Definition

International SEO is the practice of structuring a site so search engines can identify and serve the correct language or country version to users, usually through distinct locale-specific URLs and hreflang annotations.

Google distinguishes multilingual sites (multiple languages) from multi-regional sites (targeting different countries). Its guidance is to use separate URLs for each version — country-code domains, subdomains or subdirectories — with hreflang annotations to indicate the relationships between them. Google determines the target locale from signals such as ccTLDs, hreflang, and server location, and advises against automatically redirecting users or swapping content based on IP address.

Examples

• Country subdirectories

  A retailer serves /en-au/ and /en-gb/ versions of each page and links them with hreflang so Google shows Australian shoppers the AU version and UK shoppers the GB one.

• Avoiding auto-redirects

  Rather than redirecting all visitors by IP, a site lets users choose their region and uses hreflang, following Google's guidance so Googlebot can crawl every locale.

Sources

• Google Search Central — Managing multi-regional and multilingual sites

Related terms

• hreflang
  An HTML attribute or sitemap tag that tells search engines which language and region a page is intended for, so the right version is shown to the right user.
• Canonical Tag
  An HTML element that tells search engines which URL is the master copy when the same or similar content exists at multiple addresses.
• Duplicate Content
  Substantively identical or very similar content that appears at more than one URL, either within a single site or across different sites.

Where QueryCatch uses this

• SEO Audit
• Sitemap Optimisation