands like Amazon and IKEA showcase different approaches, each with its own impact on search engine rankings and user experience.

Amazon: Country-Specific Domains (ccTLDs) for Strong Local Presence

Amazon uses country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) such as amazon.co.uk, amazon.de, and amazon.co.jp to cater to individual markets. This approach has several advantages:

• Stronger local search engine rankings – Google and other search engines prioritize ccTLDs for country-specific searches.
• Higher trust & user preference – Local users tend to trust a domain that matches their country (.fr, .es, .ca).
• Better compliance with local regulations – Some markets have strict data protection and e-commerce laws, which ccTLDs help navigate.

However, a ccTLD approach requires significant effort, as each domain must be optimized and managed separately, meaning link equity is not shared across markets.

IKEA: Subdirectories for Consolidated Authority

IKEA, on the other hand, primarily uses subdirectories for its international sites, such as:

• ikea.com/de/ (Germany)
• ikea.com/fr/ (France)
• ikea.com/us/ (United States)

This strategy allows IKEA to:

• Leverage a single strong domain (ikea.com), consolidating link equity and authority across all international subdirectories.
• Simplify domain management – Unlike ccTLDs, a single domain with subdirectories is easier to maintain and update.
• Benefit from centralized content & SEO efforts – Instead of managing multiple separate sites, SEO efforts contribute to the global domain’s overall strength.

However, using subdirectories comes with challenges, such as potential geo-targeting issues, as search engines may not always associate a subdirectory with a specific country as effectively as a ccTLD. IKEA mitigates this by correctly implementing hreflang tags to signal language and regional targeting to Google.

SEO Impact: Which Works Best?

• Amazon’s ccTLD strategy results in higher local rankings but requires more resources.
• IKEA’s subdirectory approach consolidates SEO efforts but may struggle with country-specific rankings in some cases.
• A third approach, subdomains (e.g., fr.example.com, de.example.com), can work but is generally less effective than either ccTLDs or subdirectories, as subdomains are often treated as separate entities by search engines.

✓ Purchase TLDs

This one is obvious, but don’t underestimate it. Secure your primary domain and any strategic country-specific domains before entering new markets. Even if you don’t use them immediately, they can protect your brand and prevent costly domain disputes later.

✓ Choose Your Web Hosting Provider

If you’re targeting markets such as China, website performance and infrastructure deserve special attention. For example, websites targeting mainland China often benefit from local hosting or a China-optimized CDN due to network latency, the Great Firewall, and local regulatory requirements such as an ICP licence. For most other markets, a fast global CDN is sufficient.

✓ Choose Your CMS Provider

When it comes to selecting your Content Management System (CMS) today, you have various options to consider. Let’s explore the options:

When choosing your website platform, consider your current needs as well as your long-term international growth plans.

1. SaaS Website Builders

Platforms such as Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, and Webflow are quick to launch and require little technical maintenance. They are well suited for startups and smaller businesses, although multilingual SEO and advanced customization may become limiting as your international presence grows.

2. Open-Source CMS

Platforms such as WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and WooCommerce provide extensive flexibility through themes, plugins, and integrations. They remain a popular choice for multilingual websites and businesses that require greater control over their SEO, content, and infrastructure.

3. Headless CMS

Solutions like Contentful, Strapi, Sanity, and Storyblok separate content management from presentation. They are ideal for organizations publishing content across multiple websites, apps, and digital channels while maintaining a single source of truth.

4. Low-Code Platforms

Platforms such as Bubble, OutSystems, and Mendix enable businesses to build custom applications and websites with minimal coding. They can accelerate development but should be evaluated carefully for multilingual capabilities, SEO flexibility, and scalability.

5. AI-Assisted Custom Development

Modern AI coding assistants and vibe coding platforms make it easier than ever to build a multilingual website from scratch. This approach offers maximum flexibility and can significantly reduce development time for experienced teams.

However, don’t underestimate everything mature CMS platforms already solve. Before choosing this route, consider whether you’ll need to build and maintain features such as:

• Multilingual content management
• SEO-friendly URL generation
• Hreflang implementation
• XML sitemaps (including multilingual variants)
• Canonical tags
• Redirect management
• Structured data
• Media optimization
• User roles and editorial workflows
• Search functionality
• Security updates
• Plugin and integration ecosystem
• Versioning and content staging
• Localization workflows
• Analytics and tag management

For many international projects, these capabilities come out of the box with established CMS platforms, whereas custom-built solutions require you to design, implement, test, and maintain them yourself.

