1.

OVERWIEW OF INTERNATIONAL SEO

1.1 What is International SEO
International SEO helps you provide the right content, for the right search
engines, across countries, languages, and localizations.
Three Areas:
a) Technical-Structure Considerations
- Languages
- Currencies
- Regions
Dynamic solutions, different sites, structure of sub-folders, or lots of subdomains
b) On-page optimizations
- languages
- special tags
Si hay traducciones del mismo contenido a varios idiomas
c) Off-site Factors Influencing Authority
- Quality , relevance and number of colinking websites
(igual que en el SEO normal)
Atraer una audiencia global.

1.2. Beyond Google. Overview top global search engines.

Google / others Bing, Youtube
Optimizing for Google. There is a local Google for almost every country of the
planet, with diferent results. Languages and locations can be extremely
important to your international SEO strategy for Google.
Understand which search engines hold the most market share.
Baidu (China), Yandex (Rusia), Naver (Soth Korea)
You need to speak the language and understand the culture.

They have Web Masters Tools

Yandex Differens
-- doesnt index often (static page: una vez al mes, otros como blogs ms
frecuente)
- Focuses on local / regional market
2. GETTING STARTED
2.1 Optimizing countries languages
International SEO: promoting and optimizing content in order to make the site
visible to a target market across multiple countries and/or languages.
International SEO Examples
- US firm supporting Spanish speakers
- Canadian firm supporting English ant French speakers (may be French for
France)
- Multinational company supporting many languages
International SEO plan must reflect business needs
If the goal of business is to provide the same content in multiple languages:
translated content in rder to be found by search engines.
Multilingual site: a web site offering users the ability to select their preferred
language. Use techniques to send strong signals and indicator for the
language you are using, including the URL.
Use the URL structure of the target language: a subdomain of sub folder. The
search engine crawling through these pages, the use of either a subfolder or
subdomain with international recognized language codes will send you a
strong signal and help you index this content appropriately.
Whether your sites focus is multilingual, multiregional or both, youll need to
pay close attention to how is structured and how search engines are able to
discover and understan your content so that they can deliver it to the target
markets when they are searching.
2.2 Determining target markets and audiences
Factors:
Example:

UK Clothing-Company Expansion
- sucessful launch into China
- wanting to expand into the EU
Realize the website infraestructure required for global operations is going to
take a lot of work (countries, languages, cultural aspects, etc.)
EU Expansion Concerns: require infraestructure adjustments
- Core funcionality (across language/currencies/ etc.)
- Search engines understanding
- Maintaining a positive user experience
In EU Google tends to be the search engine of choice (nos enfocamos en eso)
Look at your current analytics (geographic report / languages report). Do a
formal market research.
Logistic considerations
- develop content to serve new languages / regions
- adjusting pricing to reflect new currencies
- adjust business considerations (products, shipping, legal, etc.)
It takes a lot of planning to identify your target markets.
2.3 Determining target markets audiences
Once you decided the countries and languages youre going to target,
structuring your website is a very important aspect of international SEO.
Carefully select where youll place translated content.
Some = different translations on differents subdomains
es.domain.com
Other place different content in different subfolders
www.domain.com/ es
They both have risks and disvantages.
Using subdomains

Advantage: freedom in implementation (technically, its a different website).

For different language you also habe a totally different site layout, navigation
schema and even a different set of content. Running as a second website
Risk: Losing earned value built up from the main www domain (with the
second website). Si el sitio original est bien posicionado, puede disminuir si
se abren subdominios.
Using subfolders
Reduces this risk (losing earned value) and brings the full strength of your
domain.
Disvantages:
- having to implement different site frameworks (copy page by page)
- Difficulty on CMSs
If youre targeting different countries (whit subdomains or subfolders) many
sites prefer to use separate country specific or Country Code Top-Level
Domains (ccTLDs). A big benefit of ccTCLs name provide signals to search
engines and users. www.domain.com vs. www.domain.ca about the country
of origin. If you choose to host each site locally, you can give a strong signal.
This also allows additional geo targeting opportunities. Google find to
determine which country your website is targeting and which country
versions of its search engine should show you results.
Disvantages of ccTLDs
- This approach requires significant resources and investment: creating and
maintaning completely different websites.
- (with subdomains) may lack search value from main site.
- may require physical presence in a country
If business conditions dont vary too much from country to country, and
content changes are less drastic, you might do well to host your multiregional sites using the subfolder or subdomain structure to reflect tye
combination of region and language.
Example (using two subfolders, first for the country, second for the
language). Both using two-character country codes.
US
www.domain.com/us/en

www.domain.com/us/es
Canada
www.domain.com/ca/en
www.domain.com/ca/es
Combination (ccTLDs or subdomains along with subfolders)
www.domain.com, www.domain.com/es (ccTLD + subfolder)
ca.domain.com, ca.domain.com/fr (subdomain + subfolder)
Both = signal to search engines
Language and Country combinations
If language is more important to you than region:
- www.domain.com
- www.domain.com/ca
- fr.domain.com/ca
- es.domain.com/us
(the language is determined by the subdomain, and country becomes a
subfolder)
Geo targeting can be set up in Google Webmaster Tools for both subfolders,
top level domains, and subdomains.
Risk: while the search engines can normally detect country signals being
sent, users may not always recognize them.
Potential confusion
- es.domain.com
or www.domain.com/es
may not recognize that theyre on your Spain country site, which would lead
to a bit of confusion for them, if your content is really optimized and is
entirely in Spanish.
Ultimately, the best structure is the one that addresses your business needs,
and that you can both afford and support.