International brands need to be internationally visible. Find out how to successfully design and implement a global SEO strategy.
Search engine optimization has become an indispensable marketing tool for all companies. If you're not visible online, you risk falling behind your competitors. However, while a car repair shop must rely on so-called local SEO to attract nearby customers, globally operating brands must consider internationalizing their SEO efforts.
At Moccu, we primarily support companies that offer products and solutions in the global market. As e-commerce continues to grow, the number of these companies is steadily increasing – after all, online trade is not limited by local borders.
In order to appeal to customers worldwide and expand your reach in other countries, your brand must maintain a significant online presence. This is where international SEO comes into play. With a solid international SEO strategy, you can ensure your company generates visibility, traffic, and conversions across all the markets in which you operate.
An international SEO strategy is also necessary if your focus is "only" on the German-speaking DACH region. There can already be linguistic differences – for example, "tomatoes" are known as "Paradeiser" in Austria, and "Gehsteig" is more commonly used than "Bürgersteig".
Local conditions must be considered, and technical measures should be implemented to ensure that the right customers are directed to the appropriate country-specific page.
This is all the more true if a company wants to open up target markets beyond the DACH region. A multilingual website – and as a D2C brand, a multilingual online store – becomes increasingly important. It is crucial to understand this: Simply translating your content is not enough. Content localization, not just translation, is the key to success. You therefore need to strategically plan and implement international SEO marketing.
As a global brand, you should think about your content strategy on an international scale from the outset to save costs and effort, and to make your international content production as efficient as possible. This approach also helps ensure a high return on investment for your content marketing with international SEO.
What does that mean exactly?
Regardless of internationalization, you must know which target groups you aim to reach with specific content across various channels. This knowledge is vital for delivering relevant content throughout the customer journey, ultimately helping you achieve your business goals.
We generally recommend that our clients not only focus on brand-specific search terms (branded searches) but also expand their content portfolio to include a comprehensive guide section. This strategy helps generate valuable non-branded traffic through editorial content – attracting users who may not yet be familiar with your brand.
This approach offers several benefits:
However, make sure to integrate the SEO advice section with a functional online store or other conversion pathways (like newsletter sign-ups or registration forms) to convert traffic into tangible results.
What does this mean for the internationalization of your SEO strategy? In order to optimize your content production investment, ensure that most planned content is strategically relevant in your global target markets when selecting topics. This strategy allows for a more efficient rollout of content across all countries.
While you still need to account for localization costs, your initial expenditure on content will yield benefits across multiple countries.
Of course, this doesn't mean you shouldn't produce locally relevant topics. On the contrary, local content is essential for a successful international SEO strategy. Depending on your company structure, local content can be funded from the corresponding local branch's budget.
However, content production that is centrally controlled from the headquarters (more on this later) should already take into account the potential for internationalization. Start by collecting potential topics – we explain what you should bear in mind in our Insight Article Content planning: Creating an editorial plan – and then evaluate whether each topic has a corresponding search volume in all target markets.
You may find that topic relevance varies significantly across countries. Selecting topics with equally high search volumes can be challenging, especially for companies with diverse global markets.
In order to strategically plan international SEO from the start, utilize a sound evaluation method. Calculating an average value is not helpful at this point because markets with extremes would naturally distort the value.
Instead, use an evaluation method that takes local relevance and competition within the target market into account. Based on population alone, a monthly search volume of 1,000 in Sweden may be as significant as 30,000 searches in the USA. In addition, a keyword can be highly competitive in one country, while there is hardly any competition in another.
The approach described above naturally requires an initial international keyword research. Also important here: Simply translating a German keyword will not suffice for assessing its international SEO relevance.
Instead, you need an SEO consultant familiar with the local language and market conditions. What industry-specific nuances need to be taken into account? Are there synonyms that serve as more relevant search terms for the situation at hand? Does the search intent behind the term in this region match that in Germany?
Another important point to consider is that common SEO tools typically rely on data from the leading search engine. However, Google doesn’t hold the same dominant market share worldwide as it does in Germany, where it commands about 90% of the cross-platform market. Other search engines are largely insignificant in this region.
In contrast: Google plays virtually no role in China, where Baidu is the primary search engine. So if China is part of your target market, this is a critical factor to consider. International search engine optimization isn't solely about optimizing for Google.
We haven't even touched on the essential aspect of localizing the content itself. It's evident that managing the complexities of international SEO is a daunting task for most companies. And we're not saying this simply because we are an agency that specializes in this field.
Our goal isn’t to persuade you of the benefits of working with an agency. In fact, partnering with a single external agency that claims to cover multiple languages may not be the best solution. Instead, we want to share our approach to successful international SEO: collaborating with a network of local SEO experts.