✓ Define Your Global Website Structure

Once you have agreed on your TLD structure, it’s time to think about the URL structure. Your URL structure should reflect the following:

• Your actual product / services structure: If you are running an ecommerce website, make sure to put the right products into the right categories.
• The market priorities: Put the things people are looking for higher in the website structure.
• Your brand priorities: Key content should also be put higher in the structure.
• Search engine priorities: Some search engines like Baidu favour simple structures without deep pages. It is advised to keep within 3~4 levels even for big sites.

Also, don’t forget about website search results pages, pagination pages (page 1, page 2, page 3), filtering etc. Find more about how to build a website structure here: How to Create an SEO Friendly URL Structure. If you are using subfolders, you must retain those subfolders for any URL within the same website language version.

E.g.:

could be the Spanish version of your website that you decided on.

is an example of a page, while /es/ must remain for any Spanish content.

✓ Localize Your URLs

The language of each and every URL should correspond to the content under this URL. Localize your URLs first to nest the new URLs in your global website structure at this stage. The best practice is to match the title and leave out the so-called “stop words”.

If you have a page title in Italian “Beni di consumo,” then the URL should be:

while “di” was dropped from the URL as a stop word (conjunction).

Here’s how to localize URLs with non-ASCII characters:

1. Cyrillic alphabet

Cyrillic alphabet is used in Russian, Ukrainian or Mongolian and can be transcribed quite easily:

2. Umlauts and accents

Umlauts, e.g. in German, are transcribed differently because the umlaut usually gives a word a totally different meaning:

On the other hand, other non-semantic accents are simply removed, like in this example in Czech:

3. Chinese and Japanese alphabet

Chinese symbols are typically transcribed to pyinin and Japanese to romaji and then tonal punctuation is removed. Like this:

You can find the most common ways of transcription/transliteration in this Wikipedia article.

✓ Define Your Key Landing Pages

Each of your products or services should be represented by a landing page. If you are running an ecommerce website, category pages will probably be your key landing pages. Create separate LPs’ equivalents in every language/country version of your website.

✓ Create a Global Website Map

Draw the website structure in a simple chart and identify equivalent pages across the multilingual/multiregional website. This roadmap will give you a clear idea how to plan for localization or where to implement hreflang tags.

✓ Localization Strategy

As part of your Website Localization Checklist, now it’s time to create your tailored localization strategy. Modern AI translation has dramatically reduced the cost and time required to localize websites. However, fluent language is not the same as effective localization. Native speakers remain essential for validating cultural fit, terminology, legal accuracy, and brand voice.

Most localization platforms now combine translation memory with AI translation engines from providers such as OpenAI, DeepL, and Google Cloud Translation, allowing translators to focus on review, terminology, and cultural adaptation rather than translating every sentence from scratch.

Divide your content into these groups:

1. Branding
2. Marketing
3. Technical
4. Legal
5. Back-end
6. Contact

Branding content

This is the content that defines your global brand: About Us pages, partner pages, Mission & Vision, etc. Anything that describes your brand on a global scale.

To-do: Internationalize

Make sure your content speaks a neutral language without any regional connotations or metaphors.

Workflow: Gather local input → Create a global Tone of Voice → Finalize the source content → AI-assisted translation → Native review and transcreation → Proofread

Marketing content

Your marketing content should clearly speak the language of your audience: landing pages, product pages, home page.

To-do: Localize

Make sure your marketing content speaks the language of your target audience (which doesn’t necessarily have to be the official language).

Workflow: Research keywords → Prepare a content brief → AI-assisted draft → Native transcreation → SEO & UX review → Publish → A/B test

Technical content

All manuals, product descriptions, documentation, FAQs, user guides, etc. should be translated accurately to avoid incorrect use of your products or services.

To-do: Translate

Workflow: Prepare source content → Create a glossary → AI-assisted translation → Terminology QA → Human review → Publish

Legal content

Your terms of use, privacy policy, disclaimers, impressum, and conditions should comply with the laws of each target market.

