In­ter­na­tion­al SEO for mul­ti­lin­gual sites

Companies that showcase them­selves online or sell products through online shops typically aim to expand their reach. High-quality content is just as important as improving search engine rankings and having an effective marketing strategy. It’s also essential to expand into in­ter­na­tion­al markets with a mul­ti­lin­gual website. However, operating a mul­ti­lin­gual website involves much more than trans­lat­ing the content on your website.

What are the chal­lenges of having a mul­ti­lin­gual website?

In the initial phase of planning a mul­ti­lin­gual website, a lot revolves around the topic of trans­la­tions. In addition to trans­lat­ing content on the website, it’s also necessary to translate nav­ig­a­tion and operating elements. This often requires ad­di­tion­al staff, depending on the scope of the in­ter­na­tion­al­isa­tion measures and the available resources within your company. If you offer your website in several languages, you should also offer customer support in the re­spect­ive languages as well. Ad­di­tion­ally, you’ll need to factor in country or language-specific marketing campaigns, ap­pro­pri­ate link building and the setting up of suitable technical struc­tures (web hosting, domain names, SSL cer­ti­fic­a­tion). If you manage your project using a CMS, it should also be easy to for you to enter mul­ti­lin­gual content into your system.

Once you have these areas covered, you can focus on perhaps the most critical aspect of main­tain­ing mul­ti­lin­gual web projects: in­ter­na­tion­al SEO. This involves trans­lat­ing your website, adapting the keyword set and the URL, and taking care of technical tasks such as de­vel­op­ing an ap­pro­pri­ate page structure and correct linking and re­dir­ec­tions.

If you plan to expand your online offerings to Eastern European and Asian markets as part of your in­ter­na­tion­al­isa­tion process, you should also consider which search engines are used in those regions so you can better plan the multi-language SEO for your website. Popular search engines like Yandex (Russia), Baidu (China), or Yahoo (Japan) should be included in your in­ter­na­tion­al SEO strategy. For SEO in e-commerce, the im­port­ance of Amazon and its in­teg­rated search ap­plic­a­tion is also in­creas­ing.

Suc­cess­ful in­ter­na­tion­al­isa­tion not only enhances your company’s prestige but also strengthens customers’ trust in your company. Below, we have sum­mar­ised what to consider when it comes to in­ter­na­tion­al search engine op­tim­isa­tion and which mistakes to avoid.

SEO for mul­ti­lin­gual websites

Op­tim­ising your website for multiple languages can open the door to global markets and give your company in­ter­na­tion­al vis­ib­il­ity. SEO for mul­ti­lin­gual websites ensures that your website is found and is appealing in different languages and regions. Immerse yourself in the world of mul­ti­lin­gual SEO and discover how you can expand your reach and ef­fect­ively access new target groups.

Suitable domain structure

The first step of in­ter­na­tion­al SEO is to find a fitting domain for each in­ter­na­tion­al project. You should ask yourself whether it’s ap­pro­pri­ate to use a uniform domain across all languages, which domain ending best suits your web project and how the URL should be struc­tured. The following table shows four possible options with the unique ad­vant­ages and dis­ad­vant­ages of each one:

The first three solutions are es­pe­cially relevant for mul­ti­lin­gual websites. Although URL para­met­ers are tech­nic­ally feasible, they are un­suit­able for website in­ter­na­tion­al­isa­tion. Google ex­pli­citly dis­cour­ages this approach, as such pages cannot guarantee clean indexing. Therefore, the most reliable options are the ccTLD variant, subdomain or sub­dir­ect­ory.

Regional domains are easily re­cog­nis­able and un­der­stand­able for both visitors and search engine tools. In addition, with a vast range of ccTLDs, you are not tied to a specific server location. This means you can optimise the avail­ab­il­ity and loading time of your different language versions by selecting the ap­pro­pri­ate in­fra­struc­ture. However, this domain model is also as­so­ci­ated with high costs and com­par­at­ively time-consuming ad­min­is­tra­tion. It’s also important to bear in mind that each of these websites will have no history or vis­ib­il­ity to begin with, making the initial mul­ti­lin­gual SEO measures very cum­ber­some.

