International SEO services with a global strategy for every market

International SEO makes your website visible in more than one country or language, with the right page shown to the right searcher in each market.

Most problems start with treating every market as a translated copy of the first. We research each market separately, choose the right structure, validate hreflang, localise key pages and build local authority.

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Send your website and target markets. We'll review your setup first. Or book a call.

One site, a version per marketExample

AustraliaHome market example.com/au/ en-au
United KingdomTarget example.com/uk/ en-gb
United StatesTarget example.com/us/ en-us
Everyone elseFallback example.com/ x-default

Each market gets its own version, signals and strategy.

Per-market research
Validated hreflang
Real localisation
Measured by country
Proven overseas

Why international SEO goes wrong

Expanding into a new country doesn't automatically bring search visibility there. These are the most common reasons.

01
The wrong version ranks.
UK searchers see your Australian page with AUD prices, or Google shows your US page everywhere.
02
Translated, not localised.
The words are right, but the terms, examples, prices and buying cues don't match the market.
03
Keywords were translated rather than researched.
The term you rank for at home is not what people search for in the new market.
04
Hreflang is missing or broken.
Missing return links, wrong country codes or conflicting canonicals mean Google may ignore the annotations.
05
Country pages are near-duplicates.
"Service UK", "Service Canada" and "Service NZ" pages say the same thing with the country name swapped.
06
Automatic redirects hide content from Google.
Redirecting visitors by IP or browser language can stop Googlebot from seeing some versions at all.
07
No local authority.
A domain that's strong at home can still be unknown to the publications and directories of the new market.
The common thread is that international SEO breaks when every market is treated as the same market.

International SEO vs global SEO vs multilingual SEO

These terms overlap, and agencies use them loosely. Here's how we use them.

Term	What it means	Example
International SEO	Ranking in more than one country, with the right version for each	An Australian store selling into the UK and NZ
Global SEO	A broad, worldwide presence, often from one version of the site	A SaaS product with one English site for all markets
Multilingual SEO	Ranking in more than one language	A site in English and Arabic
Localisation	Adapting content to a market's terms, prices, rules and expectations	Changing "trolley" to "cart", AUD to GBP, and AS standards to BS standards
Translation	Converting text from one language to another	English copy turned into French

Translation changes the language. Localisation changes the relevance. International SEO decides which markets get which version, and makes sure search engines understand it.

Does your business need international SEO?

You probably need an international SEO strategy if several of these are true.

Check your international SEO setup

You already get meaningful traffic or sales from other countries
You're planning to enter one or more new markets
You ship internationally or sell services overseas
You run more than one domain, country folder or language version
Google shows the wrong country version to searchers
Your hreflang is missing, or Search Console shows errors with it
Translated pages get impressions but few clicks or sales
Local competitors dominate the market you want to enter

Choose the markets worth entering

Not every country with search volume is worth targeting. Before any optimisation, we score each candidate market on five factors.

Search demand: Volume and trend for your products or services in that market's own terms
Commercial value: Average order or deal value, margins and conversion potential
Competition: Who ranks today, how strong they are, and how localised their content is
Existing traction: Impressions, clicks and sales you already get from that country
Business readiness: Shipping, payments, pricing, tax, regulations, support hours and stock

Markets are then grouped into tiers

Tier 1Markets where you have traction and should defend or grow.
Tier 2High-opportunity expansion markets.
Tier 3Markets to test later.

A market that scores well on search demand but fails on business readiness, such as no local shipping, should wait, whatever the keyword volume says.

Choose an international site structure

There's no universally best structure. Google's guidance sets out the main options, and each has trade-offs.

Structure	Example	Strengths	Trade-offs	Often suits
SubdirectoriesOur usual default	`example.com/uk/`	Shares the main domain's authority; one site to manage	Weaker local signal than a ccTLD; needs clean hreflang	Most growing businesses
Country-code domains (ccTLDs)	`example.co.uk`	Strongest local signal; local trust	Each domain builds authority separately; higher cost and admin	Established brands with local teams
Subdomains	`uk.example.com`	Can be hosted and managed separately	Authority sharing is less straightforward; more to monitor	Separate platforms or regional teams
Parameters	`example.com?country=uk`	None worth having	Hard to target and track	Not recommended by Google

Our default recommendation for most businesses entering their first new markets is subdirectories. We change that when brand, legal, team or platform reasons point elsewhere.

Country vs language targeting

A country isn't always one language, and a language isn't always one country.

English across markets: the same English can serve Australia, the UK and the US, but spelling, prices, regulations and terms often need to differ.

