Here you will find general information about international (country and language specific) SEO, SEO strategy, factors that can influence it, implementation of hreflang and common mistakes.

1. International SEO
Do‘s and don‘ts
How to…

2. Alona Demchyk
SEO Manager
Joined Plan.Net in 2015, earlier – Catbird Seat and Bertelsmann
Previous experience: E Commerce & Business Development
Qualification:
Master of Philology / in Online Marketing since 2008
Education:
Ukrainian, speaking Russian,
studied in England, based in
Munich…
@AlonaDemchyk 2

3. Plan.Net Performance SEO – Serving more than 50
clients accross 14 industries and 8 markets worldwide
43 colleagues
9 nationalities
12 languages

4. What is SEO
paid
search
results
(SEA)
Organic
search
results
(SEO)
@AlonaDemchyk 4

5. Naver
72% in
2013
Yahoo
53% in
2013
Baidu n
62% in
2013
Yandex
62% in
2013
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6. International SEO
but language (ISO 639-1) & country
(ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2) specific
Not global and local
@AlonaDemchyk 6

7. Why is this relevant?
• Migration creates multilingual
societies (Germany) ->
• Language borders across the
countries became blurred (Russian
speakers)
Rank Nationality
Population
(2014)
1 Turkey 1,527,118
2 Poland 674,152
3 Italy 574,53
4 Romania 355,343
5 Greece 328,564
6 Croatia 263,347
7 Serbia 252,468
8 Russia 221,413
9 Kosovo 184,662
10 Bulgaria 183,263
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8. You should ask yourself the
following questions when
deciding to go for ISEO…
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9. ?
• What is my business model?
• Who is my target audience?
• What language do they speak and where are they located?
• Do I have sufficient manpower, budget and time?
• Can I develop my current URL structure or do I need a new one?
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10. Before entering the international /
multilingual market
• Traffic
• Keyword
• Your online capacities
• URL structure
• Content, CMS, competitors…
• Your physical location
• Shops, warehouses
• Local customer support
• Call center, e-mail, customer service
• Economy, laws…
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11. Before entering the international /
multilingual market
• Traffic
• Keyword
• Your online capacities
• URL structure
• Content, CMS, competitors…
• Your physical location
• Shops, warehouses
• Local customer support
• Call center, e-mail, customer service
• Economy, laws…
@AlonaDemchyk 11

12. Who visits your website?
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13. 13

14. Where do your user‘s go?
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15. 15@AlonaDemchyk

16. Compare
Visits with x-languages or x-locations users to landing pages
with the conversion of those landing pages in your main
language/country
Page EN-Visitors
Page Conversion in
Germany
www.xy.de 6.600 3%
www.xy.de/termin-vereinbaren/ 1.084 30%
www.xy.de/service-center-in-deutschland 468 4%
www.xy.de/kosten/ 326 2%
www.xy.de/schaden-berechnen/ 172 5%
www.xy.de/standorte/muenchen/ 85 13%
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17. Do your keyword research (glocally)
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18. Geek SEO
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19. Main reasons for decision making
• Traffic
• Keyword
• Your online capacities
• URL (structure)
• Content, CMS, competitors…
• Your physical location
• Shops, warehouses
• Local customer support
• Country specific features
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20. Why is URL important?
Each URL tells a story, whether it is…
Generic (TLD) – .com .biz .info
New generic - .comany .fashion .bayern
Country code specific (ccTLD) - .de .ru .fr .it
Subdomain – de.xy.com, ru.xy.com
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21. „Every time you change
your URL structure…
a backlink dies“
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22. Important ISEO components
• https://www.yourwebsite.de/blog/your-article-here?nc=1#anchor
• Protocol: https
• Hostname: https://www.yourwebsite.de
• Subdomain: www.
• Domain name: yourvebsite.de
• Top level domain: de
• Folder: blog
• File name: your-article-here
• Parameter: nc
• Parameter value: 1
• Anchor: #
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23. URLs - geographic targeting (country)
(+)Country cpecific tol level domain + folder
www.xy.de/folder/..., www.xy.it/folder/..., www.xy.fr/folder/...
(=)Generic Top Level Domain + country specific folder
www.xy.com/de, www.xy.com/it, www.xy.com/fr
(-)Subdomain
de.xy.com
@AlonaDemchyk
best
worst
23

24. URLs - language targeting
(+)Generic Top Level Domain + country specific folder
www.xy.com/de, www.xy.com/it, www.xy.com/fr
(-)Subdomain
de.xy.com
best
worst
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25. Let the user choose (country)
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26. Let the user choose (language)
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27. Use hreflang for multilingual websites
HTML head
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="de-AT" href="http://www.xy.com/de-at" />
HTTP header (for binary data, like PDFs)
Link: http://www.xy.com/de-at;rel="alternate„;hreflang=de-AT“
Default languages
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="http://www.xy.com/" />
@AlonaDemchyk
Sitemap
<loc>http://www.xy.com/de/</loc>
<xhtml:link
rel="alternate"
hreflang="de"
href="http://www.xy.com/de/"
/>
<xhtml:link
rel="alternate"
hreflang="de-ch"
href="http://www.xy.com/de-
ch/" />
</url>
</urlset>
Language format ISO 639-1
Language variations format ISO 15924 (Traditional Chinese: zh-Hant, simplified Chinese: zh-Hans)
Country format ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2
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28. One language - different countries
Plan.Net Performance X Client
Initial market is based in Germany
Austria and Switzerland were added in 2014.
The content was the same, contact details were
local.
After implementing hreflang
•Ø +95% Revenue via +150% visitors a month (AT)
•Ø +43% revenue via +70% visitors a month (CH)
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29. Common mistakes
Source: http://searchengineland.com/auditing-hreflang-annotations-common-issues-avoid-
219483
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30. @AlonaDemchyk 30

31. Submit you language/local website version in
the webmaster tools relevant to your local
search engine
Google – Google Webmaster Tools
Bing – Bing Webmaster Tools
Yandex – Yandex Webmaster Tools
Baidu – Baidu Webmaster Tools
Measure your sucsess
e.g. Google Analytics
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32. Common mistakes
• Language or country codes (ISO‘s) are faulty
• You created auto-translated pages
• Different countries, one language no hreflang ->duplicate content
• References of other language versions is missing
• Different locations are not verified in Search Console
• Track separately all of your language and location specific website
versions
• You do not translate URLs and you don‘t use the UTF-8 encoding
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33. Obstacles
• Economic reasons
• Crisis (inflation) – Russia, Ukraine
• Competitive environment
• Cultural environment
• Negotiations are held differently in different cultures.
• Country specific regulations
• Redtape
• Laws
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34. Useful resources
Hreflang validator
http://hreflang.ninja/
Hreflang generator
https://www.sistrix.de/hreflang-guide/hreflang-generator/
The most common issues with hreflang
http://searchengineland.com/auditing-hreflang-annotations-common-
issues-avoid-219483 (by Aleyda Solis)
Google Support
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2620865?hl=en
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35. Thank you
You can find me on…
Twitter: @AlonaDemchyk
Xing: https://www.xing.com/profile/Alona_Demchyk
LinkedIn: https://de.linkedin.com/in/alonademchyk
Google+: https://plus.google.com/+AlonaDemchyk
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