A generic domain is a good option for getting started with in­ter­na­tion­al SEO. With the sub­dir­ect­ory variant, all the subpages benefit from the link strength and ranking of the website. The downside of going with this variant is that you are bound to a single server location that may have more trouble sub­divid­ing pages. While combining a generic top-level domain and sub­do­mainsprovides more flex­ib­il­ity, you will still face the issue of newly generated pages initially not being indexed.

Smart server selection

The server locations of in­ter­na­tion­al web projects used to be official factors in search engine ranking. Even though it’s now no longer vital for all language variants to be stored on a local server, in the age of mobile devices, de­liv­er­ing data quickly is more important than ever. It’s es­pe­cially important for online shop owners to minimise loading times and pri­or­it­ise a good server in­fra­struc­ture as part of their in­ter­na­tion­al SEO measures, in addition to op­tim­ising code. In recent years, content delivery networks have gained pop­ular­ity thanks to their high-level per­form­ance and security, becoming in­creas­ingly important tools.

Com­pre­hens­ive keyword research

You should think carefully when deciding on a domain structure. The core aspect of SEO op­tim­isa­tion for mul­ti­lin­gual websites is a soph­ist­ic­ated and well-re­searched keyword strategy. Using relevant keywords alerts search engine crawlers of your pages, in turn, improving your ranking. One major mistake that owners of online stores make when making their website mul­ti­lin­gual is carrying out keyword research for the source language and then using the keyword set as the basis for all other language variants.

While the context-specific direct trans­la­tion of keywords might prove more valuable and user-friendly than auto­mat­ic­ally trans­lated content, such an approach reduces the ef­fect­ive­ness of your in­ter­na­tion­al SEO measure for two reasons. For one, it fails to take into account region-specific search engines such as Baidu. Secondly, literal trans­la­tions of keywords may not be relevant in the target language. Even in regions that use the same language, keywords can differ (e.g., in the UK and USA). This could mean that search engine users may be unable to find the high-quality content you’ve created.

Sending the right language-specific signals

Search engines aim to display the most relevant webpages for each user. For users from the United Kingdom, for example, pages are pri­or­it­ised that contain local content and can be assigned to the British market. To do this, crawlers use different country-specific signals, including:

• Language style
• Dis­tinct­ive gram­mat­ic­al char­ac­ter­ist­ics
• Cur­ren­cies
• Units of meas­ure­ment

The more you take these elements into account for various languages, the easier it is for search engines to recognise their relevance for the re­spect­ive market. Google analyses contact numbers and addresses and uses this in­form­a­tion to better evaluate the relevance of each page for different users.

When carrying out in­ter­na­tion­al SEO for your online shop, the clearer the signals are that you send, the easier it is for search engines to cat­egor­ise your site. However, even with the best al­gorithms, this is not always easy. It’s possible to use the hreflang attribute in some web search ap­plic­a­tions, including Google and Yandex. With this attribute, a page refers to another that provides the same content for another language or country. This allows users to be re­dir­ec­ted to the ap­pro­pri­ate language auto­mat­ic­ally. There are three ways to integrate the language attribute:

• Hreflang as a link element in the HTML header: You can activate an automatic re­dir­ec­tion in the <head> area using the link element. If your online shop is available in English, Spanish and French, for example, you can simply add the following lines of code to the header for the different languages:

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="http://en.your-ecommerce.shop/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="http://es.your-ecommerce.shop/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr" href="http://fr.your-ecommerce.shop/" />

• Hreflang in HTTP header: If your mul­ti­lin­gual website contains files that are not in HTML format, such as PDF files, you can define hreflang in the Link area:

Link: <http://en.your-ecommerce.shop/>; rel="alternate"; hreflang="en", <http://es.your-ecommerce.shop/>; rel="alternate"; hreflang="es", <http://fr.your-ecommerce.shop/>; rel="alternate"; hreflang="fr"

