International SEO: The Top Do's and Dont's #Pubcon

#INTERNATIONALSEO BY @ALEYDA FROM #ORAINTI AT #PUBCON
INTERNATIONAL SEO
THE TOP DO’S & DONT’S

#youtubeseo at #smxadvanced by @aleyda from @orainti
* SEO Consultant & Founder at Orainti
* SEO Speaker at +100 Events in +20 countries
* Author “SEO. Las Claves Esenciales.”
* Blogger in Search Engine Land & Search Engine Journal
* Crawling Mondays YouTube Channel Host
* European Search Personality of the Year in 2018
I’m Aleyda Solis, SEO Consultant  
& Founder at Orainti

I help companies
to grow through
organic search in
international
markets

There are common issues that usually challenge
international SEO processes success
LACK OF
RESOURCES TO
CREATE AND
OPTIMIZE MORE
CONTENT
NOT BEING ABLE
TO RANK WELL
WITH THE CHOSEN
INTERNATIONAL
WEB STRUCTURE
RANKING IN
INTERNATIONAL
SEARCH RESULTS
WITH THE WRONG
PAGES
NOT ATTRACTING
ENOUGH TRAFFIC
WITH TARGETED
QUERIES

HERE ARE A FEW DO’S AND
DON’TS TO MAXIMIZE SUCCESS

DON’T
TRY TO TARGET ALL THE
INTERNATIONAL MARKETS
AT ONCE, PRIORITIZE BASED
ON GOALS & RESOURCES

One of the most
common challenges is
not having resources
to maintain too many
international versions

#INTERNATIONALSEO BY @ALEYDA FROM #ORAINTI AT #PUBCONGOOGLE ANALYTICS
Identify which countries & languages are already
bringing traffic and conversions to your site

#INTERNATIONALSEO BY @ALEYDA FROM #ORAINTI AT #PUBCONSEMRUSH TRAFFIC ANALYSIS
Those markets
that your
competition and
industry leaders
are already
profiting from

#INTERNATIONALSEO BY @ALEYDA FROM #ORAINTI AT #PUBCONAHREFS
Verify which are the countries with more
search traffic potential in your industry

#INTERNATIONALSEO BY @ALEYDA FROM #ORAINTI AT #PUBCONCOGNITIVESEO
Consider the level of existing organic
search competition in these markets

COUNTRY AND
LANGUAGE
CURRENT ORGANIC
SEARCH TRAFFIC
SEARCH
COMPETITION
LEVEL
SEARCH VOLUME
OPPORTUNITY
SEARCH
TREND IN
MARKET
SEARCH
ENGINE
USED
CAPACITY TO
PERFORM
BUSINESS
OTHER
TRAFFIC
DRIVERS
Canada in
English
300 per month High
200,000 searches per
month
Positive Google High Affiliate
USA in English 500 per month Medium
month
Negative Google Medium
Social
Affiliate
USA in Spanish 200 per month Medium
month
Positive Google Low
Social
Affiliate
Align this with your own multilingual and international
operations capacity and other traffic drivers

Yes No
Yes No
IS LOCATION A FACTOR THAT INFLUENCES YOUR WEB OPERATIONS?
COUNTRY TARGETING LANGUAGE TARGETING
IS THERE ENOUGH TRAFFIC &
CONVERSIONS TO TARGET EACH COUNTRY?
Identify if you should whether language  
or country target first

Remember that this should be about your own business
model, organization resources and priorities too
COUNTRY TARGET LANGUAGE TARGET

#INTERNATIONALSEO BY @ALEYDA FROM #ORAINTI AT #PUBCONHTTPS://WWW.ALEYDASOLIS.COM/ENGLISH/INTERNATIONAL-SEO-TOOLS/ROI-CALCULATOR/
Verify if there’s enough organic search traffic  
to compensate your Web activity

>
Yes No
Might be too early
BUY & SECURE
YOUR CCTLDS
FOR FUTURE
ACTIVITY
CREATE
CUSTOM
ALERTS
CREATE A PILOT
PROJECT
PRIORITIZING
MAIN PAGES
YOUR INTERNATIONAL TRAFFIC POTENTIAL VISITS & CONVERSIONS FOR A BREAK-EVEN
CONTINUE WITH THE
INTERNATIONAL WEB &
SEO PROJECT
Now you can decide which international
search markets to target first or prioritize

