Carmen Rodríguez discusses the complexities of international SEO, explaining that while it is initially challenging, understanding the process simplifies it.
Key factors include Google’s ability to identify languages, the use of top-level domains (TLDs), hreflang tags, server location, and user data from Chrome. She explains three methods for targeting international audiences: ccTLDs, subdomains, and subfolders, each with its pros and cons.
Carmen highlights the importance of correct hreflang implementation, monitoring, and avoiding common errors like missing tags and incorrect language order. She also stresses the significance of user trust and conversions in SEO success.
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Name: Carmen Rodriguez Dominguez
What Carmen Does:h at
Noteworthy: Carmen has over 7 years of experience in digital marketing, specializing in content, translations, and digital PR before focusing on SEO.
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🗝️ Google’s Language Understanding and International SEO
Google can identify and understand different languages at varying levels of proficiency. Initially, Google was created in English, but it has since improved its understanding of other languages, especially Latin-based ones like Spanish, Italian, and French. This capability is crucial for international SEO as it helps Google determine the appropriate audience and country for your content.
🗝️ Importance of hreflang Tags
The hreflang tag is a powerful tool for indicating the intended audience and language of a webpage. By using hreflang tags, you can prevent Google from treating translated pages as duplicate content. This ensures that users in different regions see the correct version of your site, tailored to their language and locale.
🗝️ Site Structure for International Targeting
There are three main ways to structure a site for international SEO: ccTLDs (country code top-level domains), subdomains, and subdirectories. Each method has its pros and cons. For example, ccTLDs are beneficial for targeting specific countries but require more effort to manage, while subdirectories are easier to monitor and automate but may not be preferred by all audiences.
🗝️ Monitoring and Common Issues with hreflang Implementation
Proper implementation and monitoring of hreflang tags are essential. Common issues include missing hreflang tags, incorrect language or country codes, and non-reciprocal tags. Tools like Google Search Console and external checkers can help ensure that hreflang tags are working correctly, which is vital for accurate geo-targeting and avoiding duplicate content issues.
carmen domínguez rodríguez 0:10
Who so I get overly excited when I talk about international SEO. Also, please forgive me, but international SEO is actually way more difficult that lots of people make it sound but once you understand it, it’s not that difficult. And I know that I just said two different things. It’s because it’s at the beginning. It’s difficult to get into the right mind frame. But once you do, it should be easy.
So the first thing that we need to consider is that Google is able to identify different languages, okay, and you actually understand different languages in lots of different like, in different levels, yeah, obviously, whenever it was created, Google was always created in English. But then he moved forward to understanding very well with language large models, things like Spanish, Italian, French, Romanian, Portuguese, other Latin languages, and then a little bit less well the rest of the languages, although, frankly, is getting much, much better.
So that means that we have seen the process of Google. Google gets to your page, understand them, the the contents, using both schema and using a lot of other ways, and then decides where to show you. There are lots of things whenever Google finds your content that will give away where which country needs to show you, or you your page, which country and which audience, but you can always make it easier for your users, as always, the better the structure your website is, the easier it’s going to be for Google to position your page in the right place.
So things that Google considered to show your your site, and this is, and I’m talking about Google working fine, because we are in a period of time right now where Google is not doing a great job as showing the right pages in the right places, and I will talk about it in a minute, but things that Google uses to identify which country your website should go is the country called top level domain that is.com for example, tends to always go to the US or international.go. The UK to the UK, es to Spain. De to Germany, et cetera, et cetera.
Now that is not it doesn’t mean that if you want to go to Germany, you need to always have the it’s not like that. But it does use it to identify where to go to there’s the second most important bit, which is hreflang statement. And hreflan is something that you put in your code to tell Google, this is my original page. My page in English.
If that’s original page, I have a copy translated into French. It’s exactly the same, but intended only for the French audience. I have another one in Spanish is exactly the same, so please don’t use it as a duplicate. But this one is intended for the Spanish audience. And hreflan is the most powerful way of of telling Google which audience is intended for which page. Then you can also, will also use your server location, and by that, using the your IP address.