First, you might wonder whether to centralize content production or outsource it to individual countries on a decentralized basis. Employees in local branches have a deeper understanding of their specific markets than headquarters does, which is why their involvement in the process is vital.
However, if you aim to effectively manage international SEO, we still recommend that you centralize the governance of your content production from your home country. This approach has several advantages:
Your global SEO strategy should be managed centrally from your headquarters. However, the demands of localizing your content are often too complex to handle in-house, and that’s not the goal.
While strategic oversight remains centralized at the headquarters, you should collaborate with SEO consultants from the respective countries. These experts are familiar with the local language and markets, enabling them to successfully implement your international SEO strategy while considering all relevant factors.
We recommend working with freelancers from each country to access the best SEO talent available. These local experts are close to their markets and collaborate closely with on-site teams.
Based on experience, freelancers often seek long-term, strategic partnerships, allowing for the establishment of dedicated SEO experts in each country who can build specific contextual knowledge.
The headquarters retains primary responsibility for the content and either manages the strategic direction internally or with the support of an agency. From there, local SEO experts are coordinated, working closely with the branches in their respective countries.
Are you looking for support in building your network of local SEOs or coordinating your international SEO strategy? Then get in touch with us!
If you serve multiple markets, we recommend implementing regional coordinators (leads) who can oversee the organization across several countries.
For example, a lead could act as a liaison between the headquarters and regions such as the DACH area, the Benelux countries, or the Nordic countries, efficiently managing the implementation of strategic directives. These leads can either be provided by the headquarters (in which case SEO knowledge is essential) or selected from the pool of local SEO experts in that region.
Ideally, SEO content production should begin with thorough keyword research, followed by a comprehensive SEO briefing for content creation. The content should be written from the outset with SEO guidelines in mind, rather than adding keywords afterward. This principle should be followed during the initial content production in your home country.
However, it's often impractical to implement this approach across numerous countries and languages. Typically, international content is translated from existing content and then adapted.
This is where the challenge for international SEO arises. If you want to succeed globally without having to create new content from scratch every time, merely translating texts is not enough. The real key lies in correctly localizing your content.
What aspects need to be considered here? What exactly does website localization mean compared to simple translation?
Content localization is a complex process that goes beyond simple translation. As presented in our international SEO model, you should therefore also work with SEO experts who understand the local market.
Nevertheless, the text is of course translated first. While some translation agencies may offer SEO optimization, this often only provides a rough check of potential keywords. This can lead to the selection of irrelevant keywords, which fail to align with the original intent.
Thus, we recommend relying on a local SEO consultant. After translating the text, they should conduct keyword research to identify relevant terms for good search engine rankings, considering search volume, search intent, and competition.
The SEO consultant should not only focus on the main keyword (the so-called focus keyword) but also conduct research on relevant synonyms and secondary keywords. For more details on the different types of keywords, refer to our Insight Article on Creating an SEO Content Briefing. This research may uncover specific sub-topics that are particularly important in the respective country.
It often happens that a word chosen by the translator isn’t the most relevant search term. Therefore, it’s essential to incorporate the researched keywords and synonyms throughout the text, ensuring they are used appropriately and in key locations. If necessary, replace less effective terms and adjust the metadata and URLs accordingly.
Equally important is the need for the content to be useful to the reader first and foremost, rather than solely catering to search engines. The text should remain easy to read, avoiding the forced insertion of keywords.
Keep in mind that translations can sometimes be significantly longer than the original text. For example, when translating a headline containing a relevant keyword from German to French, it can often expand to several lines. Thus, ensure that the text remains user-friendly in such cases.
If relevant local sub-topics arise during research, the local SEO expert should collaborate with both local managers and headquarters in the home country. While strategic oversight remains at headquarters, they will ultimately decide whether to allocate the necessary resources for the proposed initiatives.
This is important because not all localization suggestions, particularly those involving extensions of existing content, are equally relevant or aligned with the overall corporate strategy. To maintain efficiency in your international SEO efforts, evaluate the effort, potential impact, and strategic alignment of such proposals.
In addition to this international SEO optimization, cultural and socio-political nuances should also be taken into account during localization. In addition, units of measurement may need to be converted, such as changing centimeters to inches. Ideally, such adjustments should be made at the text level during the translation process.
Therefore, ensure that the translation is carried out not just by someone with excellent language skills, but by a native speaker – specifically, a native speaker from the target country. For example, while Spanish is spoken in both Spain and Mexico, there are significant local differences in vocabulary and usage.
An industry- or company-specific tone of voice should also be adhered to in the respective country. Here again, the long-term collaboration with a local SEO expert can be advantageous, as they understand and internalize these nuances. It is also important that local managers thoroughly review the text from a corporate perspective before publication.
