Does your website’s Google Search Console and Google Analytics data often report traffic from countries you don’t already target? If so, that suggests you’ve got a potential audience in those countries, and it may be time to invest in international SEO.

International SEO is all about identifying regions where genuine commercial opportunity exists, then building search experiences that align with the needs of audiences in those regions, including matching local languages, user intents, and expectations.

Implementing international SEO doesn’t have to mean global SEO either. Even huge multinational brands don’t typically target the entire planet. Instead, the best international SEO strategies help search engines serve the right versions of your content to the right users, while also improving conversions and trust in any regions your brand is targeting.

This guide covers all the fundamentals you need to know to get started with international SEO. We look at technical considerations, content strategy, measurement, and how international signals like hreflang influence AI-powered search experiences.

What is international SEO?

International SEO is the process of optimising your website so search engines can understand which countries and languages you want to target, and serve the most appropriate version of your content to each user, depending on where they’re visiting your site from.

One of the most prominent elements of SEO is localisation of content, where you translate your website into other languages to meet audience needs. If your website is being accessed across the world, chances are that many users will speak a different language to the one your website ordinarily appears in, so you’ll need to adapt this.

And it’s not just language localisation. If you usually operate in the UK but want to target audiences in the USA, you need to consider local spelling variations, as well as cultural differences and references that might need to be changed.

Even when users share a language, regional dialects or cultural differences can still affect search intent and on-page requirements. This is especially important for ecommerce and lead generation sites, where location can influence:

  • Product or service availability
  • Pricing and currency
  • Tax, shipping, and delivery information
  • Legal or regulatory messaging
  • Cultural expectations and terminology.

Good international SEO goes beyond just translating the text on your website. It’s also about designing, structuring, and optimising content so it’s locally relevant, technically accessible, and commercially effective in each target market.

Choose your target markets

Before you dive into international SEO, you’ll need to define your audiences – identify where international SEO is most likely to deliver the best return on investment for your brand.

This could involve researching countries that are already generating meaningful organic traffic or conversions, finding markets with strong demand for your product or service, or pinpointing regions where competitors are performing well in organic search.

Use Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and keyword research tools like Ahrefs to understand how your site is performing internationally and highlight opportunities.

When reviewing your analytics data, be careful not to assume language equals location. For example, English speakers could be based in the UK, US, Australia, Canada, or elsewhere, and Spanish language traffic could originate from Spain, Mexico, or across Latin America.

At a minimum, you should know the:

  • countries or regions you want to target.
  • languages you want to support.
  • most popular search engines in those markets.

When it comes to search engines, Google dominates most regions, but alternatives like Baidu, Yandex, and Naver are popular in countries such as China, Russia, and South Korea.

Website structure options for international SEO

Once your target markets are defined, you need to choose how to structure your site. Let’s look at the three most common approaches, and the pros and cons of each.

Country code top-level domains (ccTLDs)

ccTLDs are URLs with two-letter domain extensions assigned to specific countries or territories. Examples include:

  • example.co.uk (United Kingdom)
  • example.de (Germany)
  • example.fr (France)

Pros: Using a ccTLD can provide trust and clarity for users, as well as a clear geotargeting signal for search engines.

Cons: This approach typically comes with higher costs and ongoing maintenance requirements. It also means that authority is split across multiple domains, and each site requires its own dedicated SEO strategy rather than benefiting from shared domain strength.

ccTLDs work well for brands with a strong local presence in each market, but they aren’t essential for success.

Subdirectories

Subdirectories use folders within a single domain to target different countries or languages, such as:

  • example/uk
  • example/de
  • example/fr

Pros: This approach keeps all international content under one domain, consolidating authority and link equity. Subdirectories are also generally easier to manage and scale over time, particularly as new markets are added, and they’re fully supported by Google for geotargeting when combined with correct hreflang implementation.

Cons: Subdirectories require careful technical setup and ongoing governance to ensure language signals, canonicals, and internal linking are implemented consistently.

For most brands, subdirectories represent the best balance of control, scalability, and SEO performance.

Subdomains

Subdomains place each country or language version as a prefix at the beginning of a URL, such as:

  • uk.example.com
  • de.example.com
  • fr.example.com

Pros: Subdomains create a clearer structural separation between markets and allow for more flexible tracking, configuration, and even CMS setups if required.

Cons: Search engines may treat subdomains as semi-independent websites, which means authority doesn’t always flow as efficiently as it does with subdirectories. As a result, subdomain-based international sites often need stronger internal linking strategies and tighter governance to avoid performance fragmentation.

Subdomains can work well in certain scenarios, but they typically demand more SEO oversight to maintain consistency and momentum across markets.

Language switching and dynamic serving

If you want to offer your entire website to visitors from a different country, you could instead include a language selector or IP-based logic to translate the text on your web pages without changing the URL structure.

This can work, but it must be implemented carefully. Avoid forcing redirects based solely on IP, and always give users the option to switch language or region manually. Also, ensure the HTML language attributes match the visible content – you don’t want your HTML header to still say the page is in English if the text is German.

From an SEO perspective however, static, crawlable URLs for each language or region are generally safer and more predictable than fully dynamic approaches. It effectively provides multiple, entirely separate versions of your website, making it simpler to update them individually and track their analytics separately.

Key technical elements of international SEO

We’ve already mentioned some HTML elements, like hreflang, that can affect international SEO campaigns, but what exactly are these?