And we have talked many times of how Google uses your IP address to identify the content I need to show you. He also uses Chrome. So you in your chrome or your Gmail account, you can specify which country you are on, and you can identify which country you want to see searches from they use it. They use your chrome data, or your users chrome data to identify which is the right page to show. I didn’t put did they put here?
No, I didn’t put chrome because they Google always says that. It’s not true that they use Chrome data, but from all the different DoD trials we have seen that actually Chrome is one of the main sources of data for Google to identify what to show or what not to show. And then finally, all the signals, like your local address, your phone, the currencies that you use in your websites, the links where you get your links from are your links all coming from one area when you are in the other one, who will identify and use them as spammy.
And basically, a lot of the information that you have online and information that you have in schema, and finally, as well, the code that you put so whenever you are creating the code. At the top of the code in the HTML, you will always see language. So you can have language and region. So you can have English, but you can have English us.
You can have Spanish, Spain, or Spanish if you want. And you only care about your audience being in Mexico, they if you put E and MX, you’re going to have higher rank. Chances of ranking only in E and sorry es Max in Mexico, that’s in all the places that speak Spanish. So those are the most important things that you need to consider. I forgot. It doesn’t work. I was getting so serious. Okay, so site structure we were just talking about CCTV, TLDs, soup, folders of sub domains.
These are the three different ways that you can decide to put auto target international countries. You can either do it like Coca Cola does, which is having a different ccTLD per country that they target Coca Cola dot. Yes, Coca cola.it Coca cola.co.uk all of them. Yeah, I was going to say, I don’t remember if I put the slide with the good things and the bad things.
All of them are valid, but you have some of them have pros and they have cons, and I’m going to talk about them in a minute. So folder is the other one, like Apple does. So.com apple.com/out to target Australia, Apple fr, to target France, to target the E. And then finally, sub domain, which is adding the sub domain to the top of the page. Now, none of them is perfect and none of them is better than other. I surely do have favorites just because they make my life easier, but not necessarily because it’s better for users.
So for example, whenever you use a different ccTLD is easier if you have a different teams and different audiences per country and you want to make sure that you target different keywords, you target different contents, or you want your design to be different, it makes sense to use a specific domain per country. The cons are that, obviously it takes way more time to do everything, because you need to duplicate it. You cannot upload one piece of content and make the content equal for all of them.
You need to create different analytics for each of them. You need to always do different accounts for Facebook, different accounts for LinkedIn, all different things that you want to do, soup domains, also, not to mention that the authority is not passed from one to another, although, if you use hreflang, it will be connected hack that lots of people know subdomains. So yeah, they will end up all of them being in one domain, only main one. But obviously each sub domain will be classed by Google as different.
So you, if you are building authority in your.com you then also need to build authority differently in the E but they also does give you the freedom to have different teams working in different sub domains. But also, if you need to do general things, you can do them all at once, because it’s on under just one account. And my favorite, which is directory, so two folders, just because, again, it’s my favorite, because it’s the easiest one to monitor. You can create a lot of automation.
You don’t need to be creating a lot of different folders per thing, but sometimes it’s not the right thing for audiences. Yes, it’s my favorite, but frankly, there will be countries like, for example, Japan, that they don’t like to be part of other domain. They want to be independent, because they want to be treated as unique, and they want to be treated by people that only speak Japanese, and they don’t like being a translator the translated company.
They like to be alone and a special one. So I will always recommend for Japan to use GPA, JP as a different domain ranking factors in all the different so not only Google, bar. So Yahoo are different if you use a domain, country specific domain, versus if you use a folder. So the trick that I give you is, whenever you need to make a decision between using different domains, domains and so folder is to go and check with a VPN what my competitors are showing up? Is it more domains? Is it more supporters?
If it’s in mix, it’s up to you to make the decision, but if you see that all your competitors are using domains, then do and do the same thing, because it’s more likely that is for a reason. Is because users will trust you more if you have a specific domain. So. And not recommended your URL parameters. They do it a lot people who don’t know about international SEO and it doesn’t rank, so don’t do it just the other three.
carmen domínguez rodríguez 10:11
As I said earlier, the language is also very important, because it might not look like it, but if you do not put the right language in the top of the of the of the codes is not Google is going to get confused with the language that I need to show, and it might not understand it properly. It might also limit. For example, in this case, we wanted to target more more of us clients, US users, but our code was English, Great Britain. So our rankings were great in the UK, but or our users were in the US, so they were not finding us easily.
