Many businesses operate across multiple countries and languages, and in order to provide the best experience for their customers, they create content to target each of the markets they operate in. However, it’s often the case that search engines struggle to rank the correct version in each locale – particularly when they share a language. For example, maybe you’ve seen pages intended to target US customers ranking in the UK, or vice versa.

In this article, I’ll be covering:

• How to identify whether or not this is an issue for your site
• How to measure the impact of this issue
• Three methods to test to resolve this issue, plus some tips on how to build a testing plan.

Let’s get stuck in!

What is international SEO?

International SEO is the process of optimising a website, or set of websites, to represent the same business but in multiple countries and languages.

The aim of international SEO is to make it clear to the search engines which content should rank in which market. Yet many of the processes have been designed for different languages, rather than countries. This means you can easily tag content in Polish for Poland and Swedish for Sweden and it usually works well.

But what do you do with the languages that cross multiple markets? For example, you may need to create various versions of your content in English i.e.: a version for the USA, a version for the UK, a version for Ireland, a version for English speakers in Canada, a version for Australia, a version for New Zealand, etc.

The content versions you create for each market will often be pretty similar, but with key differences that really matter, like prices and currencies, availability, regulations, and other information that affects conversion and revenue in each market.

Why do search engines get it wrong?

Search engines like Google don’t aim to rank content by country but by “relevance”. This means that if the content you create for each of these markets appears to be too similar, it can cause cannibalisation issues. Effectively the versions of these pages are competing against each other for the same keywords. The result? Search engines may pick just one version to show all English-speaking users, no matter where they are.

You may find the USA product page ranking in the UK, leading to frustrated customers, poor engagement and lost business.

International SEO - bubble chart showing lost traffic

And search engines can get it wrong even if you do everything right technically. There is no way to force them to show, or not show, a URL in a specific market. Solutions like href lang are suggestions, not directives.

What does an international website look like?

If you have a business targeting multiple countries, you probably have one of three international set-ups. It’s important to know which you’re working with as it can affect the technical implementation of tags and measurement.

Different ccTLDs

These Country Code Top Level Domains are unique domains for each country or territory, e.g. website.com for USA, website.co.uk for the United Kingdom, website.fr for France etc.

Example: Purina.com, Purina.co.uk, Purina.fr

Subfolders

One website, with different sections for each country, e.g. website.com/us/ for USA, website.com/fr/ for France.

Example: Apple.com, apple.com/uk, apple.com/ca

Subdomains

One domain, but with subdomains for each country, e.g. us.website.com and uk.website.com. This structure is usually seen as separate websites by search engines, so will need to be given their own individual sitemaps.

Example: es.webuy.com, mx.webuy.com

Does it matter which I have?

Not necessarily – the methods I’ll be sharing to resolve this issue work with any of the structures, but working from a single website with subfolders can be easier to manage technically where there are redirects or href lang tags. Some businesses even have a combination, with some countries having their own domain, and others sharing one domain with different subfolders.

It’s important to know what you’re working with to help calculate the development cost of any changes.

How to get all the data (that matters!)

To understand the extent of the issue, and the impact of any incorrect rankings, you’ll need some data. We’re aiming to understand:

• How many pages are ranking in the wrong country?
• How many people are landing on pages for the wrong country?
• What is that costing the business?

You’ll be comparing the portion of people going to the right place, with those going to the wrong place. It’s never 100% correct, but we should aim to keep the incorrect portion as small as possible.

Keyword rankings

Using your favourite tool (such as Semrush, Ahrefs, Sistrix), grab your keyword rankings and URLs in every market separately. Then isolate the ones where the incorrect URL is ranking, e.g. where URLs intended for the UK market are ranking in the US. Make sure you check the reverse too, where URLs intended for the US market are ranking in the UK.

It’s worth analysing this data to see if you can identify any patterns. What page types or topics are causing particular issues – is it your product pages or guide content? Do you have content missing in some markets, or is your content stronger in one market than in others?

It’s worth checking rankings over time too to see if this is trending up or down, and whether it’s affected by any algorithm updates. I’ve seen some core updates create confusion between markets that is resolved with another update later.

Google Analytics

You want to start with landing pages then add country over the top. You can use the pre-built report under Reports > Engagement > Landing Pages, then add a filter for the ‘Country’ dimension, and exactly match ‘United States’ for example – you can tick multiple options here.

You can then add another filter for ‘Landing page + query string’ containing the /uk/ subfolder, for example. This will tell you sessions, users, key events and revenue. Repeat the process for each market and URL combination – it’s quicker if you’ve got Big Query. Go back as far as you can to show if this is getting better or worse.

I also recommend getting the data for traffic that’s going to the correct pages for comparison - it should give you data on conversion benchmarks for the next step.

