International websites: 5 questions will help you choose the right structure

So, you want to enter a new market. But how do you set up your website to be optimally positioned for SEO? What's the best structure for international websites?

There is actually no single, definitive answer to this question. The structure should be tailored to your specific needs, the current status quo, and the competition in your target markets. If your choice isn't optimal, you risk your international SEO success.

Therefore, ask yourself the following questions to choose the best possible structure for your international web presence:

1. Do you want to address your target group in a country- or language-specific way?

This should be the fundamental question for all international websites: are they geared towards the country or the languages?

Companies that lack a clear direction here are creating problems for themselves. SEO For example, some Swiss companies have the Spanish language version of their website on the .ch domain and indicate the language with a Spanish flag.

In SEO, it's generally best to personalize as much as possible and therefore adapt—or rather, localize—websites to the respective country. However, there are some exceptions:

If location is not a critical factor in business operations and models, then businesses that use a SaaS (Software for Service) model, for example, are typically language-centric, not country-centric. Skype and Instagram are examples of this. After all, it's about software that is exactly the same everywhere. The only difference is the language.

If the target audience is spread across multiple countries and speaks the same language, ideally, you should localize for each country individually. Initially, however, you might not have enough users and search volume, making multiple separate subpages pointless.

Often, it's more practical to first offer a language version of the website on a generic top-level domain (gTLD) to gauge the response. If sufficient growth is observed in the country, then a specific web presence – a country-specific top-level domain (ccTLD) – can be established.

Initially, it's quite common to have a mixed approach for international websites: both language- and country-centric. However, it's crucial to understand precisely why you've chosen each approach and to adapt the site's structure as needed.

• SEO per country: Here you select country-specific top-level domains (ccTLD) and then individually adapt the subpages and subdomains to the respective region (localization).
• SEO per language: Here you choose a generic top-level domain (gTLD) and also build the subpages and subdomains with this domain type.

If you have versions of your website for multiple languages ​​and countries, be sure to use the hreflang attribute to always direct users to the correct version.

To choose the right version for you (country-specific or generic top-level domain), you should also consider the following additional questions:

2. Have you already achieved success in relevant markets?

Once you've decided on a basic strategy, you should analyze your current status in your target markets. Your ideal web structure can be adjusted depending on your current success in each of those markets, especially if you've already established international online presences in those markets.

Therefore, ask yourself these questions:

• What is the current web structure in the existing market?
Are you currently using a country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) or a generic top-level domain (gTLD)? Is the extension you're currently using one for your local market or a .com extension?

• Do you already have an international online presence?
If that's the case – what web structure are you currently using for your international website?

• What ranking in Google results for each country, how much traffic and what click-through rates do you already have on your existing international websites?
Have you already achieved a good positioning for certain products in the relevant markets? keywords Have you already achieved this? Do you already have an internationally oriented web structure with high link popularity?

• What makes your current international web presence so successful in your international markets?

For example, if you currently have a country-specific top-level domain for your existing local market, it's impossible to activate a subpage and leverage its link popularity for another market. The country-specific domain simply isn't relevant for that other market.

However, if you have a generic top-level domain without optimizations or subdomains targeted at international markets, then you can only leverage the site's previous successes for those specific markets.

Sometimes, however, companies already have well-optimized, country-specific domains and change them to reduce website administration or costs. Therefore, an inventory is essential to decide whether migrating to a different web structure is worthwhile.

3. What is the web structure of the leading websites in your target markets?

Use a tool like SimilarWeb to conduct an industry analysis and see the leading websites in your industry in your target countries and markets, as well as gather further information about the web structure of these sites. Are the top-ranking sites country-specific or generic top-level domains?

Based on this, you need to evaluate whether you should use a generic or a country-specific top-level domain for the respective market in order to achieve top rankings.

4. What is the link popularity of the leading sites in the targeted markets?

In addition to analyzing the web structure of leading websites in your target markets, you should also examine their link profiles. What percentage of their links come from local sites and what percentage from generic top-level domains? How much of a head start would your competitors have if you created a new website for that market? Is one approach more promising than another?

If most websites use country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) with relatively low authority, then building your own ccTLD might be feasible. However, if the competition's lead is too significant, you should consider using a generic top-level domain (gTLD), provided it ranks highly in search engines for the relevant markets.

5. What impact does the use of a localized domain have on user behavior compared to a generic domain?

This question requires data on individual markets. Consequently, it cannot be answered for everyone. However, if you have data available for individual countries, languages, and industries, you should definitely study it for the influence of cultural factors and preferences and base your choice of domain (country-specific or generic) on these results. Pilot projects can even be used to test these approaches first.

Keep in mind that a page's performance also depends on the authority of the brand you're working with locally, as well as many other factors. Therefore, don't generalize and don't expect to draw 100% accurate conclusions for every market and every business based solely on this data.

Use the area « for this.search analyticsUse the Google Search Console and its filter to view specific subpages, the search queries for which these subpages rank, and click-through rates per country. Check whether the click-through rates for the exact same position, page, and search query differ solely because, for example, a country-specific top-level domain was used instead of a generic one.

With a little patience, you can determine whether using a generic or a country-specific top-level domain would be advantageous for a particular country.

Once you have answered the questions above, it should be much easier for you to choose a web structure that will deliver the desired results in the targeted markets.

Do you have any further questions or would you like advice from experts? Then contact us. MIC Group today. We are your Expert for SEO Zurich and are always happy to assist you!