If you already run an international website or have international expansion on your road map, there are several common SEO issues which can hold back your success.
In this article we’ll look at six international SEO mistakes that you could be making, to help you look out for and avoid them on your site.
Domains
One mistake we see with people taking their first step into an international market is not considering the current domain they have.
If you have a .co.uk domain name, for example, you will need to consider getting a new domain for each market you go into, as a .co.uk won’t perform as well in international search engines as it is a UK-focused ccTLD.
IP serving
This is something which, from a development point of view, sounds like the perfect fix. Automatically redirecting people to the correct international version of your website based on their IP address, and so location, does sound really useful.
In its truest form, IP serving cannot be overwritten and a user in a specific country will always be redirected to the site for that country. There are, however, a number of reasons why this isn’t always the right approach to take.
Firstly, you can’t assume that all users in a particular location are from that country. If your IP serving can’t be overwritten by a user, this will mean that anyone in a particular country will be forced to use the site in that language/currency, which doesn’t then take into consideration someone who is travelling or not native to the country in question. This isn’t a great user experience.
The second issue of IP serving is that it will affect your SEO, as search engines