More than one language in one country: Canada and Switzerland each need several language versions.

The UAE: typically needs both English and Arabic.

We structure URLs as language plus country, such as /en-gb/ or /ar-ae/, only where both genuinely change.

Implement hreflang correctly

Hreflang tells Google which language and regional version of a page to show each searcher. It only works when every version references every other version, including itself.

A correct set for one page with three English versions and a fallback

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-au" href="https://example.com/au/running-shoes/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-gb" href="https://example.com/uk/running-shoes/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-us" href="https://example.com/us/running-shoes/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://example.com/running-shoes/" />

The same block appears on all four pages. x-default names the page for searchers who don't match any listed version.

The mistakes we fix most often

Missing return links. Page A lists page B, but page B doesn't list page A.
Wrong codes. en-uk instead of en-gb, or a country code used where a language code belongs.
Canonicals that undermine hreflang. All country versions canonicalise to one "master" page, which tells Google the others shouldn't be indexed.
Hreflang pointing at the wrong URLs. Redirected, noindexed or 404 URLs.
Partial coverage. Templates where hreflang was never added, such as blog posts, filters or new product types.

On large sites, hreflang is usually managed in XML sitemaps rather than page code, and generated automatically from the CMS. We validate every set with a crawl, then monitor it after each release.

Research keywords in each market, don't translate them

The single most common international SEO mistake is translating your home-market keyword list. The same product can be searched in completely different ways.

For every target market, we research:

The terms people actually use
Their search volume
The intent behind each term
The type of page that ranks
The competitors who own the results

A term with strong commercial intent at home may be informational elsewhere, and the page type Google prefers can change too.

Australia
thongs

United Kingdom
flip flops

United States
flip flops
Australia
ute

United Kingdom
pickup

United States
pickup truck
Australia
doona

United Kingdom
duvet

United States
comforter
Australia
tradie

United Kingdom
tradesman

United States
contractor
Australia
esky

United Kingdom
cool box

United States
cooler

Query
Intent
Results page
Page type
Business goal

Researched separately for each market.

Localise the pages that matter

Localisation adapts the content to the market, not just the language. Here's an illustrative example for a product page moving from Australia to the UK.

Element	Australian page	Translated only	Localised for the UK
Spelling	colour, optimise	unchanged	colour, optimise (same in UK)
Product term	"doona cover"	"doona cover"	"duvet cover"
Price	AUD 89	AUD 89	£45, including VAT
Sizing	Australian bed sizes	unchanged	UK bed sizes (single, double, king, super king)
Shipping	"Free shipping over AUD 100"	unchanged	UK delivery times and threshold in GBP
Returns	Australian Consumer Law reference	unchanged	UK consumer rights reference
Trust	Afterpay, Australian reviews	unchanged	UK payment options, UK reviews

The "translated only" column is what many sites publish. It's technically a UK page, but it gives a UK buyer several reasons to leave.

What we localise

Terminology and spelling
Currency and prices
Units and sizes
Examples and references
Legal and compliance information
Shipping, returns and payment methods
Product availability
Trust signals
Calls to action

Build country pages that deserve to exist

A country or market page should carry information that's genuinely specific to that market:

Local availability
Pricing
Delivery
Regulations
Case studies
Testimonials
Contact details
FAQs that buyers in that market actually ask

Pages that only swap the country name are the doorway pattern Google's spam policies warn against. They also rarely convert.

If there's nothing market-specific to say yet, it's usually better to serve that market from your main version than to publish a thin country page.

Build authority in each market

A domain that's well known at home may have no presence in the new market. Rankings in a new country often depend on earning recognition there, from:

Local publications and industry media
Local associations and directories
Distributors and partners in that market
Digital PR built around local data or stories

Global authority plus local relevance. We plan link building by market, through our link building service.

Get the technical foundation right for every market

Beyond hreflang, international sites need:

Self-referencing canonicals for each market version.: Country versions should not canonicalise to one master version just because their content is similar.
Crawlable versions for every market.: Don't automatically redirect visitors based on IP or browser language. Googlebot's default crawling IP addresses appear to be in the US, so auto-redirects can hide your other versions. Use a visible country or language selector, or a dismissible banner, instead.
Segmented XML sitemaps by market,: so you can monitor indexation for each country.
Consistent templates,: so hreflang, canonicals and structured data are generated correctly on every page type.
Accurate structured data for each market:: prices, currency and availability in Product markup, and correct addresses in LocalBusiness markup.
JavaScript rendering.: Country selectors and dynamically loaded content need to work for crawlers, not only for browsers.
Performance for distant users.: A CDN keeps pages fast for buyers far from your server.

