In short
Decide the URL structure first — country domains, subdomains, or subdirectories — because it is expensive to change later. Subdirectories are the usual right answer, since they concentrate authority on one domain. Then use hreflang to declare which version serves which language and region, translate the whole page including metadata, and never rely on automatic redirection by IP address.
The structure decision comes first
Three options, and the choice is difficult to reverse.
Country domains (example.fr) give the strongest geographic signal and the clearest separation. They also mean maintaining separate domains, each building authority from zero. Right when you have genuinely separate businesses per market, expensive otherwise.
Subdomains (fr.example.com) sit between. They are treated as fairly separate properties, which shares less authority than people expect.
Subdirectories (example.com/fr/) keep everything on one domain, so authority earned anywhere benefits everywhere. For most organisations this is the right answer, and it is by some distance the cheapest to operate.
One caution: whichever you choose, do not put language in a URL parameter. Parameter-based language switching is poorly handled by crawlers and produces exactly the duplicate content problems you are trying to avoid.
Language and country are different axes
The common confusion. Spanish for Spain and Spanish for Mexico are the same language and different markets — different currency, different terms, different examples, occasionally different vocabulary.
Decide whether you are serving languages or markets. If you only need languages, /es/ is enough. If pricing, availability or legal terms differ by country, you need country-specific versions and the structure gets larger quickly.
Most sites need fewer combinations than they initially plan. Every additional version is content to maintain forever, and a half-maintained version is worse than none.
What hreflang actually does
hreflang tells search engines which version of a page serves which language and region, so the right one appears for the right searcher.
It does not improve rankings. It prevents the wrong version being shown, and it stops your translated pages competing with each other.
The rules that matter:
It must be reciprocal. If the English page points at the French page, the French page must point back. Non-reciprocal annotations are ignored.
Every version lists every version, including itself.
Use correct codes — language, optionally with region: es, es-MX, pt-BR. Getting these wrong is the most common implementation error, and the codes are not intuitive.
Add x-default for the fallback version shown when nothing matches.
Implement it in the HTML head, or in the sitemap for large sites. The sitemap approach is easier to maintain at scale and easier to audit.
Translate everything, not just the body
Partial translation is common and undermines the whole exercise.
The body text is the obvious part. What gets missed: the title and meta description, alt text, the URL slug, structured data, form labels and error messages, transactional emails, and the navigation itself.
Translate the slug. A French page at /fr/how-to-choose-a-web-agency/ signals that the translation is superficial, to readers and to search engines.
Translation is not localisation
A correct translation can still be wrong for the market.
Keywords do not translate. People in different markets search using different terms, and the literal translation of your best English keyword may be a phrase nobody types. Keyword research has to be redone per market, ideally by someone who speaks the language.
Examples, currencies and formats need converting — prices, dates, phone formats, address structures, units.
Legal and regulatory content differs, sometimes substantially.
Tone varies. Directness that reads as confident in one market reads as rude in another.
Machine translation has improved enough to be a useful starting point, and is not sufficient alone for anything commercial. The pages people buy from need a human who speaks the language.
Do not auto-redirect by IP
This is the mistake that causes the most damage and is still common.
Automatically redirecting visitors based on their IP address means a crawler based in one country only ever sees one version, so the others may never be indexed. It also traps genuine users — someone travelling, or an English speaker in France, cannot reach the version they want.
Suggest, do not redirect. A dismissible banner offering the other version, with the choice remembered, achieves the goal without the harm.
Hosting and speed
Serve every market at a reasonable speed. A site hosted on one continent is slow on another, and slow correlates with poor performance in every market.
A CDN handles this for cacheable content. For dynamic pages, region choice matters, and a genuinely global audience may justify more than one origin.
Common failures worth checking
Non-reciprocal or incorrectly coded hreflang. Untranslated metadata. Automatic IP redirection. Language versions with no internal links between them. A sitemap listing only the primary language. Country versions duplicating content without localisation. And versions that were launched enthusiastically and then never updated, so half the site is two years out of date in three languages.
That last one is the argument for launching fewer versions than you think you want.
The order to do it
Decide markets and languages honestly. Choose the URL structure. Implement hreflang correctly and validate it. Translate everything including metadata and slugs. Redo keyword research per market. Add a suggestion banner rather than a redirect. Then measure per market in Search Console, which reports separately by country.
If you are planning a second language and want the structure settled before it is expensive to change, book a call.
Common questions
Should I use subdirectories, subdomains or country domains?
Subdirectories in most cases, because everything stays on one domain so authority earned anywhere benefits every version, and they are the cheapest to operate. Country domains give the strongest geographic signal but each builds authority from zero. Never put the language in a URL parameter.
What does hreflang actually do?
It tells search engines which version of a page serves which language and region, so the right version appears for the right searcher and your translations do not compete with each other. It does not improve rankings — it prevents the wrong version being shown.
Is translating a page enough for international SEO?
No. Keywords do not translate — people in different markets search using different terms, so research has to be redone per market. Currencies, examples, formats and legal content need localising, and metadata, alt text, URL slugs and structured data all need translating too.
Should I redirect visitors based on their location?
No. Automatic IP redirection means a crawler in one country only ever sees one version, so others may never be indexed, and it traps genuine users such as travellers or English speakers abroad. Offer a dismissible banner suggesting the other version and remember the choice.
How many language versions should a site have?
Fewer than most plans assume. Every version is content to maintain permanently, and a half-maintained version is worse than none — sites frequently launch several enthusiastically and end up two years out of date in three languages. Add markets when you can commit to maintaining them.
