International SEO: the most common mistakes

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If you manage a web project with several language versions, sooner or later you will have to implement the search engine optimization possibilities of multilingual websites in order to achieve international web positioning. In this regard, it is important that you really get involved, because regardless of whether you are looking for keywords, want to implement tags or create links, errors can occur that negatively affect the good visibility of your web project.

Mistake #1: Focusing on IP-based redirects
Implementing hreflang tags is often a laborious and complicated task, which is why many operators resort to automatic redirects based on IP addresses in order to present users with the correct version. However, this pharmaceutical email lists solution is not optimal for several reasons: on the one hand, it makes it difficult for search engine crawlers to categorize and index web pages, and on the other hand, the collection of IP addresses is not always accurate and in some cases is even inadequate. This is how users end up on pages that do not match their search query – for example, hotel guests who, despite having different nationalities, always see the same language variant if the IP address is taken into account as a criterion. A high number of redirects also has a negative impact on loading time .

Mistake #2: Incorrect hreflang tags
If you include incorrect hreflang tags, they may be misinterpreted or ignored by search engines. A common source of errors is the use of country and language codes that do not correspond to ISO standards and which, of course, do not allow the page to be ranked. In other cases, hreflang attributes conflict with Google Search Console settings or references are missing. Complications often arise when you want to highlight certain pages with both hreflang attributes and the canonical tag. For more information on this source of errors, visit our article on the hreflang tag .

Mistake #3: Illogical domain concept
As mentioned above, the choice of domain structure plays a very important role in international SEO. While the chosen strategy can be wrong despite the best planning, there are some mistakes that can be avoided. Thus, the combination of a geographic top-level domain with subdirectories for each of the language versions is somewhat contradictory, since the geographic targeting is clearly defined with the ccTLDs (by the way, Google classifies them in the Google Search Console automatically), but is somewhat weakened by the subdirectories. As a result, subpages often do not appear in users' search results.

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Mistake #4: Reckless Links
Managers of newer projects, in particular, tend to neglect aspects such as quality, functionality and reasonableness when creating links, a procedure that has a boomerang effect. Because link building becomes more complex on multilingual pages than on single-language pages, SEO specialists must strive to create references correctly and not lose sight of them.

It is often the case that external links from a given country do not point to the corresponding URL, but to the main domain. This not only has a negative effect on the user, but also defeats the purpose of increasing the link power of the alternative URL . Other problems that can arise are related to outdated or otherwise (no longer) working links and a very high number of internal links.

Mistake #5: Ignoring mobile users
Optimizing your website for mobile devices is especially important for international SEO, as in some countries mobile Internet access far exceeds desktop access. If you want to present your multilingual website abroad in the best possible SEO light, it is essential to also optimize it for mobile users. A mobile-friendly website improves the user experience , which in turn translates into higher engagement rates and lower bounce rates.

Furthermore, search engines such as Google take mobile-friendliness into account as a ranking factor. Multilingual and mobile-optimized websites therefore have a better chance of ranking higher in search results. As already mentioned, visitors from many countries such as India, Brazil, China or Indonesia primarily use smartphones to access the Internet. This means that a website that is not mobile-optimized could exclude a large part of the target audience.

For this reason, mobile optimization of your multilingual website is not only a plus, but an absolute necessity for international SEO success. You should pay special attention to the loading speed of your multilingual website for SEO, its adaptation to different screen sizes and whether it has a user-friendly interface for touch screen navigation.

Taking these aspects into account can significantly improve the visibility of your multilingual website in search engines and help you reach a global audience more effectively.

Mistake #6: Lack of local keyword research
Another factor that often makes your multilingual website difficult to find is inadequate local keyword research. This means that the meta title, meta description and URL are not optimized for the respective country and language. Your international SEO strategy cannot work this way. A proper adaptation must consider, among other things, cultural differences in search behavior such as the choice of words, certain phrases, their synonyms, as well as sentence structure and grammar. To establish a real connection with the local audience, you should invest in professional translations and cultural adaptation of content as part of your multilingual SEO measures for your website.