DO
ASSESS THE WEB STRUCTURE
TO USE FOR EACH MARKET
BASED ON GEOLOCATION
NEEDS, COMPETITION &
SCALABILITY

Avoid using scripts or
cookies to show  
international versions
w/ the same URLs

Only one of the country/language  
versions will be indexable

Don’t use
parameters for
your international
Web structure,
specially for
countries, as you
won’t be able to
geolocate them
through the
Google Search
Console

www.brand.dk
www.brand.dk/kontakt-os/
www.brand.com/da-dk/
www.brand.com/da-dk/kontakt-os/
da-dk.brand.com/
da-dk.brand.com/kontakt-os/
CCTLDS
SUB-DIRECTORIES W/ GTLDS
SUB-DOMAINS W/ GTLDS
If you’re country targeting, select between  
ccTLDs, Subdirectories & Subdomains

* Need less technical resources
* Need less efforts to grow popularity 
* More chances to get all versions penalized if something goes bad
* Need more efforts to geolocate
* Need more technical resources
* Need more efforts to grow popularity
* Better than sub-directories to organize larger & more complex sites 
* Need more efforts to geolocate
*Ideal alternative to geolocate if competition is not too high
*Need more technical resources
*Need more efforts to grow popularity with a new domain
CCTLDS
Each have pros & cons to country target

www.brand.com/es/
www.brand.com/es/categoria-a/
es.brand.com/
es.brand.com/categoria-a/
If you’re language targeting, select between using
subdirectories or subdomains

* Need less technical resources
*Need less efforts to grow popularity
*Generates a deeper url structure
*More chances to get all versions penalized if something goes bad
* Need more technical resources
* Need more efforts to grow popularity
* Generates shorter URL structure which can be better for larger sites
Which also have pros & cons to language target

Be mindful that you can't use subdirectories or
subdomains under ccTLDs to geolocate other countries
MINI1.COM/US/
MINI1.COM/FR/
MINI1.COM/ES/

BRAND.COM/LOCATION-USER/LANGUAGE-USER/LOCATION-PRODUCT/
BRAND.COM/LOCATION-PRODUCT/LOCATION-USER-LANGUAGE-USER/
BRAND.COM/LOCATION-USER-LANGUAGE-USER/LOCATION-PRODUCT/
BRAND.COM/LOCATION-PRODUCT/LOCATION-USER/LANGUAGE-USER/
... and that if you use
sub-directories to
geolocate, the
location of the user
should be the first
one to facilitate a
scalable geolocation

#INTERNATIONALSEO BY @ALEYDA FROM #ORAINTI AT #PUBCONHTTPS://SUPPORT.GOOGLE.COM/WEBMASTERS/ANSWER/182192?HL=EN&REF_TOPIC=2370587
Take also into
consideration
that Google
doesn’t support
“regions” that
are not countries
to geotarget

People across Europe won’t all search in just a single
language that can serve to rank for them all

Even if the content is different, like in the case of
Politico, it would be difficult to geolocate each

The .com site
ends up
outranking the
.eu one in
Europe and
the .eu domain
also ranks in
the USA
US US
EU
EU

If there’s no other way than using a .eu extension for
Europe then you’ll need to use it as if it was a gTLD
WWW.BRAND.EU/EN-GB/
WWW.BRAND.EU/FR-FR/
WWW.BRAND.EU/ES-ES/
WWW.BRAND.EU/

Verify the domain types and authority of the top  
sites rankings in your desired market
SERPCHECKER

Yes
Country Language
Are your top
competitors
using ccTLDs?
Yes
Yes
USE
CCTLDS
No
No
USE GEOLOCALIZED
SUBDIRECTORIES
YesNo
USE
SUBDIRECTORIES
USE SUB-
DOMAINS
No
WHAT’S YOUR INTERNATIONAL TARGET?
Is the domain
authority of your
competition
higher?
Is the domain
authority of your
competition
higher?
Do you need a
ﬂatter &
differentiated
structure?
Choose your international Web structure accordingly

#INTERNATIONALSEO BY @ALEYDA FROM #ORAINTI AT #PUBCONHTTPS://WWW.YOUTUBE.COM/WATCH?V=R5W52S5LITS
Take a look at
this Crawling
Mondays episode
to go through
the international
Web structure
selection process

DON’T
RANK IN YOUR
INTERNATIONAL SEARCH
MARKETS WITH NON-
RELEVANT URLS

Misaligned pages will have worse rankings,  
CTR, user experience and conversions