To-do: Translate

Workflow: AI-assisted draft (optional) → Legal review → Update → Final approval

Back-end / System

System texts often involve different locales: date and time formats, time zones, currencies, measurement units, address formats, phone numbers, pluralization rules, etc. That’s why they require localization rather than direct translation.

To-do: Localize

Workflow: Create glossary → Select localization tools → Export → AI-assisted translation → Import → Automated QA → Functional testing → Native review → Final deployment

Contact

Your contact information should be created from scratch and include the most relevant contact details for users in each target market.

✓ Localization Platform Selection

Select the localization platform that best supports your workflow and long-term maintenance. Popular solutions include Lokalise, Phrase, Crowdin, XTM Cloud, and Trados.

Factors you should take into account:

• AI translation support
• Translation memory
• Terminology management (glossaries)
• QA automation
• CMS and API integrations
• Export/import capabilities
• Collaboration features

This Wikipedia article provides an overview of popular CAT (Computer-Assisted Translation) tools.

✓ Write Website Content

Based on your website structure, write the content for every page. Write with localization in mind: avoid unnecessary idioms, culture-specific references, and text embedded in images. Make the source content clear, neutral, and easy to translate.

✓ Run the Website Localization Project

Create multilingual content according to your localization strategy. Prepare a clear brief and run the localization project using the workflows above. Modern localization platforms such as Lokalise, Phrase, and Crowdin integrate directly with many CMSs and Git repositories, reducing manual exports and imports while keeping translations synchronized.

✓ Perform QA Check of the Content

Using your localization tools, verify the following:

• Terminology consistency
• Brand voice
• Keyword implementation
• Spelling and grammar
• Broken placeholders and variables
• HTML/Markdown integrity
• Layout issues caused by text expansion
• Cultural appropriateness

✓ Implement Multilingual Content into the Website

Many localization platforms integrate directly with popular CMSs such as WordPress, Contentful, Storyblok, and repositories like GitHub, allowing translations to be synchronized automatically. After implementation, verify page rendering, metadata, hreflang annotations, structured data, internal links, forms, and other localized elements before publishing.

✓ Icons, Graphics

Semiotics is the cultural theory of signs and symbols. The perception of signs, symbols, i.e. icons and graphics, differs from culture to culture. Internationalize your visual content: make sure all images and icons on your website are culturally neutral:

• When depicting people, think of ethnical diversity
• Balance male and female element in the pictures
• Think of different clothing styles
• Pick internationally understandable icons: envelope, books, cameras, clocks, eye glasses, microphones, planes, trains, scissors, rainbow etc.
• Colors

For further inspiration on this topic, see this research performed by Tampere University of Technology. Use further tips from my Pinterest board Intercultural Signs and Symbols.

✓ Usability

Especially if you are dealing with users in different parts of the world, individual language or country versions of your website should correspond to the local user experience rules. Eastern countries like China, South Korea or Japan prefer deep website structures that are rich in written content. They generally like to scroll and discover information they need themselves. Whereas in the Western part of the world, the design is rather straightforward and visual. Consult the usability elements of your local versions with a local UX specialist. You can find very good local usability examples in the article: Why Japanese Web Design Is So Different.

✓ Website Geo-Targeting

Make sure your multilingual website is properly geo-targeted.

URLs

If you use regional ccTLDs (domains), your basic geo-targeting is sorted. Otherwise, make sure to properly name your subfolders using the ISO codes for language or country, or both separated by a hyphen (“language-country”).

Hreflang tags

Hreflang tags are NOT a ranking signal nor an ultimate solution for a international websites. If your global website does not use ccTLDs, you’ll need to mark up equivalent pages with hreflang annotations. Find more in The Ultimate Hreflang Guide for Dummies.

As generative search grows, supplement hreflang with entity-level signals: local brand mentions, authoritative regional backlinks, consistent NAP data per regional entity

Setting a geographic target in WT (no longer in use)

Choosing a so-called geographic target (country targeting) in Search Console is no longer supported. However country targeting is still achievable through URL structure (ccTLDs, subfolders, or subdomains) combined with hreflang annotations and on-page localization signals.

