Posted 30.04.2025
By Susan Giles
If your business operates in multiple countries, you’ll already be familiar with an added 101 extra layers of details you have to get right. From tangled supply chains to negotiating foreign policies, there is so much more to balance – including your digital marketing.
But do you realise even your SEO is complicated when you operate internationally? Whether you use multiple international websites or one site to cover many locations, you’ll need an extra layer of optimisation to make sure search engines can see just where in the world your website is relevant – and rank it accordingly. That’s international SEO.
Not sure what that means, or where to start? Here’s an in-depth guide to international SEO in 2025 to help you get a clearer picture, so you can make sure you’re pointing search engines in the right direction when it comes to your business.
International SEO is a sub-type of search engine optimisation that multilingual or multinational websites use to improve their rankings and – in turn – to increase organic traffic.
Many of the processes and techniques for traditional and international SEO are the same, but with international SEO, the focus is on telling search engines which countries your website is targeting so they can share the version of your site that is relevant to each place.
It’s essentially a form of geotargeting – just like local SEO but on a bigger scale.
While both types of SEO are about showing search engines when and why to rank your website highly, international SEO addresses the additional complexities that arise in global markets.
The potential pitfalls it seeks to address include:
Generally speaking, international SEO can feel more difficult than standard SEO. Your strategy needs to account for more variables and the needs of different markets all while avoiding cannibalisation.
If your business operates in more than one country, you’ll benefit from an international SEO strategy. Whether you have a single website (domain) that caters to multiple countries and multiple languages or separate websites for every country you target, international SEO is the best way to find your target market using search engines.
Absolutely. For any business that operates in more than one country, international SEO is incredibly important. In fact, it’s vital.
When you search for a product or service, search engines understand that you want results that are in your native language and that are geographically available to you. They’ll actively avoid pointing you towards a site that is in the wrong language or that doesn’t ship to you – otherwise, this would create a bad search experience, and Google’s entire ethos is to give the best search experience possible.
So if you search for a ‘fridge/freezer’ while sitting in Derby, you’ll be shown UK websites first. Carry out the same search while you’re sitting in Barcelona, and you’ll be shown businesses based in Spain. Even if you don’t use geographic search terms like ‘near me’ or ‘in Derby’ or ‘in Spain’ search engines will still assume you only want results available to your location..
International SEO lets you show search engines that you are relevant to your target audience. It helps you show which language version or domain of your website is targeting which market, to improve your visibility and increase your organic traffic.
So how do you optimise your website for international SEO? Much like standard SEO, it is not enough to make one or two changes. You need an effective international SEO strategy that weaves optimisation across your entire website, both on-page and in your website build.
Without a broad approach to your international SEO efforts, you could still confuse search engines over which locations you’re targeting. You need to make sure you’re sending enough signals – and that they point clearly to your location.
If you want to build a successful international SEO strategy, here are some of the things you need to include:
Technical SEO can be complicated enough, but with international SEO, the potential for problems just grows. You should make sure to look out for the following:
When building sites across multiple countries, one option is to have a corresponding Country Code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD for each location. For example, the ccTLD for France is .fr, .eu is for the European Union and ‘.co.uk’ is for the UK.
Getting your ccTLD alone isn’t enough to show Google what country your business operates in. If you add content to your web pages in a language not known to be spoken in the country of your ccTLD, then this geo-targeting specification can be ignored.
You can also use schema markup to assign local currency and language to important business information (including your business address and phone number) to ensure Google can identify your business’s intended location.
You can use hreflang attributes – either through adding hreflang tags to the HTML of your page, or adding hreflang markup to your XML sitemap – to tell search engines exactly which country or language your pages are targeting.
For websites that target different countries with some in the same language, you can map the site for URLs covering both languages and countries. If your website is duplicated in multiple languages, you can map the alternative URLs for each of the different languages.
If you’re deliberately uploading similar content in multiple languages, canonical tags will help you avoid duplication issues by telling search engines which pages to index and rank and which to ignore. This way it won’t register content as duplicated – if it does, this can lead your website to be penalised.
As with traditional SEO, the foundation of an effective international SEO strategy is in-depth keyword research.
This can help you work out what your website needs to say – and how it needs to be said. Not just to please search engines but to connect with your customers too.
The process for international SEO keyword research is almost the same as standard keyword research. You need to weigh up search volume, competition and synonyms. You also need to analyse the keywords your competitors are targeting, so you can see what is working in your target market and spot any missed opportunities.
The goal for both types of keyword research is also the same. You’re looking to find long-tail keywords that might have a lower search volume but drive targeted traffic that is likely to invest in your business.
The extra step with keyword research for international SEO is regional language and cultural differences. This isn’t as simple as translating to the corresponding language. It means incorporating local slang, idioms and other lingual variations that will show Google and other search engines that you understand the local audience you are targeting.
Keyword research is just the first step of your on-page international SEO strategy. Even if you run a multinational company with multiple websites, it’s not enough to share identical content across all your international sites – even if it’s translated into different languages.
If you want your website to rank in different countries, simply translating your content to another language is not enough. You need to update it and localise it towards your target audience.
This means regional variations on names and spelling, and appropriate use of local slang and common phrases.
You also need to make sure the whole page is translated. Just doing the body content won’t send strong enough signals. You also need to change the meta data, and image alt text too.
All the information contained on your website needs to be tailored to the common practices of the local market.
This includes:
Any content you create also needs to account for any cultural, seasonal or regulation variations that apply in the different regions. For example, if your business is targeting customers who live in Australia, while talking about Christmas, you need to remember that this holiday will be taking place on a bright summer’s day, not a dark wintery one. Meanwhile, if you’re targeting a Japanese market, their Christmas dinner is more likely to include fried chicken than roast turkey.
Including these differences in your content clearly shows who your local market are – and that you understand them.
One thing about international SEO is that it doesn’t really change as often as standard SEO does – a lot of these factors have been important for years, and all that’s really shifted is the importance of including them.
The biggest difference in 2025 compared to say, 2020, is that it is even more important today to carry out international SEO than ever before – and that will just increase throughout 2025.
A number of recent algorithm updates have emphasised the importance of user-first content. In terms of international SEO, that means clearly identifying the geographic locations your website is targeted at and making sure your content is relevant to those people. If you aren’t doing that already, you need to make it a priority if you want to increase your search visibility moving forward.
International SEO is another key part of proving to search engines what your website should rank for and why. There’s no single quick fix but, when you weave an international SEO strategy through your whole site, you’ll turn up in the results for your target country, and find visibility in your targeted international market.
If you still aren’t sure what that involves, our international SEO services can help you show search engines exactly where you’re targeting. Talk to our SEO experts today and we can help you build a strategy that lifts your website to new levels of success.
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