SEO Internationalisation: What To Consider When Taking Your Website International

Shea Keaveney June 30, 2025

In many ways, it’s easier than ever to take your business international. Technology has eliminated barriers, social media amplifies your marketing around the globe, and modern logistics have simplified shipping. 

But what’s not easy is taking your website international. As a leading SEO agency, we’ve put together our thoughts on internationalisation in SEO, including what to watch out for if you want to see your rankings flourish overseas.

Language 

The most obvious consideration when rolling out a website to multiple countries is language. Incorrectly translating content from one language to another won’t just impact rankings, it will also massively harm your users’ experience.

Given the amount of translation tools available and the rise of AI platforms, many people’s first thought is to outsource translation to a machine. But machines can have difficulty understanding slang terms, regional differences and cultural variations.

For example, Spanish is the primary language in both Spain and Mexico, but while the language may look and sound the same to a non-Spanish speaker, there will be slight variations in terms of vocabulary and tone. This isn’t just an issue that exists from one country to another either, regional differences can exist, which must be accounted for. 

When putting together your international SEO strategy, try to view the process of changing content from one language to another as localising rather than translating. 

Hreflang tags

Hreflang tags are closely linked to language and help to inform search engines which version of a website needs to be served up to the user. As a result, they are a fundamental part of international SEO.

Apple will have multiple variations of their website, and they’ll want a British user to see content in British English, but want an American user to view content written in American English. To assist search engines in doing this, a website will use HTML tags like the one below. This is an example of a Hreflang tag:

<link rel=”alternate” href=”https://www.apple.com/” hreflang=”en-US”>

The snippet of code above signals that there is an alternate version of the webpage available. It can be found at www.apple.com, and the alternate version has been written for English speakers in the United States.

Canonical Tags 

Anyone who has any experience with SEO will know that duplicate content is generally a bad thing. Given that international SEO will see you create different versions of the same webpages, duplicate content has to be a careful consideration.

Like most things in SEO, there are ways to inform search engines like Google about your intentions. In the case of avoiding penalties for duplicate content, you can use canonical tags to let Google know which version of your website is the main version and which one you’d like to be indexed. This then allows Google to consolidate your link equity all in one place.

It’s important to use canonical tags in tandem with Hreflang tags. Canonical tags will inform Google which version of the website has the most link equity and authority to give your site the best chance of ranking; Hreflang then helps Google serve up the correct version of the website to ensure an optimal user experience.

URL Structure

When internationalising your website, you must also give careful consideration to your website’s URL structure. You have three main options:

Country Code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs)

Your first option is to have completely separate domains for each of your websites. This would mean having a URL ending in .co.uk for users in the UK, .fr for users in France, .de for Germany, and so on.

The first thing to note about this strategy is the cost, as each separate domain must be purchased. However, it’s important to remember that most international SEO practices are only signals, not orders. Having a top-level domain for a specific country is one of the strongest signals you can send to a search engine. 

Without a clear hreflang and canonical strategy, your website may also suffer from diluted authority if backlinks are pointing to a range of different domains.

Subdirectories

If you choose to operate different versions of your website as subdirectories, it may look something like this:

• examplewebsite.com
• examplewebsite.com/uk
• examplewebsite.com/fr
• examplewebsite.com/de

This allows you to keep one central domain, which is easier to manage, and also allows you to send backlink equity to one place. On the flip side, just having one domain can be perceived as a weaker signal in terms of local SEO and also make it harder to track data. 

Subdomains 

The third option is to set up your international websites as subdomains. The URL would look something like fr.examplewebsite.com. This offers flexibility without the complexities that come with setting up different top-level domains.

It’s also worth pointing out that subdomains can probably be considered the most confusing in terms of how they appear to the user. Both top-level domains and subdirectories are clearer, more succinct and trustworthy. 

Localise Search Volumes

It’s important to not just consider technical elements, but also your overall strategy when it comes to SEO internationalisation. In particular, consider how the keywords you target can change based on cultural trends and language differences. 

For example, searches relating to swimwear or sunglasses may spike during summer in cooler countries, while they may experience larger, consistent values in countries that experience sunshine all year round, which would then need to be factored into an SEO strategy.

Consider how terminology may change too, from one country to another, whether comparing two countries that speak the same language or not. UK users may search for ‘food takeaway’ while US users are more likely to search for ‘food takeout’. 

Backlinks

Another important aspect of SEO is building a strong backlink profile for your website. This includes building relevant links from websites within your niche. For international websites, it can be beneficial to secure your links from websites within the same country. 

Depending on the type of business, it can also be beneficial to appear in local online directories, as this can enhance your backlink profile while also offering an additional way to drive traffic to your website.

Final Thoughts

Internationalisation is a complex part of SEO, and unfortunately, there are lots of things that can go wrong when rolling your website out to the world. Without considering technical aspects such as canonical tags and hreflangs, your website may struggle to rank in different countries or worse, be penalised. It’s also important to tailor your strategy to different regions and countries, whether that’s targeting terms that are more relevant to different countries or languages or building a more relevant backlink profile.

At Red Cow Media, we’ve experienced handling large-scale internationalisations. So if you have any questions around SEO or website internationalisation, feel free to contact us or read more about our past internationalisation successes on our case studies page.