NAP

Make sure to use your NAP information (name, address, phone) consistently across your web and all business listings. Tools like Yext should help you with the consistency. Mark-up your NAP information with schema.org.

Off-page factors

The ccTLD of linking domains (.de, .fr, .co.uk) is now the primary geo-relevance signal (the so-called ‘TLD zones’ in Ahrefs). IP-based attribution was dropped as CDN adoption made server location unreliable. Audit your backlink geo-portfolio in Majestic or Ahrefs and align it with your targeting intentions. Local digital PR, editorial mentions in regional publications, and forum discussions on platforms like Reddit or their local equivalents are increasingly weighted as authority signals — and strengthen regional entity clarity, helping AI systems retrieve the correct version even where hreflang is ignored.

✓ Talk the Search Engines’ Language

It is no longer true that Google dominates globally. While it still holds the largest share, regional search engines play a crucial role in their respective markets. For example, Baidu remains the leading search engine in China, particularly for desktop users. Yandex holds strong in Russia, and Naver is a key player in South Korea. Each search engine has different preferences: Baidu still places importance on meta tags, local hosting, and backlinks from Chinese sites. Bing, while similar to Google, weighs factors like exact-match domains and social signals differently. Yandex focuses more on behavioral factors such as user engagement and click-through rates. The nuances are described in many articles, but the essential information can be found in the Webmaster Guidelines:

• Bing
• Google
• Yandex
• Baidu
• Naver

Image credit: alphametic.com

Note: Since 2022, Yandex’s domestic dominance has grown further, but international brands should verify legal and compliance requirements before investing in Russian market SEO.

✓ The Rise of AI-Powered Search

The search landscape is evolving with the rise of AI-driven search engines like Search GPT, Perplexity AI, and ChatGPT-powered browsing. While Google and Bing have integrated AI-generated results, standalone AI search engines are gaining traction, particularly for research-based queries. However, their market share remains small compared to traditional search engines—Google still holds over 90% globally, while Bing, Yandex, Baidu, and Naver retain influence in their respective markets. The impact of AI search on organic traffic is still unfolding, making it crucial to monitor how users adapt to these new search experiences.

✓ On-page SEO

When it comes to Technical International SEO, it’s crucial to ensure your multilingual website is properly SEO-ed. Run the basic on-page SEO checklist (including the SEO Implementation Checklist) to make sure your website is search-engine friendly for all of the search engines you are targeting. This list may help. Check Webmaster Guidelines (above) to meet individual requirements of different search engines.

✓ Decide on Your Analytics Methodology

The question whether to have a single tracking code or multiple tracking codes for each subfolder/subdomain depends on a lot of factors. In general, if other subfolders/subfolders are mutually equivalent, it may be worth implementing a single tracking code and define traffic differences using segments/filters in Google Analytics. This will give you the idea of how users are moving through the whole website. If you are running different TLDs at the same time or the content on the separate subfolders/subdomains is rather different, you can go with multiple tracking codes.

✓ Google Tag Manager

Now it’s time to implement a tracking code on your website. Today’s standard is generating a Google Tag Manager code and placing it across all pages on your website. By using Google Tag Manager, you won’t have to implement the tracking code from scratch every time you re-design your website.

✓ Define Goals and KPIs

Modern SEO KPIs:

• Conversion Rate: Measure the percentage of visitors who complete desired actions on your website, such as filling out forms or making purchases.
• Goal Completions: Track the number of users who achieve specific goals, such as form submissions, downloads, or newsletter sign-ups.
• Average Session Duration: Understand how long visitors spend on your site, indicating engagement and content relevance.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): Analyze the rate at which users click on your search engine results or ads.
• Page Views: Assess the total number of pages viewed by visitors to understand content consumption.
• Engagement Rate: The percentage of sessions that meet Google’s engagement threshold — 10+ seconds on page, 2+ pages viewed, or a conversion event. GA4 redefined Bounce Rate as the inverse of this metric.
• Exit Rate: Determine the percentage of users who exit your site from a particular page.
• Organic Search Traffic: Track the number of users who find your website through organic (non-paid) search results.
• Referral Traffic: Monitor the volume of traffic coming from external websites and sources.
• Direct Traffic: Measure the number of users who access your site directly by typing your URL into their browser.
• Keyword Ranking: Keep tabs on how well your website ranks for specific keywords on search engine results pages (SERPs).
• Mobile Traffic: Understand the percentage of users accessing your site via mobile devices, crucial for mobile optimization.
• User Engagement: Analyze user interactions with your site, such as clicks, scrolls, and video views.
• Local Search Visibility: Assess how well your website performs in local search engine results and maps.
• Visitor Demographics: Explore user demographics like age, gender, and location for targeted marketing.

