International SEO and hreflang tagging
Posted: Sat Feb 01, 2025 6:09 am
How to choose the best international SEO strategy for a startup?
A very common mistake is to start with a ccTLD based on the country's initial market: for example, I am a startup from Spain and I start my project with a .es domain.
In this way, for my internationalization I will be almost forced to use a large number of ccTLDs, depending on the countries in which I want to sell my products/services.
Which is fine, as long as all of these marketplaces are actually important and you can manage as many domains as you want.
One of the disadvantages of an international SEO strategy that opts for ccTLDs is that it requires more resources and efforts since it almost forces you to differentiate the brand positioning strategy and any effort to gain authority will be diluted among several domains.
The question a startup has to ask itself is: will I be belarus mobile database able to carry out several different marketing strategies in the short term for, for example, Spain, Mexico, Italy, Portugal and France, executed by professionals who know each of these markets? If the answer is no, the best thing to do in this regard is to start with a .com domain and offer different versions by language and/or country with a system of folders by language and a good hreflang structure and leave the ccTLD for later.
A possible process of evolution of the international SEO strategy of a startup, as it grows, could be this:
Buy ccTLD domains to avoid competition and redirect the .com domain.
Create microsites by language through folders by language and/or country.
Transfer the contents of language and/or country folders to ccTLD domains.
Correct use of hreflang tagging is certainly important, but we cannot reduce international SEO to its correct implementation: as we are seeing, the strategy should first be well defined, since hreflang tagging only certifies what we have decided (for example, a strategy focused on countries, languages or even a hybrid one).
A very common mistake is to start with a ccTLD based on the country's initial market: for example, I am a startup from Spain and I start my project with a .es domain.
In this way, for my internationalization I will be almost forced to use a large number of ccTLDs, depending on the countries in which I want to sell my products/services.
Which is fine, as long as all of these marketplaces are actually important and you can manage as many domains as you want.
One of the disadvantages of an international SEO strategy that opts for ccTLDs is that it requires more resources and efforts since it almost forces you to differentiate the brand positioning strategy and any effort to gain authority will be diluted among several domains.
The question a startup has to ask itself is: will I be belarus mobile database able to carry out several different marketing strategies in the short term for, for example, Spain, Mexico, Italy, Portugal and France, executed by professionals who know each of these markets? If the answer is no, the best thing to do in this regard is to start with a .com domain and offer different versions by language and/or country with a system of folders by language and a good hreflang structure and leave the ccTLD for later.
A possible process of evolution of the international SEO strategy of a startup, as it grows, could be this:
Buy ccTLD domains to avoid competition and redirect the .com domain.
Create microsites by language through folders by language and/or country.
Transfer the contents of language and/or country folders to ccTLD domains.
Correct use of hreflang tagging is certainly important, but we cannot reduce international SEO to its correct implementation: as we are seeing, the strategy should first be well defined, since hreflang tagging only certifies what we have decided (for example, a strategy focused on countries, languages or even a hybrid one).