And if your language also, if your website wants to target more than one region with the same language, you still need to tell Google. So so lots of people are like, Oh, well, my all my audiences are in Canada, the US and the UK. Was the whole point of doing so folders when it’s always the same language, yes and no.
Why? Because you might have a lot of competitors in your let’s say you, are from the US, and you want to target the UK, but you have a lot of competitors in the UK that they have their own domain dock or the UK. They have a lot of authority. They have, they are well known. They have the right schemas.
And you are in the US. No one knows you. Google doesn’t know that you’re trying to target the US or the UK audience. You don’t have the right schema, you don’t have, don’t have the right content for them. We just said that information within the website is a factor. So if you only have information about your phone in the US, your customer care in the US, why is Google going to be showing you in the UK when you are not adapting to the users?
So this is the same logic. If you are not adapting to the users enough to have a reason or a part on the website to target them, Google won’t show you in the UK, you need to tell Google My intention is to treat my users in the UK the same way that my users in the in the US. And then it’s easier. So when you need to consider all those things and actually explain this to your clients, if they once only want to determine only want to they don’t want to implement it.
So what is hreflang? I just said earlier, hreflang is one of the most important HTML elements to put in the code to tell Google which page is intended for where. So we, lots of people, think that hreflang can only be implemented among same domain. So if you have different folders, you go and implement the hreflang further. But actually you can also do it in different domains, because at the at the end of the day, what you are doing is to tell Google, this page is mine. This page is mine.
They are not duplicate. They are just my pages to show to two different audiences. We’ve been talking all this time about classifying content depending on the type of content there is. You can also classify the content depending on what audience you want to set to send it, but this is mainly for international, right? So what we need to do is to implement this hreflang in the code and then monitor that is working.
So the main fact about hreflang is what I said earlier, Google will prioritize page that location based, not language based. So if your information to Google is I am in Japan, your information in cross is in Chrome, is I am Japan, Google will show you Japanese pages, and will will know that because you are selling that is located for Japan. You don’t want Google to guess. You want Google to know if Google has to guess, it won’t, because it’s a machine.
So again, if you’re even if your content is translated, translated, considering that you need to talk a different languages, unless you tell Google, Google will won’t be necessarily prioritizing you. So Google will prioritize whatever you can with identifying the contents. Also, another thing that people think is, oh, yeah, but if I am targeting different pages, how it’s not going to be duplicated content again, even if you are using same content for Australia and the UK, if you are implementing HRF land, Google automatically will avoid duplication by by understanding that you are trying to target two different audiences.
So at the end of the day, what Google wants is to prioritize pages that are good for customers and the customers want to trust. So if you are not making a decision for the customer to trust, you. Neither will Google. And then finally, yeah, you can, your customers will convert easier, obviously your page if they can trust you. So at the end of the day, what matters is conversions only. Therefore conversion will need trust. And this is how hreflang look like.
This is the piece of code that you can put again, as we set up a schema, hreflang can can have a lot of errors if you are not implementing it right. So it’s super important that whenever hreflang is implemented, we understand what it means every single part, and then we also check it as working properly.
So and the first important part is that we are adding alternates in the code, and that means, basically there is an alternative of this page, but to be target, to be targeted for a language and a code. And so you put alternate href your page for that for that country, and then you’re telling Google which country in which language, first sorry, first language, and then country. So English language, GB, Great Britain, French language, fr, country. If I was trying to Target Canada, I will put Fr. Ca, same, with Spanish problem.
Now also, Google has a hack which is for wherever you know that you have users in Europe. For example, I use this recently. One of my E commerce is I know that have a lot of users in Europe, in the Scandinavia countries, I cannot afford to translate my pages right now to Danish, Norwegian, Norwegian and Finnish and Sweden, but Swedish, but I know that they speak English very well. So what I have done is I have used my English page, and I have added X defaults, and every time that someone searches my brand, it will the English page will will pop up. It won’t be a Spanish page, it won’t be a French page, it won’t be a Dutch page.