Content promotion KPIs:

• Community size
• Reach
• Engagement
• Brand mentions
• Tone (positive, neutral, negative)

Translation Q&A checklist:

• Terminology
• Segment length
• Spelling
• Consistency
• Trademark check

Local SEO KPIs:

• Local keywords rankings
• Traffic from local directories
• Branded keywords by locality
• Brand mentions by locality
• Backlinks from local directories
• Locality anchor texts
• Local reviews
• Local landing pages traffic
• Local landing pages rankings
• Digital PR mentions (local editorial coverage)
• Forum and community mentions (Reddit, regional equivalents)
• Press and editorial mentions (tracked via Google Alerts or Mention)
• Review quality and volume (Google Business Profile, Trustpilot)

Create reports in Google Analytics and Search Console so you can regularly check the KPI values.

✓ Segment Your Global Audiences

The worst thing you can do is to make a single strategy and try to communicate with different target groups with different desires the same way. Instead, segment them by common behaviours. This spreadsheet will help you research channels and behaviours of your different language groups so you can later decide on which tactics to use.

✓ What Is the Market Maturity

Low maturity

Users search for particular brands they trust, and use general keywords to search for products and services. Often searches occur in different languages where there are more resources. The strategy you should go with is building brand awareness through relationship linkbuilding and media / influencers relations.

High maturity

There are high volumes of long tail keywords in every shopping phase (See, Think, Do, Care). The strategy here should be a long-tail content strategy plus brand awareness based on content and online PR.

When defining the maturity of your users/market, always consider when the Internet penetration growth started. If it started a year ago, you should be dealing with a low-maturity market. Take into account the future growth also and choose your strategy accordingly.

✓ What is Your Local Competition Doing

Local competition may be a good marker of what works in the market, but also may give you an insight of where opportunities lie when you find a gap in your competitors’ activities. Use SEMrush to gain competitive data and look at your competitors’ websites and get inspiration from their content and keywords.

✓ Choose International SEO Tactics

Now, when you see where and how your target groups are talking about topics related to your products or business, you can easily select tactics and channels:

1. Which channels should we be on?
2. What languages should we use to communicate?
3. What frequency of communication should be best?
4. What tone of voice and topics should we use?

🌐 Example: Let’s say you sell licences to your software for users with depression. You found out that users in Brazil use blogs and discussion forums to seek information about how to fight depression (phase “Think”). They communicate in Portuguese. At the same time, users in Portugal and using slightly the same channels. You have a colleague on board who speaks Portuguese fluently. She’s comes in twice a week. That’s a good frequency to respond to comments, at least at the beginning. So, the task you set will be as follows: communicate with Brazilian and Portuguese users about how to fight depression on blogs and forums, 2-3 times a week.

✓ Consider Setting up a Virtual Office & Phone Number

With the rising importance of local SEO, local NAP information (name, address, phone) can make your local website version more competitive in the local context. You can use one of the virtual address services e.g. www.yourcityoffice.com for setting up a virtual local branch. The importance rises when your business has some local aspirations: e.g. you run a local showroom or you deliver products locally.

✓ Build Trust Signals

When entering a new market, your website starts with little or no local reputation. Build trust signals that help users evaluate your credibility and support the principles behind Google’s E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness).

1. Local presence

Show that your business genuinely serves the local market. Publish locally relevant content, attend local events, showcase local case studies, introduce local team members, and provide local contact details where possible.

2. Business verification

Verify your business through trusted local organizations where appropriate. Depending on the market, this may include business registers, chambers of commerce, regulatory bodies, industry associations, or VAT registration.

3. Reviews, testimonials & social proof

Build credibility with authentic customer reviews, testimonials, case studies, expert endorsements, awards, and local media mentions. Local references often carry more weight than international ones.