#INTERNATIONALSEO BY @ALEYDA FROM #ORAINTI AT #PUBCONGOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE, SEMRUSH, SISTRIX, AHREFS
Check if you’re
suffering from
search results
misalignment
problems already

#INTERNATIONALSEO BY @ALEYDA FROM #ORAINTI AT #PUBCONSEOMINION
Use VPNs or the free seominion extension  
to search from any location and language

Verify which domain
extensions are
treated as generic
by Google to
geolocate if needed

#INTERNATIONALSEO BY @ALEYDA FROM #ORAINTI AT #PUBCONGOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE
Register & geolocate in search console each  
sub-directory/domain to country target

#INTERNATIONALSEO BY @ALEYDA FROM #ORAINTI AT #PUBCONLINK REDIRECT TRACE
Avoid automatic  
redirects based
on the IP
location

Redirects can give
a bad user
experience and
end-up damaging
your web versions
crawlability

It can also end up showing the wrong titles or  
meta descriptions in search results pages

It's
recommended
to suggest the
relevant
international  
Web version
instead

#INTERNATIONALSEO BY @ALEYDA FROM #ORAINTI AT #PUBCONHTTP://BIT.LY/BINGLANG
Indicate each page international targeting  
with their meta & html lang tag

#INTERNATIONALSEO BY @ALEYDA FROM #ORAINTI AT #PUBCONHTTPS://SUPPORT.GOOGLE.COM/WEBMASTERS/ANSWER/189077?HL=EN
As well as your
pages language
and country
target and their
alternates with
hreflang

English for the US
Default
English for The US
English for the UK
<link rel="canonical" href=“https://www.brand.dk/da/kontakt-os/“ />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://www.brand.dk/da/kontakt-os/" hreflang="da-dk" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://www.brand.com/contact-us/" hreflang="en-us" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://www.brand.co.uk/contact-us/" hreflang="en-gb" />
<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.brand.com/contact-us/“ />
brand.dk/da/kontakt-os/
brand.co.uk/contact-us/
brand.com/contact-us/
Danish for Denmark
<link rel="canonical" href=“https://www.brand.co.uk/contact-us/“ />
Every page should include its language & country
targeting, and point to its other versions

You can also optionally use the x-default value for
unmatched international versions

Use ISO 639-1
values for
languages  
and ISO 3166-1
for countries in
hreflang tags

You can include hreflang in the HTML head,  
HTTP header or XML Sitemap
BETTER FOR SMALL
NUMBER OF
VERSIONS TO TAG
AND WHEN USING A
PLATFORM THAT
ALLOWS TO EASILY
EDIT THE HTML HEAD
HTML Head
BETTER FOR BIGGER
SITES WITH A HIGH
NUMBER OF
VERSIONS TO TAG
AND/OR WHEN YOU
CAN’T EDIT YOUR
HTML HEAD
XML Sitemap
WHEN SPECIFYING
HREFLANG FOR
NON-HTML
DOCUMENTS LIKE
PDFS, DOCS, ETC.
HTTP Header

There’s no limit on
assigning the same
URL to many
targeted countries

If you don't have flexibility for these changes you can
use Cloudfare Workers with Sloth to add hreflang
HTTPS://SLOTH.CLOUD/BLOG/HOW-TO-IMPLEMENT-HREFLANG-THROUGH-SLOTH/

#INTERNATIONALSEO BY @ALEYDA FROM #ORAINTI AT #PUBCONHTTPS://SEARCHENGINELAND.COM/AUDITING-HREFLANG-ANNOTATIONS-COMMON-ISSUES-AVOID-219483
Unfortunately,
it’s common to
generate
hreflang with
errors

From non-existing values..

... to including
non-existing,
non-indexable
or redirecting
pages

#INTERNATIONALSEO BY @ALEYDA FROM #ORAINTI AT #PUBCONHTTPS://WWW.SEROUNDTABLE.COM/GOOGLE-HEAD-SECTION-BREAK-HREFLANG-UNRECOGNIZABLE-22340.HTML
To broken HTML
head that doesn't
allow hreflang
correct
identification

ASSESS THE
LANGUAGES AND
COUNTRIES HREFLANG
IMPLEMENTATION
SCOPE
CHOOSE THE
HREFLANG
IMPLEMENTATION
METHOD
SPECIFY THE
HREFLANG CODE
PATTERN
MONITOR AND
TROUBLESHOOT THE
HREFLANG
IMPLEMENTATION
AFTER LAUNCH
VALIDATE THE
HREFLANG
IMPLEMENTATION IN A
TEST ENVIRONMENT
ESTABLISH HREFLANG
BEST PRACTICES
GUIDELINES TO BE
FOLLOWED WHEN A
NEW PAGE IS
PUBLISHED
HTTP://BIT.LY/HREFLANGPROCESS
Avoid hreflang errors by following an  
implementation and validation process

