International SEO Strategy For Multilingual Sites

Joshua Lee | 29 August, 2025 | 4 minute read | Blog, SEO

Expanding into new markets is one of the most effective ways for growing businesses to increase brand awareness, reach new customers, and boost revenue. But without a clear international SEO strategy for multilingual sites, your efforts can be easily undermined by language barriers, misaligned content, and poor visibility in local search results.

Whether you’re a SaaS company targeting the DACH region or an e-commerce brand moving into the US and France, international SEO often starts with a key question: How do we make sure the right people in each market find and trust our content online?

Many businesses exploring this topic are trying to:

• Increase organic traffic from target regions
• Rank higher for key localised search terms
• Avoid duplicate content and technical SEO pitfalls
• Make the most of one website to serve multiple languages

If you’re reading this, you’re probably trying to get clarity on how to structure your website, what to prioritise when going multilingual, and where to begin with technical SEO. You’re not alone, and the good news is, this post will guide you through the key areas of multilingual SEO that matter most.

We’ll show you how to evaluate your current setup, what common mistakes to avoid, and introduce the different implementation paths (like subfolders vs subdomains), so you can move from confused and cautious to confident and visible.

Define Your Goals and Understand Your Target Markets

Before you implement anything, align your international SEO strategy with specific business objectives.

What are you hoping to achieve?

Are you looking to drive more leads from Spanish-speaking markets? Are you hoping to grow your e-commerce revenue in Germany? Or is your priority brand visibility in English-speaking regions like the UK, US, and Australia?

Knowing this determines:

• The languages you’ll prioritise
• The types of content to translate
• The structure of your multilingual site
• Which search engines to optimise for (Google in most markets, but Yandex in Russia, Baidu in China)

Pro tip: Use tools like Google Analytics and Search Console to assess where you’re already getting international traffic — and where it may be underperforming.

Curious how this compares to the latest global SEO tactics? Dive into our Ultimate Guide to International SEO for 2025 for updated insights and winning strategies.

Choose the Right Site Structure for Multilingual SEO

The way you structure your multilingual content has a huge impact on SEO success.

Common international SEO structures

• Subdirectories (e.g. /fr/ or /de/):
  Best for keeping SEO authority consolidated under one domain. Easier to maintain, especially for small teams. Recommended by Google.
• Subdomains (e.g. fr.example.com):
  Treated as separate properties by search engines. More setup needed in Google Search Console. Sometimes used when CMS limitations exist.
• Country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) (e.g. example.fr):
  Offers strong local trust signals but costly and resource-heavy. Better suited for large enterprises.

Hreflang tags: the linchpin of multilingual SEO

If you serve multiple languages or regions, hreflang annotations are essential. They help Google serve the correct language version of your page to the right audience, and avoid duplicate content penalties.

• Example: If you have content in English for both the UK and the US, hreflang tells Google which one to show to which user.
• Mistake to avoid: Incorrect hreflang implementation or forgetting to include a self-referencing tag.

Align Content and Keywords With Local User Intent

International SEO isn’t just about translation, it’s about localisation.

Translate meaning, not just words

Literal translations can tank your search visibility. You need to research local search behaviour, adapt your keywords, and adjust messaging to match cultural norms and buyer expectations.

For example:

• In the UK, someone might search for “hire a car”
• In the US, it’s “rent a car”

Use keyword research tools like Semrush or Ahrefs, set to the target country, to uncover region-specific search terms.

Checklist for multilingual content optimisation

1. Translate page titles, meta descriptions, and headings
2. Localise call-to-actions and user interfaces
3. Adapt currency, measurements, and date formats
4. Optimise for locally relevant keywords

Our Final Thoughts

A successful international SEO strategy for multilingual sites takes more than just adding translations. It requires deliberate technical setup, informed structure choices, and cultural adaptation of content to make your website discoverable and relevant in each target market.

By understanding your goals, choosing the right structure, implementing hreflang correctly, and truly localising your content — you’ll give your business the best chance to grow organically across borders.

Ready to Make Multilingual SEO Work for You?

Want to see how an international SEO strategy for multilingual sites could support your expansion plans? Schedule a discovery call today and speak to our team.