4. Trust badges & certifications

Display certifications and trust badges that your audience recognizes. Examples include Trusted Shops, Google Customer Reviews, payment provider badges, SSL certificates, or industry-specific certifications.

5. Legal & transparency

Provide clear company information and comply with local regulations. Include Terms & Conditions, Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy, return policy, company registration details, and easy-to-find contact information.

6. Guarantees

Reduce purchase risk with guarantees that fit your business model, such as money-back guarantees, satisfaction guarantees, free trials, or free returns.

7. Humor as a trust signal?

Humor can be an effective trust signal when it aligns with local culture and audience expectations. For example, witty copy is often appreciated in markets such as the UK or Australia, while customers in more conservative industries or markets may perceive the same approach as less professional. When in doubt, validate your messaging with local users first by running A/B tests.

Localization Tip: Never assume that adding more trust signals always increases credibility. Their impact depends on local culture and customer expectations. For example, German consumers often appreciate visible certifications and trust badges, while Scandinavian audiences may perceive an excessive number of badges as overly promotional [1].

✓ Country or Language Redirects

International Team Basics

You can’t do international SEO without a strong team behind it. It’s virtually impossible to handle all tasks in one person. Think carefully of who to hire. Think of any new member as a key member. Ask yourself: What would this person do if my international business struggles? Is s/he committed?

✓ International Project Management Basics

International SEO can’t be without project management. The tasks involved are so complex that you will soon get lost in email. Learn basic skills of international project management:

• Time management (consider different timezones)
• Delegation (consider different work habits and understanding of “in time” and “on time”)
• Effective planning (see Editorial calendar)
• Evaluation (see Analytics)

✓ Learn about Cultural Differences

As mentioned in the previous point, some cultures have different understanding of the importance of completing tasks in time. For instance, in Indonesian, the exact meaning of the word “tomorrow” means “any time after today.” In German or Spanish, it has also stands for “morning.” Always use clear and simple language and specific assignments with clearly defined deadlines to avoid misunderstandings. Also, some cultures need their time off for daily rituals. Learn about cultural specifics in The World Factbook.

✓ Choose a Project Management System

Your project management system should meet the following requirements:

• Group tasks into projects
• Set recurring tasks and projects
• Assign tasks to teams
• Assign tasks to contractors
• Set time zones with deadlines
• Allow non-ASCII characters in task description, if applicable
• Login for contractors
• Alerts for overdue tasks and projects
• Time tracking for distant team members

You should also set basic rules such as:

• No special characters in file names
• Upload a PDF version along with the source document
• Use one communication language

I use Asana because it allows me to create projects and batch add tasks. I have also heard a lot of praise for Trello, so I guess it could be the right option, too.

✓ Appoint Key Team Members

• Project Manager: A person responsible for running multilingual / international projects.
• Deputy Project Manager: A backup project manager if the head PM is not available.
• Content Officer: A person solely responsible for the quality of your multilingual content.
• Communications Officer: A person responsible for external communication: consistency, quality, community building, helpdesk.

It should be crystal clear who oversees an important part of the project, even when one team member handles multiple roles.

✓ Create an Editorial Calendar

Create a shared document that will involve dates, topics, languages, team members, completion status. Hand over the Calendar to the person responsible for your website’s content. Some teams prefer a separate and detailed Media Plan or Link Building Plan that involves important steps in communication with local online and offline media and local link building activities, esp. when dealing with local SEO. Simply outline the steps that should be done regularly, and assign the tasks to individual team members. Read more in the article: Make Editorial Calendar in Google Docs

✓ Run a Test Project

Create a test project in the first month. Troubleshoot issues that arise and note them down. Use them to fine tune the project template. Collect feedback from both users and team members. Don’t forget to upload the KPIs above into your project management system so you are able to oversee the core quality indicators.

Evaluation Phase

✓ Analyze Engagement Rate

The engagement rate is a crucial metric to monitor in Google Analytics 4 (GA4). It provides insights into how effectively your website is capturing and retaining user interest. By default, GA4 measures engagement based on a threshold of 10 seconds, considering any interaction that lasts longer as positive engagement.