Deeper technical work runs through our technical SEO service. Large multi-market sites with many teams usually need enterprise SEO governance as well.

International ecommerce SEO

Selling products across borders adds layers that service businesses don't face:

Prices, currency and tax shown correctly per market, and matching what's in your structured data and merchant feeds
Product availability: what to do with products you don't sell in some markets
Variants and sizing that change by region
Shipping and returns content for each market
Category structure: whether each market needs the same categories
Merchant listings and product feeds for each country's Google Merchant Center account

Ongoing store optimisation runs through our ecommerce SEO service.

Before you launch a market

International ecommerce SEO analysis

Our international ecommerce SEO analysis tells you whether a new market is worth entering and how. It covers:

Market demand: Category and product search demand in the target market's own terms
Competitor review: Who ranks for your key categories there, and how localised they are
Current visibility: Your existing impressions, clicks and sales from that country
Structure recommendation: Subdirectory, ccTLD or subdomain, with reasons
Platform plan: How your ecommerce platform should handle currency, language, URLs and hreflang
Localisation scope: Which pages need full localisation, light adaptation or nothing at launch
Launch roadmap: Priorities for the first six months

Request an international ecommerce SEO analysis

International B2B SEO

B2B companies selling overseas need industry and solution pages that reflect each market's terminology, standards and certifications, with case studies from that market where possible. See B2B SEO.

Multi-location SEO across countries

Businesses with physical locations in several countries need a Google Business Profile, a location page and local citations for each site, managed under one architecture. See local SEO.

Launching a new market or restructuring an existing one

Adding country folders, merging regional domains, or moving from ccTLDs to subfolders are migrations. They carry the same risks as any site move, plus hreflang. We map every URL in every market, the redirects for each market and the new hreflang set, then test on staging and monitor each country after launch. See SEO migration.

How we report international SEO

Global totals hide market problems, so we report by market.

Visibility: Impressions, clicks and average position, filtered by country in Search Console
Correct version: Whether searchers in each country land on their market's version
Indexation: Indexed pages per market version, from segmented sitemaps
Hreflang health: Errors and missing return links after each release
Commercial: Leads, sales and revenue by country in analytics
Authority: New referring domains from each target market

Our international SEO process

International SEO grows one market at a time.

ChooseSteps 1 to 2

1
Discovery
We cover your business goals, current markets, target markets, platform and team.
2
Market prioritisation
We score candidate markets on demand, value, competition, traction and readiness.

BuildSteps 3 to 7

3
Audit
We review the current international setup: structure, hreflang, canonicals, redirects and indexation by market.
4
Structure and language strategy
We recommend a structure and URL pattern, with the reasoning.
5
Market keyword research
We research each target market separately, in its own terms.
6
Technical implementation
We handle hreflang, canonicals, sitemaps, selectors and structured data, then validate by crawl.
7
Localisation
We localise priority pages first, each with an SEO check.

GrowSteps 8 to 10

8
Authority
We build links and PR in each target market.
9
Measure
We report by market every month.
10
Expand
We move to the next tier of markets once the first is performing.

Results: SEO for markets outside Australia

Our published case studies are Perth-delivered SEO for stores selling in the United Arab Emirates, a market outside our home country. Both are single-market projects that show how we research and rank in an overseas market's search results.

Google Search Console performance report for cigaradubai.com showing 16,842 clicks and 2.58 million impressions over three months, with clicks and impressions both trending steeply upward

cigaradubai.com · WooCommerce · UAE

UAE WooCommerce store

We handled technical clean-up, optimised product and category pages, and rebuilt internal linking around the terms UAE customers search for.

16,842 clicks and 2.58 million impressions in Search Console over a three-month view beginning 27 January 2026.

Google Search Console performance report for vapeworlduae.com showing 113 thousand clicks and 6.85 million impressions, rising from a flat baseline across the period shown

vapeworlduae.com · Shopify · UAE

UAE Shopify catalogue

We rebuilt collection structure, product-page templates and topical content for the UAE market.

113K clicks and 6.85 million impressions in Search Console for the period shown.

See the full case studies. Results vary by market, competition, site condition and campaign length. No one can guarantee international rankings.

