International SEO 101

If your organization needs to operate across the world, chances are you will need to expand your SEO efforts to target other countries. There is a lot of complication when it comes to international SEO and several methods. Here are a look at a few approaches your organization can consider when targeting more than one country:

Single TLD

Your approach to international SEO will vary by industry and in some cases you will not need to do anything other than a standard SEO approach. Often, organizations that focus on a niche can get away with a single top-level-domain and one set of content to cover domestic and international SEO at once.

Subfolders

When you have country specific offices or content, you can also look at creating subfolders for various countries. The English site that targets the United States (or your largest market) can remain the root directory. Other countries will have subfolders with their two letter country codes. For example: domain.com/de (for Germany), domain.com/uk (for the United Kingdom)

Country domains

Another option is to use a country specific domain for each country you want to target. However, the problem is that unlike the subfolder method above, your country domains will not get automatic authority from your main domain. You will need to build authority and get backlinks for each of your country domains.

Before you look at international SEO, explore all the options and find which approach is the best for your organization’s vertical.