It will be the English because I know that my users can speak English. So that’s what you do with exifol. Is the page in the language that you know most of your users are going to be able to understand most of the cases is English. So how can I check that hreflan is implemented correct, correctly? So first of all, I’m going to give you the sample.
We go to go to a page. Actually, I will show you when I’m not recording so I can show my client. So I will show you how you can check it in a minute. You can check as well. Sorry, you can check in the code directly, but just type in hreflang and it will pop up. I’m going to show you, after this, you can use external tools, screaming, Frog, sidebar, href hreflang checker.
There is a checker out there that is really good. And you can do it page by page or submit whole sign up and it will check it. And then you also can ask developers to check if it’s working or not. You can also check, once you have implemented hreflan, you need to also monitor that is working. So to monitor that is working, the best way to do it is by filtering by the countries that you want to do an HR in Google Search Console.
And sometimes even if you have implemented hreflang properly, you need to be really careful it might not work if all your internal linking is not implemented properly, what am I saying? So you might have created the soup folders implement the hreflang, but all the soup folders in all the countries are still going to the UK.
Just to say, an example, if you don’t change those URLs, hreflang is not going to be implemented properly. It’s not going to work if you have links or some imagine that you created a soup folders. You started to get lots of links from the UK, but you’re trying to target Spain. Might not work if you haven’t implemented but to be honest, the biggest issue, most of the time, is that hreflang has been implemented wrongly, or internal linking once, once hreflang has implemented properly, internal linking is not right. So it’s like 90% of the time that is causing an error. So typical HR planning issues that we can find in an audit are geo targeting. So we can see that we put English, we use a VPN, um.
carmen domínguez rodríguez 20:00
We go to one of our main countries, and we we put the keywords, and we start seeing, for example, a sub domain that is not the right sub domain that should be popping. So if I’m checking in, I don’t know Qatar, but all my Australian pages are showing there versus the Qatar pages. When I have them translated in Arabic.
Something is wrong. So set this thing local per site, which is what I said earlier, rather than using just hreflang to English in here. First of all is all wrong, because, rather than having this issue, have a line at random, dash line, but just making sure as well that we are using the right, the right local, for example, at D is written. The contrary, it should be D, E, at right.
We said it earlier, first language, then country, that German, Dutch, and then 80, Austria, and then the same. We need to make sure that the order is put in the right way. Missing hreflantags, this is a classic, particularly when you have tons of different countries, you might have the missing equivalent of that, of that well, so in this case, missing the hreflang tax at all. There is nothing that is popping there. Or some countries have the missing equivalent.
So you might have put one page and you put four languages when you have seven. So if you have three that are missing, Google is not going to understand that those are the equivalent as well, and they’re going to show it to whatever he wants. So the solution is obviously ensure that all the hreflang tags are reciprocating so it can establish the correct translation and allow sites to reinforce each other. So if in page A, you have a, English, a Spain Spanish, a Italian.
When you go to Italian, it has to have a English, a French, Spanish. All of them need to reciprocate to each other. So it’s not like you put the hreflang tag only in the English to the translated, also from the translated to the English. And all of them, they all need to be related, and each of them needs to be showing at each other, missing self reference as well.
You need to make sure that you are telling Google, okay, this is me, and I am intended for Great Britain, and then I have this one for Ireland, this one for France, this one for Dutch, this one for English, Australia, etc, etc. So you also need to put your your URL the first one, so you can tell Google another classic one is non 200 hreflang tags.
So you are putting hreflang tags to pages are for, for, for, or redirecting, and that is going to cause a loop, because you are constantly sending it back, and you need to make sure that this is not happening, of course, like you will do with any 404, and missing x default, this is a big issue, as I said, because it might show the wrong pages to the users.
And if you are an user who is located, I don’t know, as I said, Finland, and you’re trying to target a page and read about it because it’s famous, but the only page coming up is the Arabic one. I cannot read it. So you need to make sure that you are putting the page that everyone, or most of people, can read as if the XFL page. And that’s it. That was also very technical. Did it make sense?
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