Everything you need to know in 2025

Expanding your business globally requires more than just translating your website; it demands a well-crafted SEO strategy. 

This international SEO guide breaks down everything you need to know about optimizing your site for multiple countries and languages, ensuring your content reaches the right audience globally.

What is international SEO?

International SEO is the process of optimizing multilingual or multinational websites to improve their visibility, organic traffic, and overall performance across multiple countries and/or languages. 

Effective international SEO ensures that search engines can identify the countries and languages a website is targeting and deliver the most relevant version of the site to users based on their location and language preferences.

How does international SEO differ from general SEO?

International SEO is a more complex and nuanced version of regular SEO, tailored to the specific needs of businesses with a global audience.

A general SEO project usually involves one website targeting one local country.

Whereas an international SEO project:

• Targets multiple countries with multiple languages.
• May involve either a single website (domain) for all languages and countries or separate websites for each target country.
• Often includes optimizing for multiple target search engines.

All the standard actions taken for any individual website remain the same in international SEO, but they are accompanied by unique complexities such as managing:

• Different languages.
• Multiple websites.
• Legal restrictions.
• Varied infrastructures.
• Diverse search engines.

Go-to-market web infrastructure and SEO strategies

One of the first challenges of international SEO is approaching the existing global web infrastructure. 

Will they use a single website with multiple language versions or multiple websites unique to each market or language? 

Typically, this decision was made long before the search was considered based on market necessities like:

• Business structure.
• Legal requirements.
• Cultural nuance.
• Decentralized management. 

The type of global website(s) deployed requires different approaches to international SEO to minimize distinct challenges.

Duplicate content

A multinational company like Nike, with 37 English websites, poses a challenge for search engines in deciding whether to index all 37 versions or just one. 

If some of these sites aren’t indexed, they won’t rank or drive traffic to their local markets.

SERP cannibalization

The opposite issue, which is just as problematic, occurs when a search engine indexes multiple market websites but displays content from the wrong market in local search results. 

For example, the U.S. page might appear more relevant than the Canadian English page, leading it to show up for Canadian searchers.

Parent and child relationships

Many content management systems (CMS) use a parent-and-child relationship between language versions of pages. 

If the content on the parent site is updated, it may impact the local market. 

Similarly, a common challenge is that child content may be overwritten by parent updates, or child pages and references might be automatically created, even if they haven’t been localized.

Many factors often go into the decision process for the chosen web infrastructure reflected in two options each requiring different technical actions.

Multilingual website

A multilingual or multi-language website has multiple languages but may only target a single country. 

For example, if your website is designed to target customers only in Canada, you may have one website in English and the other in French. 

Similarly, many websites target U.S. audiences in both English and Spanish languages. 

A Swiss company only targeting Switzerland may have localized versions in English, French, German, and Italian. Alternatively, these same sites can also target border countries due to shared languages.   

Multilingual by name indicates websites and content in different languages. Due to the different languages, duplicate content is typically less of an issue. 

The key concern is that the content is correctly translated, culturally relevant, and aligns with the local searcher’s intent. 

Language-only sites often use the same domain and are designated by a language folder, minimizing the multiple site challenges. 

However, language-specific websites are not problem-free. 

When targeting people in multiple countries, since search engines may not pick up strong geo-targeting signals compared to local market-focused sites.   

Unfortunately, as content is localized, key elements may not be maintained. 

Content may be linguistically correct but may not contain a more popular phrase or the well-optimized entity cluster, negatively impacting performance.

Multinational website

Multinational or global websites are created to target audiences in multiple countries. 

While multinational websites can be multilingual, depending on the target countries, your multinational website may not always be multilingual. 

For example, if you’re targeting English-speaking audiences in the U.S., UK, Australia, and Ireland, you might have one English-language website for all of them, or separate English websites for each market, each offering unique products and pricing tailored to that specific region.

Multinational or international SEO activities focus on optimizing these websites intended for multiple countries with the goal of ranking well and driving traffic from each location.

One of the biggest challenges for our multinational sites is ensuring that the site is indexed and ranking well and that the correct country site appears in the search results for the target country. 

If you have multiple websites in the same language (i.e., Spanish), you must let the search engines know which site is designed for which country. 

If your websites are not optimized and localized for each country, all sites in the same language may seem like duplicates, resulting in one or more being excluded. 

Sometimes, each country has its own domain, so you need to optimize multiple separate websites while considering the entirety of the infrastructure.

Dig deeper: How to craft an international SEO approach that balances tech, translation and trust

International SEO: Technical elements

When you work with multiple sites, there are exponentially more technical issues. 

Many technical SEO items need to be considered, which may be irrelevant for a general SEO project with one site in a single language.

Here are six of the technical SEO items.

ccTLDs

Each country has assigned ccTLD. Unlike gTLDs, ccTLDs let the search engines know which country the website is created for. 

For example, “.es” is for Spain, and “.jp” is for Japan. While most businesses in the U.S. use “.com” for their website domain, “.com” is a gTLD.  

When a website with a ccTLD adds content in languages not associated with that market, the ccTLD’s geo-targeting specification is likely ignored. 

For example, a .de website in English or Japanese.

Server location (web server’s IP address)

Search engines also consider the location of the website hosting server. 

It is cost-prohibitive for most businesses to host each website separately in the targeted country, so many will use a CDN that can manage geolocation for their businesses. 