Who our international SEO services suit

A good fit

Australian ecommerce stores expanding into the UK, NZ, US, the Middle East or Asia
Overseas businesses targeting Australia
SaaS and technology companies serving several countries
B2B manufacturers, suppliers and service firms with international customers
Businesses with multiple domains or language versions that aren't performing
Businesses with broken or missing hreflang

Probably not a fit

You want your site machine-translated with nothing else changed
You want hundreds of near-identical country pages
You can't support the market yet (shipping, payments, service hours)
You expect guaranteed rankings in a new country

International SEO pricing

Price depends on

Markets and languages
Structure and platform
Site size
Localisation needed
Market competition
Implement or advise

International SEO audit

Best forSites already in several markets

IncludesStructure, hreflang, canonical and indexation audit by market, plus a fix list
Market entry analysis

Best forPlanning the next market

IncludesMarket scoring, demand and competitor research, structure recommendation, launch roadmap (the international ecommerce SEO analysis for stores)
International SEO setup

Best forLaunching or restructuring

IncludesStructure, hreflang implementation, technical setup and priority-page localisation
Ongoing international SEO

Best forGrowing several markets

IncludesMarket-level optimisation, content, authority and reporting

You get a written, scoped quote before work starts. See SEO packages and pricing.

How long does international SEO take?

Month 1: Market research, audit and structure decision
Months 2 to 3: Technical setup, hreflang and localisation of priority pages
Months 3 to 6: Content expansion and local authority building
Month 6 onward: Optimisation and expansion to the next market tier

Fixing hreflang and wrong-version problems on an existing site can show in Search Console within weeks of recrawling. A brand-new market starts with little authority, so competitive rankings there usually take months.

International SEO FAQs

What is international SEO?

International SEO is optimising a website so the right version ranks in each country or language you target. It covers market selection, site structure, hreflang, keyword research per market, localisation and local authority.

What's the difference between international SEO and global SEO?

Global SEO usually means a broad worldwide presence, often from one version of the site. International SEO targets specific countries or languages with versions built for each.

What is an international SEO strategy?

It's a plan covering which markets to target and in what order, how the site is structured for them, which pages are localised, how search engines are told which version is for whom, and how success is measured in each market.

Do I need hreflang?

If you have more than one version of a page for different languages or countries, yes. Hreflang helps Google show each searcher the right version.

Should I use subdirectories, subdomains or country domains?

For most businesses entering new markets, subdirectories are the simplest and share your existing authority. Country domains suit established brands with local teams and budgets.

Is translating my website enough?

No. Translation changes the language, but buyers also need local terms, prices, shipping, regulations and trust signals. Keywords should also be researched in each market rather than translated.

Can the same English page rank in Australia, the UK and the US?

It can, but a separate version for each market, with local prices, spelling and terms, usually performs better where you're serious about the market. Hreflang then tells Google which version goes where.

Should I redirect visitors to their country automatically?

It's better not to force it. Automatic redirects can stop Google from crawling some versions. Use a visible selector or a suggestion banner instead.

What is international ecommerce SEO?

International ecommerce SEO is SEO for online stores selling in more than one country. It covers market-specific prices, currencies, availability, shipping content, product feeds and platform setup, as well as hreflang and localisation.

What's included in an international ecommerce SEO analysis?

Market demand, competitor review, your current visibility in that country, a structure and platform recommendation, localisation scope and a launch roadmap.

Do you work with stores outside Australia?

Yes. Our published case studies are UAE ecommerce stores, managed from Perth.

Can you fix an existing hreflang setup?

Yes. We audit every hreflang set, fix codes, return links and canonical conflicts, and validate after each release.

How do you build links in other countries?

Through outreach to publications, associations, partners and directories in that market, plus digital PR built around local angles.

Can you guarantee rankings in a new country?

No. We commit to the research, the setup and transparent reporting by market.

How much does international SEO cost?

It depends on the number of markets and languages, site size and how much localisation is needed. You get a written quote after a short review.

Related services

Selling products overseas? Combine this with ecommerce SEO.
Restructuring domains or launching country folders? See SEO migration.
Large multi-market site with many teams? See enterprise SEO.
Hreflang or indexation problems? See technical SEO.
Need authority in new markets? See link building.
Selling B2B internationally? See B2B SEO.

Don't take one SEO strategy global. Build the right one for every market.

Tell us where you sell today and where you want to grow. We'll check your current international setup and reply with the first things we'd fix or research.

Get my strategy Ecommerce analysis

Use the contact form · Book a thirty minute call

You'll get back

Whether Google shows the right version in each market today
Hreflang, canonical or structure problems we can see
Which target market looks most promising, and why

Why international SEO goes wrong

The wrong version ranks.

Translated, not localised.

Keywords were translated rather than researched.

Hreflang is missing or broken.

Country pages are near-duplicates.

Automatic redirects hide content from Google.

No local authority.