#INTERNATIONALSEO BY @ALEYDA FROM #ORAINTI AT #PUBCONHTTPS://WWW.ALEYDASOLIS.COM/ENGLISH/INTERNATIONAL-SEO-TOOLS/HREFLANG-TAGS-GENERATOR/
Use the correct
annotations and
values by
generating
hreflang
patterns with
generator tools

#INTERNATIONALSEO BY @ALEYDA FROM #ORAINTI AT #PUBCONHTTPS://WWW.HREFLANGBUILDER.COM/
If you work in an
enterprise
environment, check out
the hreflang builder to
generate hreflang in
XML sitemaps and
facilitate the mapping
process

#INTERNATIONALSEO BY @ALEYDA FROM #ORAINTI AT #PUBCONDEEPCRAWL, SITEBULB, SCREAMING FROG, RYTE, BOTIFY
Validate the hreflang implementation  
using SEO crawlers before it is launched

#INTERNATIONALSEO BY @ALEYDA FROM #ORAINTI AT #PUBCONDEEPCRAWL, SITEBULB, SCREAMING FROG, RYTE, BOTIFY
After launch,
recrawl and fix any
remaining issues
starting with those
affecting more and
the most important
pages of your top
markets

#INTERNATIONALSEO BY @ALEYDA FROM #ORAINTI AT #PUBCONGOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE
Monitor with the Google search console International
report if there are any further hreflang problems

#INTERNATIONALSEO BY @ALEYDA FROM #ORAINTI AT #PUBCONCONTENTKING
You can set alerts whenever hreflang are changed too

#INTERNATIONALSEO BY @ALEYDA FROM #ORAINTI AT #PUBCONHTTPS://WWW.YOUTUBE.COM/WATCH?V=TL1H4Y17SN4&T=1098S
Check out my
hreflang
implementation
Crawling Mondays
Episode for more
information

DO
LOCALIZE YOUR CONTENT
AND OVERALL WEB
EXPERIENCE TO CONNECT
WITH YOUR INTERNATIONAL
USERS PREFERENCES

VACATION IN THE UK
PUBLIC HOLIDAYS IN THE US
It's critical to understand your target audience  
search preferences in each market

#INTERNATIONALSEO BY @ALEYDA FROM #ORAINTI AT #PUBCONSEMRUSH, KWFINDER, AHREFS, SISTRIX
It's fundamental to develop a specific keywords  
research per market with native support

#INTERNATIONALSEO BY @ALEYDA FROM #ORAINTI AT #PUBCONGOOGLE TRENDS, GOOGLE KEYWORD PLANNER
To identify specific terms, preferences, trends  
and seasonalities in search markets

Use it to localize every aspect of your Web content:
URLs, title, meta description, navigation…

Avoid leaving critical areas of your content without
localizing using the relevant language terms

Otherwise it will provide a bad search and user
experience, negatively impacting rankings and CTR

To facilitate the pages localization process create a
matrix specifying their alternate versions

<Characteristic> <Main Keyword> in <Location>:
+<No. Of Items> by <Brand>
<Palabra Clave> <Característica> en <Ubicación>:
+<No. de Products> por <Marca>
English Title Spanish Title
Create then another w/ patterns to generate the  
main content elements for each page version

The goal is to
connect with
each of your
audiences
preferences with
your Web
experience

PRIORITIZE YOUR
INTERNATIONAL
TARGETED
MARKETS
ASSESSING AND
SELECTING THE
BEST
INTERNATIONAL
WEB STRUCTURE
FOR YOU
CORRECTLY
GEOLOCATING
YOUR
INTERNATIONAL
WEB PAGES
LOCALIZING
YOUR CONTENT
BASED ON YOUR
AUDIENCE
PREFERENCES
By following these steps you’ll avoid the most  
common International SEO Challenges

To target, localize and grow your International Web
organic search visibility, traffic and revenue

Thank you!
Questions?
HTTPS://YOUTUBE.COM/C/CRAWLINGMONDAYSBYALEYDA

International SEO: The Top Do's and Dont's #Pubcon

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International SEO: The Top Do's and Dont's #Pubcon