International SEO.

International SEO is the practice of optimising a website's visibility in search results across multiple countries and languages. It addresses the technical, content, and authority challenges of serving different markets: choosing between ccTLDs, subdomains, or subdirectories; implementing hreflang correctly; creating high-quality translated or localised content; building local authority in each target market; and understanding how Google serves different results in different geographic markets.

URL Structure Choices

The primary architectural decision in international SEO is URL structure: ccTLDs (country-code top-level domains like .co.uk, .de) send the strongest geographic signal but require separate authority building per domain; Subdomains (de.example.com) share limited authority but separate tracking cleanly; Subdirectories (example.com/de/) share domain authority fully but mix country traffic in one domain. For most businesses without significant per-country resources, subdirectories provide the best balance of authority consolidation and geographic targeting.