What is this costing the business?

Now you can calculate how much this issue is costing the business in terms of revenue.

Here’s an example with dummy data. I’ve marked the traffic going to the correct pages in green, and totalled up the other traffic going to the wrong market.

You then take average conversion rates for organic traffic in each market, and average order value, to calculate what that lost traffic would bring in, if those users landed on the correct pages.

Add this together and you have the cost to the business in terms of lost revenue, every month. We can use this to compare against the cost of fixing to build a business case at the end of this guide.

International SEO Impact Calculations

How to fix international SEO issues – 3 methods to try

This is my framework for fixing international SEO issues from lowest risk to highest risk.

1: Get your href lang tags right

While they are suggestions for search engines and can be ignored, it’s worth getting them right as a first priority. We’re not going to cover how to build href lang tags because that’s a whole other article, but it’s worth checking for any errors because they can be fiddly.

Use an href lang tag tester

Google Search Console has deprecated their report, but you can test the validity of href lang tags using various tools online. I like hreflang.org which can use either by submitting a list of URLs, or a sitemap: https://app.hreflang.org/

Make sure your pages self-reference

You need to link to your own URL as well as the alternates in other countries. E.g. on the US version of the page, you want to have a href lang tag to the US page itself: <link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-us" href="https://website.com/us" />

Check your syntax

I’ve seen many people try to use ‘en-uk’ for the UK market, but the correct syntax is ‘en-gb’.

Check your X default

If you have one market as X-default, sometimes this ends up ranking in many markets. Try taking it out and see if that helps search engines get it right more often.

2: Content localisation

Href lang tags can be ignored if content isn’t localised to that market. There are lots of tweaks you can make to test if it helps search engines (and users) understand the difference.

Meta data

It’s worth testing putting the market in the page title if you have space – try “Page Name | Brand UK” and “Brand US” and test to see how it affects CTR and rankings. You might find as users click on the correct page version more often, Google will adjust their rankings in response.

Currency & shipping

For ecommerce sites, this is the biggest localisation signal – currency, store locations and shipping information should be customised to each market.

Text and body copy

Adjust your language for each market, e.g. using British or American spelling and syntax or local words and expressions. Credit local sources where possible such as government sites, regulators etc. If appropriate, it can be worth adding the country name into headings e.g. “Why Australia loves [product]”.

Localise internal links and backlinks

Ensure that all UK pages link to other UK pages internally. External links can play a part here too – ideally UK pages should be getting backlinks from UK publishers – your link building efforts should be done in each market for high local relevance.

3: Geo targeted pop-ups

If you’ve tried the first two methods but haven’t seen any improvements, you may want to consider implementing a geo-targeted pop-up. These are often used on major international sites to catch any traffic which appears to be landing on an incorrect page version.

For example, if you’re in the UK and land on a URL for the USA, a pop-up or banner will appear to let you know that this page is intended for US users, and offer to redirect you to the UK site instead. It works based on your IP address, so it only appears for users who land on the wrong page for their location.

Pros

• It sends users to the right part of the site
• This stops user frustration from later realising they’re on the wrong site
• It ensures the user stays on your site rather than going back to search

Cons

• It can be intrusive
• It doesn’t stop the URLs ranking in the wrong country, as the pop-up appears to users after they land on the wrong page
• It can interrupt the journey, often redirecting to the homepage on the correct site instead of the equivalent page
• You need control over the UX, especially on mobile devices – banners may be more user friendly

International brands like Asus display a discreet banner at the top, while sites like O’Neill’s display a pop-up:

Geo-Targeted Banner on Asus

Geo-Targeted pop up on O’Neills

How to build a testing plan

Any site changes come with both costs and risks, so you’ll need a plan. I recommend talking to as many internal teams as possible about the various solutions, and the time and resources they would require to implement.

Factor in:

• Development time and costs, including external agency support
• Content team time and support
• Implementation on the site, testing and debugging
• Sign-off timelines

Don’t forget to factor in what other projects may be affected by delays while the business works on this issue, which can often be a sticking point with SEO!

Once you’ve captured everything, add up all the costs and compare to your “lost business” calculation from earlier, so you can see the return on investment.

I tend to begin by testing the methods I’m proposing on a small group of pages first, so I can see what works before rolling out to every page. In my experience it’s definitely worth testing something like content localisation on a few problem pages, and measuring the impact before rolling out changes across multiple content versions.

Keep testing

International SEO is tricky but it’s definitely worth investing time and effort in testing solutions. Remember, the main aim is to get your users to the right page, even if search engines seem determined to rank the wrong URL for the market.

And always keep an eye on algorithm updates as they can cause significant shifts in international rankings. Sometimes your changes don’t seem to be working, then an algorithm update will come along and it’s like Google finally notices all your hard work!