International SEO relies on a set of technical signals that help search engines correctly interpret language, regional intent, and page relationships. Here are a few of the key technical components of international SEO.

hreflang

hreflang tags tell search engines which language and regional version of a page should be shown to which users. They help prevent any incorrect ranking or duplicate content issues that could affect the user experience.

hreflang can be implemented via:

  • HTML link elements in the page head
  • HTTP headers for non-HTML files
  • XML sitemaps.

Each version of a page must reference all other relevant versions, including itself, using valid ISO language and country codes.

While hreflang does not directly improve rankings, its value lies in correct serving and consolidation of signals, ensuring the right page appears for the right audience.

x-default

The x-default hreflang value specifies a fallback page for users who don’t match any defined language or region.

This designates the target URL as a catch-all option for visitors who don’t match any of your country-specific or language-specific hreflang elements. For global campaigns, for example, this allows you to direct any remaining traffic to a location-generic page written in English, or any other language of your choice.

Including an x-default option is good practice for completeness when implementing hreflang across your website, and it helps ensure you don’t miss out on potential traffic, leads, and sales from any countries or languages you haven’t specifically targeted.

Canonical tags

Canonical tags are HTML elements that tell search engines which version of a page should be treated as the primary, authoritative version when multiple similar or duplicate pages exist.

In international SEO, canonical tags are important because they help prevent search engines from misinterpreting translated or regional pages as duplicates. Each language or country-specific version should normally use a self-referencing canonical tag, signalling that it’s the correct version for its audience.

This allows search engines to index and rank each version appropriately, while still understanding how the pages relate to one another.

Content language

Remember, Google might not always be the best search engine for international SEO campaigns, so check if your chosen search engine does things differently. Some search engines, including Bing, still rely on the content-language HTTP header instead of hreflang.

While Google primarily uses hreflang for content analysis, including content language alongside hreflang can ensure correct ranking across other search engines.

Sitemaps and indexation

If you use XML sitemaps, create and submit them for each language or regional section of your site.

Sitemaps that include hreflang annotations help search engines discover and understand relationships between international pages more efficiently.

Always submit sitemaps through the relevant webmaster tools for each search engine you target.

hreflang and AI-powered search experiences

As search engines increasingly use AI to generate and personalise results, correct international signals are becoming even more important.

hreflang is crucial for AI-powered search for a number of reasons as it:

  • Helps AI-powered search engines understand which version of content is most relevant for a user’s language and location.
  • Prevents AI assistants and LLMs mixing signals from different markets when summarising or ranking content.
  • Allows AI platforms to select the correct source page when generating overviews or summaries.

Poor hreflang implementation increases the risk of AI systems referencing the wrong regional version, or more likely, omitting your content from results entirely.

While hreflang does not guarantee inclusion in AI-generated results, it improves the quality and accuracy of how your content is interpreted and served across both traditional and AI-assisted search.

Hosting, performance and global delivery

The location of your website’s hosting server isn’t a ranking factor in itself, but users accessing your site internationally may experience slower load times as the distance between a visitor and your host server increases.

Research by Google found that over 50% of users will abandon a page if it takes longer than three seconds to load, so slower load speeds can seriously impact your site’s traffic. As page load speed is increasingly used by search engines as a ranking factor, this could impact rankings too.

Make sure you test your page load speeds as experienced by users in your targeted regions – Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool is helpful for this. If you detect an excessive delay, consider investing in hosting on a server located closer to your target audience.

Best practice includes using a content delivery network (CDN), and optimising images, scripts and fonts to support faster load times.

International SEO: FAQs

Here are a few of the most frequently asked questions we receive around building an international SEO strategy.

How do I choose which languages to support?

Start with data. You might already have a good amount of traffic coming from a country that speaks a different language, or you might have a small amount of traffic that you want to build on.

Alternatively, it often makes sense to target a few of the most widely spoken languages, like English, French, Spanish, and German for the European market. Just remember to define your geographical reach correctly so you don’t catch French Canadian traffic or Spanish-speaking South American countries if you can’t deliver to those locations.

Should I buy a ccTLD domain name?

A ccTLD domain name can be a good investment. For example, a .co.uk URL makes it immediately apparent that a web page in British English is catered towards the UK, rather than another English-speaking country.

Some intermediate and advanced web users routinely use search parameters like ‘site:.uk’ to limit their search results to their local ccTLD, so having a geographically relevant domain can ensure your site is included in those search results.

Should I always use ccTLDs?

No. ccTLDs can be valuable, but subdirectories are often more efficient and just as effective for SEO when implemented correctly.

Should all my international pages be directly translated versions of each other?

No. Translating pages from one language to another is a good starting point, but some markets may need unique landing pages or content strategies.

In essence, an international SEO campaign is a collection of country-specific regional SEO campaigns. If you can generate better ROI by changing the focus of a page, or publishing a new landing page that doesn’t appear on the other versions of your site, you should do so.

Can I run a truly global international SEO campaign?

Yes, but it requires careful planning. By using options like x-default, you can create ‘catch-all’ pages, so any remaining traffic that doesn’t match your country-specific or language-specific subdomains still has somewhere relevant to go.

However, attempting to cater to a truly worldwide market is ambitious, so consider whether you would achieve better ROI with a more targeted, focused campaign.

Let SALT help with your international SEO

Looking to launch your own international SEO strategy? Or maybe your existing strategy is in need of a refresh?

SALT delivers a wide range of services to help your brand grow in new markets, including content tailored to local needs, technical analysis that removes barriers to visibility, and holistic strategies that bring all channels together. Get in touch with our expert team today.