• Hreflang in the sitemap: Instead of markups, you can also dis­tin­guish between the different language versions in the sitemap:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<url>
<loc>http://en.your-ecommerce.shop</loc>
<xhtml:link
rel="alternate"
hreflang="en"
href="http://www.en.your-ecommerce.shop"
/>
<xhtml:link
rel="alternate"
hreflang="es"
href="http://www.es.your-ecommerce.shop"/>
<xhtml:link
rel="alternate"
hreflang="fr"
href="http://www.fr.your-ecommerce.shop"
/>
</url>

Mul­ti­lin­gual websites and duplicate content

While it is advisable to provide unique content for each language version on your site, this is not always feasible. This is par­tic­u­larly true when targeting markets that share the same language (e.g., UK, USA, Canada and Australia), making it a challenge to avoid duplicate content on mul­ti­lin­gual websites. For­tu­nately, with a mul­ti­lin­gual online shop, it’s not necessary to hide all such pages and prevent crawling using a robots.txt file or a noindex tag. If you offer the same content under different URLs, you can use the canonical attribute under certain con­di­tions. Similar to hreflang, this is included as a link element in the HTML header.

If you have created separate URLs for the American, Canadian and British versions of your website and want to use the exact same content for all three shops, you can extend the HTML header with the following code:

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="us" href="http://us.your-ecommerce.shop /" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="ca" href="http://ca.your-ecommerce.shop/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="uk" href="http://uk.your-ecommerce.shop/" />
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.en.your-ecommerce.shop/" />

Because all three pages have been given the same attribute, search engines know not to index them sep­ar­ately. In this case, the ‘original’ English version: http://www.en.your-ecommerce.shop is preferred. All SEO signals, such as external links, then count as if there is only one page.

Country-specific link building

Off-page op­tim­isa­tion is a crucial aspect of in­ter­na­tion­al SEO. High-quality, trust­worthy backlinks strongly influence your search engine ranking, making your website look more reliable and trust­worthy to potential customers. With country-specific links, you can also provide search engines with more useful in­form­a­tion about which language version is relevant for each user. This aspect of mul­ti­lin­gual SEO for websites requires a lot of time and effort, making it one of the more chal­len­ging tasks. Despite this, it’s still worth striving for prof­it­able returns from the outset so you don’t end up having to use expensive external providers later on.

Unique concept, page layout and design

In 2003, eBay entered the Chinese market. However, within just three years, the company was forced to withdraw, leaving the field open to its rival platform, Alibaba’s Taobao. Today, the Asian company makes more sales than eBay and Amazon put together and is also gaining ground in the Western world. Limited loc­al­isa­tion is one of many reasons which led to eBay’s cata­stroph­ic failure in China. The company’s demise was the result of at­tempt­ing to apply the same formula that had been suc­cess­ful in the USA and Europe.

Taobao, on the other hand, has catered to its Chinese audience well, using a range of familiar elements, such as cute icons, flashing an­im­a­tions and a chat feature that allowed pro­spect­ive buyers to contact the seller. This shows how important it is to pri­or­it­ise the user ex­per­i­ence when planning SEO for a mul­ti­lin­gual online shop. Even if you don’t plan on expanding into markets in Asia, this demon­strates how even small and subtle changes can decide your business’s fate in a par­tic­u­lar country.

What are the most common in­ter­na­tion­al SEO mistakes?

When running a website or web project with several language versions, you should take time to explore the various search engine op­tim­isa­tion tech­niques for multi-language websites. However, it’s important that you don’t do this half-heartedly. Whether you’re finding keywords, im­ple­ment­ing tags or building links, it’s easy to make mistakes that can reduce the vis­ib­il­ity of your website.

Mistake #1: Focusing too much on IP-based re­dir­ec­tions

Im­ple­ment­ing hreflang tags is fre­quently dismissed as an un­ne­ces­sary, difficult and time-consuming task. Many webstore owners would rather guide users to the correct version of the site using re­dir­ec­tions based on IP addresses. However, there are many reasons as to why this is not always the best solution. Firstly, this makes it difficult for search engine crawlers to cat­egor­ise and index your pages. Another problem is that IP detection can be in­ac­cur­ate and, in some cases, com­pletely in­ad­equate. This can lead to users finding them­selves on ir­rel­ev­ant pages. If the IP address is the only criterion evaluated, users could end up with the same language variant, re­gard­less of their language pref­er­ences and location. Ad­di­tion­ally, in large numbers, redirects can have a negative effect on the page’s loading time.