Hreflang attributes

Hreflang attributes, using tags or hreflang XML sitemaps, help search engines understand which language and country each page is targeting.

• For multilingual websites (websites in different languages): Map the alternate URLs for each language.
• For multinational websites (websites targeting different countries, some in the same language): Map the site URLs for both languages and countries.

Schema markup

Purchasing multiple domains and hosting websites in different countries are very expensive. 

However, schema markup can be implemented relatively quickly at a low cost. 

Markup business information, including address and phone number, and products with local currency and language descriptions, provides strong location signals.

CMS

CMS settings, especially when using multiple systems, can make it difficult for local sites to optimize their pages and content effectively. 

Often, the main or parent pages have more options and features available, while child pages may not.

Tools

Many tools work well with Google in English but may not support other search engines or languages. 

For example, when local pages use double-byte characters in file names (such as Japanese or Russian), these characters may break in Western-made tools or CSV files. 

This also applies to XML sitemaps, which require non-ASCII characters to be encoded properly using entity escape codes.

International SEO: Content 

A multinational company often has multiple websites, each with content in different languages. 

While some global sites feature the same content in the same language, this content must be tailored for each target market. 

This makes content optimization for global websites much more complex than standard SEO.

Here are three important SEO factors to consider when optimizing content.

Translation vs. localization

Simply translating content may not be enough; it must also be localized for the target audience.

Many multilingual or multinational websites are built by adapting a main (parent) site into various languages or market-specific versions. 

The quality of the translation plays a crucial role in both SEO and overall website performance.

Even if the websites share the same language, they must adjust to the local spelling, common phrases, and writing style. 

Often, websites only translate the main body of content, neglecting metadata and alt text. Ensure all text, including page body and tags, is fully translated.

Dig deeper: Multinational SEO vs. multilingual SEO: What’s the difference?

Location-specific information

Certain details must be adapted to fit the norms of each market, such as:

• Sizes, units of measurement, currencies, and contact information (addresses, phone numbers, email addresses).
• Payment methods, shipping, and return policies.
• For international shipping, include any relevant customs information.

Cultural/seasonal/local regulation differences

Different regions have unique cultural practices and seasonal trends that affect purchasing behavior. 

For example: 

• Australians celebrate Christmas on the beach.
• Some European countries take entire months off for summer holidays.

This shows how seasons and purchasing habits vary by region. 

Some markets also require different corporate or financial information, disclaimers, and privacy policy statements.

Dig deeper: 15 SEO localization dos and don’ts: Navigating cultural sensitivity

International SEO: Management and organization

All teams, both local and global, share the goal of improving organic search performance. 

Ensuring alignment between global and local efforts helps create more consistent website performance across different sites. 

When managing multiple websites targeting different languages or countries, it’s essential to consider that team sizes, budgets, resources, and skill levels can vary by region.

Effective international SEO project management must take these factors into account.

Central vs. local

Regardless of the organization’s structure, the more collaboration between local market knowledge and global resources (i.e., analytics, infrastructure, and shared assets), the better the overall performance will be.

Resource/budget differences

The central vs. local strategy can help identify resources that can be used globally, such as: 

• Diagnostic tools.
• Page templates.
• Analytics. 

This allows local markets to focus on truly local tasks like link building, content optimization, and keyword research. 

Be mindful of the time available in each market, as the local SEO role is often filled by someone with many other responsibilities, limiting their time for SEO work.

Different SEO practices

A key challenge is aligning knowledge and practices between internal teams and external agencies. 

Agencies focused on a single market or region will prioritize actions specific to their remit. 

This can lead to multiple requests for local issues that can only be resolved globally, or even the need to reverse actions taken by other market teams. 

To overcome this, promote global-local collaboration. Share best practices, information, keywords, and even insights from conferences.

Dig deeper: How you can deal with decentralization in international SEO

Locally focused search engines

Google may be the most popular search engine in the world, but it’s not the only search engine. 

Depending on the country and region, other search engines may be more important to your business. 

Understand where your target audience is searching and monitor the website performance for their preferred search engine.

Examples

• Google – Global except for China.
• Bing – Global.
• Yahoo – Global.
• Yandex – Russia and Eastern European countries.
• Baidu – China.
• Yahoo Japan – Japan.
• Naver – South Korea.

While most best practices apply to all search engines, each has its nuances that must be factored into your program. 

Most have their own versions of Webmaster Tools and ways to submit pages, which may require local registration to use them.  

Maximizing your global reach with international SEO 

International SEO is much more than an extension of general SEO.

It’s a complex, multi-faceted strategy that tackles the challenges of language, culture, infrastructure, and search engine differences. 

From choosing the right web infrastructure to using hreflang tags and localizing content, an effective international SEO strategy ensures your global audience finds the most relevant version of your website, no matter where they are.

Addressing the technical, content, and organizational challenges outlined in this article can help businesses unlock new growth opportunities in various markets. 

However, achieving success requires more than technical expertise. You need:

• Strong collaboration between central and local teams.
• Thoughtful resource allocation.
• Continuous adaptation to local search engines and user behavior.

As the digital landscape evolves, implementing a robust international SEO strategy is crucial for businesses seeking to maximize their global reach and achieve sustainable growth. 

With the right approach, your website can become a seamless bridge, connecting your brand to audiences worldwide.