Does your content include infographics or videos? Do you offer useful downloads, such as PDF guides or checklists? If so, these elements must also be translated and localized. If translating them is not feasible initially, consider removing these assets and ensuring that any references to them in the text are also deleted to avoid inconsistencies.
Encountering infographics, videos, and downloads in a different language can significantly disrupt the user experience. Therefore, thorough localization of all assets is essential to maintain a consistent and positive content experience.
Broken links or redirects to content that has not been translated not only affect the user experience, but also have a negative impact on your international SEO performance. Website localization therefore not only includes linguistic adaptation, but also extends to checking links. Ensuring that all links point to relevant, localized content is essential for maintaining usability and optimizing search engine rankings across different markets.
Finally, you should also involve the branch's legal department in the localization process to ensure that all content complies with local legal regulations.
If specific legal requirements or unique regulations exist in the target country, these must be incorporated into the content. This may involve modifying legal sections from the home country or adding new content to meet the legal demands of the local market.
For example, mowing lawns is prohibited on Sundays and public holidays in Germany – rules that don’t apply in all countries. Meanwhile, for the French market, it’s essential to include a note that, as of 2024, separating organic waste at the source will be mandatory for every household.
The use of a local SEO can also be helpful here, as they may be familiar with existing or upcoming regulations and can factor them into their SEO research. However, final legal questions should always be reviewed and addressed by your legal team.
Whether your business operates solely within the German-speaking DACH region or you plan to offer content in other languages, a successful international SEO strategy requires a solid technical foundation for your website.
The first step is deciding which domain will host your localized content. There are three primary options to consider:
With top-level domains, a distinction is made between country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) such as .de, .fr or .it and generic top-level domains (gTLDs) such as .com, .org or .info.
If you decide to use subdirectories or subdomains in your international SEO strategy, it’s best to opt for a generic domain to avoid inconsistencies.
Each of the three options has its advantages and drawbacks. Country-specific top-level domains provide both users and search engines with a strong trust signal, as they clearly indicate a localized site. However, the costs and maintenance efforts are significantly higher. You’ll need to implement all SEO actions separately for each country-domain and build individual high-quality backlink profiles for each. Backlinks (external links pointing to your site) are a critical ranking factor for Google.
Subdirectories or subdomains are less resource-intensive since all your localized content is hosted under a single domain structure. However, they lack the trust-building benefits of ccTLDs. Additionally, any technical issues with your website will affect all markets simultaneously. If you are planning an international reorganization, consider market-specific impacts. For instance, during a migration to a .com domain, a strong market like Germany might initially see some performance dips, while smaller markets like Luxembourg could potentially benefit.
Using a top-level domain strategy, where each country is assigned its own ccTLD, sends a strong signal of local trust to both users and search engines. It also prevents others from securing your brand’s domain in key markets.
That said, many companies face the challenge of developing an international SEO strategy without starting from scratch. In most cases, the website structure has evolved over time. So, there's no one-size-fits-all answer.
For internationally recognized brands with local subsidiaries and active marketing efforts in different countries, we recommend using ccTLDs. These companies should already have a website in place or, at a minimum, have secured local domains for key markets.
Depending on the existing setup, it may be more efficient to use subdirectories in some cases. This approach creates synergies and allows you to maximize your SEO efforts across markets.
Subdomains, however, should only be used in special cases. Our experience shows that moving from a subdomain to a subdirectory structure often results in significant visibility gains, as directories benefit from the authority of the main domain.
In some cases, though, the technical challenges of implementing a full international domain strategy may make subdomains the most realistic option initially. While not ideal, subdomains are still better than having no international SEO strategy at all.
As with many SEO decisions, the answer is: "It depends." If you're unsure which domain strategy is best for your business, feel free to reach out to us. We can work together to find the most suitable solution.
The hreflang attribute is an essential element of your international SEO efforts. It’s used in the HTML code as a link attribute to establish relationships between alternative versions of the same page for different countries.
In other words, hreflang allows Google to recognize that these pages are localized variants of the same content. It’s important to note that Google does not use the hreflang attribute to detect the language of a page, contrary to some common misconceptions.
While we don't have the space here for a full hreflang guide, we’d like to provide a few essential points to help you get started.
When focusing on international SEO, your goal is to reach a global audience. Naturally, you want to ensure that your localized content is being shown to the right users in the right regions. This is where the hreflang attribute comes into play.
The hreflang attribute allows you to signal Google precisely which version of your content should appear in the search results for specific countries or languages. This becomes especially important when you’re targeting multiple countries that share the same language.
For example, imagine you run an online store that sells products in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Without the hreflang attribute, users in Germany might accidentally land on the Swiss version of your site. They’d see different currency options, higher shipping costs, or other discrepancies that could frustrate them and lead them to abandon your site without making a purchase.