Mistake #2: Incorrect hreflang tags

If hreflang tags are incorrect, search engines might end up mis­in­ter­pret­ing them or ignoring them com­pletely. Errors are fre­quently caused by the use of incorrect country and language codes, which do not cor­res­pond to current ISO standards and do not provide the desired result. Sometimes, however, missing hreflang tags, Google Search Console settings or missing feedback can be the root of the problem. In addition, com­plic­a­tions can arise if you give a webpage hreflang at­trib­utes and a canonical tag. For more in­form­a­tion on this error, check out our article on hreflang basics.

Mistake #3: Illogical domain concept

As we’ve seen above, the choice of domain structure plays an integral role in in­ter­na­tion­al SEO. Even with the best planning, your strategy can go wrong if you fail to avoid the most common errors. The com­bin­a­tion of a country-specific top-level domain with separate sub­dir­ect­or­ies for the in­di­vidu­al language versions is in­her­ently con­tra­dict­ory. The geo­graph­ic­al ori­ent­a­tion is clearly defined by the ccTLD (Google clas­si­fies it in the Search Console auto­mat­ic­ally), so the use of sub­dir­ect­or­ies only weakens it. This results in the subpages rarely appearing in relevant search results.

Mistake #4: Poorly im­ple­men­ted links

Aspects such as quality, func­tion­al­ity and use­ful­ness are often ignored in link building — par­tic­u­larly in new projects. And since link building is even more complex in mul­ti­lin­gual websites than in other websites, even seasoned SEO experts sometimes struggle to get it all right.

For example, one common mistake is that an external link leads to the main domain rather than a specific language or country domain. Of course, this has a negative impact on your visitors and decreases the link potential of the al­tern­at­ive URL. Other frequent problems include links that are outdated or faulty, as well as using too many internal links.

Mistake #5: Ignoring mobile users

Op­tim­ising your website for mobile devices is crucial in in­ter­na­tion­al SEO, es­pe­cially since mobile internet access surpasses desktop access in certain countries. To ef­fect­ively present your mul­ti­lin­gual website in­ter­na­tion­ally using SEO standards, it’s vital to ensure that it is also optimised for mobile users. A mobile-friendly website provides a better user ex­per­i­ence, leading to higher en­gage­ment rates and lower bounce rates.

Moreover, search engines like Google factor in mobile friend­li­ness when ranking websites. This means that mul­ti­lin­gual websites that are also optimised for mobile devices are more likely to achieve higher search result rankings. As mentioned earlier, in many countries such as India, Brazil, China, or Indonesia, users primarily access the internet via smart­phones. As such, a website not optimised for mobile devices could miss out on reaching a large portion of a company’s target audience.

Op­tim­ising your mul­ti­lin­gual website for mobile phones is not just ad­vant­age­ous but an absolute necessity if you want your in­ter­na­tion­al SEO efforts to be suc­cess­ful. It’s crucial to focus on fast loading times, ad­apt­ab­il­ity to various screen sizes and a user-friendly interface for touch­screen nav­ig­a­tion.

By ad­dress­ing these factors, you can greatly improve the vis­ib­il­ity of your mul­ti­lin­gual website in search engines and more ef­fect­ively reach a global audience.

Mistake #6: Not carrying out local keyword research

In­suf­fi­cient local keyword research is another common reason why mul­ti­lin­gual websites are not dis­covered. If meta titles, meta de­scrip­tions and URLs are not optimised for the specific countries and languages you are targeting, your in­ter­na­tion­al SEO strategy is unlikely to succeed. Proper ad­apt­a­tion must take into account cultural dif­fer­ences in search behaviour, such as word choice, specific phrases, synonyms, sentence structure and grammar. To truly connect with local audiences, you should invest in pro­fes­sion­al trans­la­tions and the cultural ad­apt­a­tion of your content as part of your mul­ti­lin­gual SEO efforts.