International SEO: a practical guide

1. Choose your markets before your languages

Many companies think in languages (“let's add a French version”) rather than in markets. But a language is not a country. French is spoken in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Quebec. German in Germany, Austria and German-speaking Switzerland. And British English is not American English.

To decide, I combine three sources:

• Your own data: which countries already send you visitors and enquiries (Search Console, Google Analytics)?
• Real demand: how many monthly searches are there for your products in each country?
• Your capacity: can you deliver, answer the phone, invoice and provide after-sales service in that country?

Better one market done properly than four done by halves. Start with one or two countries, prove it works, then expand.

2. The structure of your multilingual website

The second decision is one you'll live with for years: where do your foreign-language versions sit?

In most cases I recommend a subfolder: this very site uses /de/, /nl/ and /en/. Translate your URLs too: /fr/prestations/ means far more to a French visitor (and to Google) than /fr/services/.

3. Hreflang, done right

Hreflang tags tell Google which language versions of a page exist, so a Belgian visitor lands on your Belgian page rather than the French one. For the full details, see my complete hreflang guide. The mistakes I find in almost every audit:

• 01Non-reciprocal tags the English page points to the French one, but the French page doesn't point back. Google then ignores the link.
• 02Wrong codes “en-UK” doesn't exist; the correct code is “en-GB”. The same care applies to “fr-BE”, “de-CH” or “nl-BE”.
• 03Conflicting canonicals a French page with a canonical tag pointing to the English version.
• 04Automatic redirects based on IP address Googlebot mostly crawls from the US and would never see your other versions. Use a clear language switcher instead.

✦ To write your tags without errors, use my free hreflang generator: tick your languages and countries and the code writes itself.

4. Keyword research for each country

This is the heart of it. You don't translate keywords; you research them in each country. An example from my own research on the German market: “übersetzer frankreich deutsch” (French-German translator) gets around 390 searches a month, while “seo frankreich” gets around 110. In other words, many German companies think “translation” long before they think “search visibility”. That insight shapes which pages I build and what they say.

It works the other way too. For Cup Concept, a German maker of reusable tableware, the French keyword research covered around 1,500 terms, and French buyers' vocabulary looked nothing like a translation of the German catalogue (see the Cup Concept case study). Good international keyword research:

• is carried out market by market, in the target language;
• gives monthly search volumes and seasonality for each query;
• groups keywords by intent: learn, compare, buy;
• translates directly into a site structure and a content plan.

5. Translate, localise or rewrite?

Machine translation has improved enormously and I use it as a starting point. But publishing raw output means two risks: phrasing that sounds slightly off (and puts buyers off) and pages that miss the keywords people actually search for.

Localising goes well beyond the text:

• 01Tone the formal vous in France and Sie in Germany for B2B, a more direct style in the Netherlands.
• 02Legal pages a full Impressum in Germany; mentions légales and terms of sale in France.
• 03Payment Carte Bancaire in France, iDEAL in the Netherlands, Bancontact in Belgium, and paying by invoice (Kauf auf Rechnung) in Germany.
• 04Trust Trusted Shops or ProvenExpert in Germany, Avis Vérifiés or Google reviews in France, Kiyoh in the Netherlands.

That is exactly how I work for ABI Profils, whose site runs in French, German, English and Dutch: each version has its own keyword research and content, managed every month (see the ABI Profils case study).

6. Local links and mentions

Links from British sites do little for your French version. Each market needs local mentions: trade press, industry associations, trade fairs, partners, distributors and bilateral chambers of commerce. A handful of good links from the right country and sector are worth far more than a hundred irrelevant directories.

7. What about AI assistants?

ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude now answer many of the questions your prospects used to type into Google, in every language. To be cited, your business must be easy to understand: the same name and offer everywhere, structured data, factual content and mentions in local sources. That's GEO: Generative Engine Optimization. Find out more about GEO.

8. Measure each market separately

A multilingual site is managed market by market. Set up a Search Console property or filter for each folder (/fr/, /de/, /nl/) and track impressions, clicks, rankings and, above all, enquiries. And be patient: first results usually appear after a few months, solid results after around a year of steady work. For Hotel Beaulac in Neuchâtel, it took three years to grow from 1,700 to 20,000 organic visitors a month, in three languages (see the case study).

In short – International SEO

International SEO isn't a translation job: it means building, for each market, a version that speaks its buyers' language and follows their unwritten rules. Choose your markets, pick a clear structure, get your hreflang right, start from keyword research by market and localise your content. Links, GEO and Google Ads then build on a healthy foundation.

Wondering where to start? I always begin with an audit of your foreign-language versions: what's blocking, what's working, and the three actions with the biggest impact. Have a look at my pages on SEO in France and SEO in Germany.

Frequently asked questions – International SEO