SEO discipline
International SEO
International SEO is where small technical errors become expensive, because they compound across every market at once. Lower demand than the other disciplines and the highest cost of getting it wrong — a broken hreflang implementation can suppress an entire locale.
What actually moves the needle
Reciprocal hreflang
Each locale must point at the other. A one-way hreflang is ignored entirely, which is the single most common implementation error and produces no visible symptom.
Canonicals per locale
Each language version canonicalises to itself. A French page canonicalising to the English one removes it from the index.
Translated URLs
A URL carrying the target market's vocabulary is a relevance signal and a trust signal. /fr/services/seo-local reads as native; /fr/services/local-seo does not.
Genuine localisation
Translated English is recognisable to native readers. Quebec French differs from France French; Spanish for Spain differs from Latin American Spanish. Getting it wrong signals you are not really in that market.
Market-specific content
The questions buyers ask differ by market. Translating the answers to a different market's questions produces accurate content nobody searched for.
Widely taught, and wrong
Each of these is still repeated in guides and sold in packages.
“Auto-translate is good enough now”
Good enough to be understood, not good enough to be trusted. Native readers detect it, and in regulated markets like Quebec the requirement is legal rather than aesthetic.
“Country subdomains always beat subdirectories”
Both work. Subdirectories inherit domain authority and are cheaper to maintain; subdomains suit genuinely separate operations. The choice is operational, not an SEO ranking decision.
“One Spanish version serves every Spanish market”
Vocabulary, formality and the vosotros form differ enough that Spain reads Latin American Spanish as foreign, and vice versa.
How this site does it
This site runs 341 French pages against 350 English, with translated URLs, reciprocal hreflang on every pair, per-locale canonicals, and a CI check that fails the build if English text appears on a French page. We built it wrong first and the check is what caught it.
We publish the craft because knowing what to do and having the systems to do it consistently are different problems. If you would rather have it executed than implemented in-house, that is what Market Expansion is for.
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