As you can see, something as seemingly small as not using hreflang could have a significant negative impact, including potential revenue loss. Using hreflang correctly is essential to ensure that your international SEO strategy delivers the intended results, providing users with content that is relevant to their specific location.
Generally, you should use the hreflang attribute whenever you're localizing your website for different countries and providing multiple versions of the same content. However, there are some exceptions where you might be able to skip it:
In uncertain cases, improper implementation could result in more harm than benefit. If you're unsure about your specific situation, feel free to reach out to us for tailored advice.
In our experience, properly implementing the hreflang tag does not always guarantee that Google will display the correct content. Surprisingly, this problem isn’t discussed much within the SEO community.
We’ve encountered cases where users were still being directed to the wrong version of a website – even when a country-specific top-level domain (ccTLD) was in place and the hreflang attribute had been implemented perfectly.
This issue often arises when the content is an exact duplicate across different country versions. For example, if the French version for Belgium is identical to the version for France, Google might still mix up the content.
This highlights the importance of pairing the hreflang attribute with precise localization. When content is tailored to the specific region, even with minor adjustments, the chances of delivering the correct version to users in that region are significantly higher.
The basic syntax of the hreflang attribute is quite simple:
The language in the hreflang tag must follow ISO 639-1 codes (language codes), and this is mandatory. The region, following ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2 (country codes), is optional.
The hreflang attribute is typically placed within the head section of the page's HTML:
Ensure that the hreflang attribute is used consistently across all versions of your website. Each page must link to its corresponding alternative version reciprocally. For example, if you're localizing content for Germany, Austria, France, Spain, Belgium, and Switzerland, all six pages must implement hreflang tags for every version.
Depending on the scope of your SEO internationalization, this can quickly result in a long list in the head section of your content:
The canonical tag is used to inform search engines of the preferred URL for a page that has similar or identical content. This helps avoid duplicate content issues and ensures that the correct version of a page is indexed. This is particularly important for online shops that offer multiple variants of a product, such as different hair colors or pant sizes.
When you expand these contents globally, it may become necessary to use both the canonical tag and the hreflang attribute at the same time. The canonical tag will typically point back to itself to establish it as the primary version for its “own” language and region.
For example, if you publish localized content in both France and Germany, the head section of the German version should include the following:
In the French version, on the other hand:
The sitemap.xml is an XML-format list of all the website's URLs, helping search engines understand the website's structure for more efficient indexing. In a global SEO strategy, it might be beneficial to create a separate sitemap.xml for each country in order to optimize indexing specifically for different regions, especially if you use distinct top-level domains for different regions.
The robots.txt file is a text document that provides search engines with instructions on which parts of a website should be crawled and indexed. Whether you need multiple robots.txt files for your international SEO strategy depends on your chosen domain strategy (see above).
If you've opted for country-specific top-level domains (ccTLDs), you'll need a separate robots.txt for each domain. However, if all your content is hosted on a shared generic domain, a single robots.txt file will suffice.
A long loading time is not only frustrating for users, but it also significantly impacts your content's ranking in search results. Good website performance is an important ranking factor for Google and should always be considered in your search engine optimization strategy.
For websites with a global reach, using a content delivery network (CDN) is advisable. A CDN consists of a globally distributed network of servers that store copies of your content. For example, images, videos, and other assets are then no longer sent from Germany to a user in Canada; instead, they are delivered by servers that are geographically closer. This shortens loading times and improves the user experience.
International SEO is the key to success for global brands looking to thrive in a digitally connected world. An effective international SEO strategy allows you to gain visibility across linguistic and cultural boundaries, reaching a broader audience.
With our guide, you’re well-prepared to successfully position your business in the international market. If you have any questions or need assistance with implementing your SEO strategy, feel free to reach out to us.
Best practices for international SEO include conducting thorough, multilingual keyword research, collaborating with local SEO experts, and localizing content instead of just translating it.
Technical aspects, such as a solid domain strategy and the correct implementation of the hreflang attribute, are important to ensure that the right content is displayed in different markets.
An international SEO checklist should include the following aspects:
To increase the efficiency of your international SEO strategy, you should centrally manage content production and consider the internationalization potential of the selected content from the outset.
Centralized management allows for a cohesive implementation of your global business strategy. This ensures that all content aligns with key performance indicators (KPIs) and maintains a consistent brand presence across all markets. It also facilitates more efficient resource management and cost control regarding tools, analytics, and reporting.
However, collaborating with local SEO experts remains essential. By combining a centralized content strategy with local expertise, you can ensure that your international SEO efforts are efficient and that your content achieves the desired impact in various target markets.
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