A higher engagement rate is generally a positive sign, indicating that users are spending more time on your website and interacting with your content. However, it’s important to understand that engagement can be customized in GA4 to better suit your specific goals and user behaviors. By adjusting the engagement time threshold, you can fine-tune this metric to align with your website’s objectives and audience behavior.

Analyzing engagement patterns can help you identify areas of your website that are performing well and areas that may need improvement. It’s a valuable metric to track when assessing user satisfaction and content effectiveness.

✓ Check Conversion Rate

Another quality indicator is conversion rate. If it’s very low even after a few months, you should think of the reasons why users abandon your website without performing an action: check the Conversion funnel to find out when they are leaving and where they go instead of converting. What sort of information do they miss along the conversion path?

✓ Identify KPI Trends

Check if there is an increase or decrease in KPI values (see above). If the numbers aren’t steadily increasing, don’t panic. Focus on the long-term trend and evaluate the cause of the ups and downs. Follow all KPIs, not just traffic or rankings.

iSEO tips and tricks

Essential tools

In the realm of international SEO, having the right tools can make a significant difference. This includes not only tracking tools and keyword research platforms but also specialized Global SEO Software designed for managing international campaigns at scale.

Keyword Research

• SEMrush: Offers features like international keyword tracking.
• Ahrefs: Provides country-specific ranking reports.
• Moz Keyword Explorer: An all-in-one SEO tool that includes rank tracking and site audits.

Backlink Analysis

• Ahrefs Backlink Checker: A comprehensive tool for backlink analysis.
• Moz Link Explorer: Provides detailed backlink data and insights.

Technical SEO

• Screaming Frog: Ideal for crawling website URLs and fetching key SEO elements.
• Sitebulb: Provides website auditing and offers actionable insights.
• DeepCrawl: An enterprise-level website crawler that provides SEO audits and insights.

Content Optimization

• Clearscope: Helps in content optimization by analyzing top-performing content.
• MarketMuse: Uses AI to offer content strategies and optimization recommendations.

Rankings

• Google Search Console: Use filters to segment performance data by country.
• SEMrush: Offers international keyword tracking features.
• Looker Studio: Allows for comprehensive reporting templates that can filter data by country.

Tracking tips

• Don’t Translate Keywords: Simply translating keywords won’t suffice; you need to perform local keyword research.
• Use SEMrush and Google Search Console Geo-Filter: These tools offer country-specific data that can aid in optimizing your international SEO strategy.
• Create a Looker Studio Reporting Template: This template can aggregate data from various sources and allows further filtering by country.
• Compare Data from Various Tools: Use multiple tools to gather data, but make sure to compare them over the same time period to get an accurate picture.
• Use Google Trends for Individual Keywords: This can help you compare impression trends for specific keywords in different countries.

Why Use Multiple Tools?

Different tools offer different insights and capabilities. For a comprehensive international SEO strategy, it’s often beneficial to use a mix of tools. For instance, while SEMrush is excellent for keyword research, you might need a tool like Screaming Frog for in-depth technical SEO audits.

The 6 Best International SEO Tracking Tools

• SEMrush – Best for cross-market keyword visibility
• Ahrefs – Best for international backlink analysis
• Google Search Console – Best for free country-specific performance insights
• Screaming Frog – Best for hreflang validation
• ProRankTracker – Best for geo-specific rank tracking
• Moz – Best for multi-language keyword research

International SEO Tracking Tools and Software in Detail

🧩 Multilingual SEO Models by Growth Stage

Compare realistic SEO approaches by growth phase. Each option is tailored to your expansion complexity, internal resources, and strategic priorities.

🔑 Key Takeaways

• Outsourcing multilingual SEO is often the most efficient path for scaleups and enterprises entering several markets—especially in Europe, where language, legal, and search behavior vary significantly by region.
• A hybrid SEO strategy for Europe—with internal ownership and external execution—offers the best balance of control, speed, and local expertise for companies managing 3+ markets.
• Early-stage companies can resell multilingual SEO services by partnering with white-label freelancers or agencies, providing value-added offerings without scaling internal teams.
• If you’re a startup expanding into 1–2 new markets, outsourcing to freelancers or a small agency is usually faster and more cost-effective than building in-house.

International website SEO Support

For personalized international website SEO support and guidance, feel free to get in touch with me.