Podcast With Kira Khoroshilova

Master International SEO in 2025 with Kira Khoroshilova

Show Notes

Looking to master International SEO in 2025 🌍 and rank your website number 1? This step-by-step guide dives deep into expert strategies for driving more organic traffic, improving search engine rankings, and achieving global success. Learn the secrets to effective hreflang implementation, cultural localization, and keyword research tailored for multilingual and regional markets. Discover tools like Mangools and Sitebulb and actionable insights to optimize your WordPress, Magento, or Shopify websites for a global audience. Whether you're a beginner or an advanced marketer, this is your ultimate guide to staying ahead in SEO and scaling your business worldwide.

Ready to unlock your website’s potential and achieve a #1 ranking? Watch now and keep optimizing your way to the top! 🚀

Chapters:

00:00 - Intro

00:54 - Starting in SEO

03:14 - Challenges in Global SEO

06:39 - Common Global SEO Mistakes

07:35 - Keyword Research for Global Markets

10:00 - Issues with Automatic Content Translation

11:34 - Content Translation and Localization Strategies

12:48 - Cultural Nuances in SEO

21:04 - Technical SEO for International Projects

22:42 - Geo Targeting vs Language Targeting

25:10 - Site Architecture for Multilingual Websites

27:10 - IP Redirects in SEO

30:30 - Subdomains vs Subdirectories for SEO

36:06 - International SEO for Agencies

39:06 - Pricing Strategies for International SEO

41:07 - Pitching International SEO to Clients

43:22 - Language-Based Pricing for SEO

46:31 - Overview of International SEO

49:28 - Link Building for International SEO

51:18 - Google Algorithm and Language Differences

53:20 - Rapid Fire Round

54:20 - Final Advice

55:01 - Connect with Kira

Transcript

Intro

0:00 welcome to the another exciting episode of the agency Insider show I'm your host navit kosel and today we have a

0:06 Powerhouse in the world of SEO with us she's an expert in international SEO href Lang implementation and cultural

0:13 localization a true Global strategist who help luxury and Enterprise Brands

0:19 scale worldwide she is the founder of diary of an SEO a sought after speaker and a consultant who has worked with

0:25 Brands across multiple markets please welcome the incredible k to the

0:31 [Applause] [Music]

0:41 show K great to have you here thank you so much that was such a wonderful introduction I'm very shy

0:49 now I'm sure you will live live up to your reputation hope so yes so uh let's talk about your

Starting in SEO

0:59 journey in SEO your journey in SEO is fascinating how did you get started in this industry good question um so I've

1:06 not actually been in SEO all that long compared to a lot of other people uh my

1:12 journey started when I was living in Egypt and I was volunteering for a very rich

1:18 Egyptian man who had a marketing agency and I was doing SEO copywriting which

1:25 was actually just black hat SEO um plagiarism

1:30 it but I I didn't know at the time but I that that was the first time I ever heard about SEO uh as a concept and I

1:38 remember I wrote a couple of plagiarized blogs and I was like okay this is interesting and I went and read the 200

1:45 100 Google ranking factors back when people were like memorizing them and I thought yeah this this sounds

1:52 interesting and it kind of just I got sucked into it from there I don't remember how I really got into it but

2:00 that was the Catalyst and that was around four years ago so it wasn't very

2:05 long at all uh and ever since then really all I do is read about SEO do SEO

2:11 and yeah of course and daddy of an SEO and yeah exactly um and that's how that

2:17 was born but it started the name Diary of an SEO started as just an Instagram

2:24 page I just wanted something for myself where I'd post my journey and it just grew into something

2:30 so much bigger than I ever thought it would right so so is there a mission

2:36 behind the Diary of n now yeah I mean it the core has stayed so I do want to have

2:43 a community and build just a better understanding around SEO and have people

2:49 record their Journeys from start to finish um so I think the name really reflect who we are as a company as well

2:57 and obviously just helping brands Excel and get as much revenue through

3:03 organic and kind of evangelize the concept of SEO because it is life changing if you do it right for people

3:09 it can take your business from nothing to Millions very quickly

Challenges in Global SEO

3:14 abely now you also specialize in international SEO what Drew you to this

3:21 nich well uh I I've always wanted to find a job that kind of reflects who I

3:28 am so I'm sure can tell the theme is that it's a lot of Personality plus business I've lived in 11 different

3:35 countries I moved around a lot uh I speak a few languages I Love Culture so

3:41 I love knowing where people are from what their ethnicity is and just traveling around so I love SEO and I

3:50 thought well this industry first of all is not well studied so there's not many

3:55 impressive SEO people around it's much less than you know local SEO technical SEO so I thought why don't I bring my my

4:03 culture and my past into SEO and give it a new angle which is what I do and when

4:10 I deliver my talks it's a lot of it is about the cultural aspect that people never really think about but me being in

4:16 all of those countries I feel like gives me a better understanding and a more holistic understanding of what a

4:22 strategy should be like right now now uh what challenges did you face early on while working on

4:29 Global SEO project just the the levels of knowledge

4:35 and how to execute everything because there's so much there's so many moving parts and a lot of the time you feel

4:41 like you've done everything right but you haven't because it doesn't work so the the learning from your mistakes and

4:48 just just doing it the way you feel you know how and kind of just just seeing

4:55 how you get on in a way so International SEO the the core aspect of it you would

5:01 Implement plus there's a lot of experimentation across different Industries so that was a big challenge

5:08 because something that works for one industry is not going to work for another one so that that is a big

5:14 challenge I mean there are hundreds we'd be here for six hours if we listed every single challenge but those are the

5:19 biggest ones I think okay okay let's talk a bit more about International SEO

5:24 now many people assume SEO is universal why is international you so

5:31 different it's um a completely different way of thinking in my opinion with

5:38 things like local SEO technical SEO uh you kind of have um you've got you know

5:44 an A to B of what you want to do with International SEO you've got a lot more

5:49 to work with so obviously volume wise the size of the website the number of links and you have to bring all of them

5:57 together you have to bring technical SEO local SEO you have to bring the soft skills which have nothing to do with SEO

6:03 at all but you have to bring them in um then you're also usually when you do

6:08 Global SEO expansion the companies are a lot bigger so then you have to get

6:14 through a lot of red tape when you want to deliver a strategy but they say oh well no I can't because the this

6:20 management said this and they said this so we can't do it in a certain structure just because of the way a company is

6:26 formed you have to find ways around it so it's it International SEO is about a

6:31 lot more than SEO which makes it really difficult and a little bit annoying but yeah now now

Common Global SEO Mistakes

6:39 what are some common mistakes company make when expanding their SE efforts

6:44 globally I think the structures of the technical ability is the most important

6:50 um a lot of companies one that I always bring is an example they do um Global

6:57 negotiation training and they had a they were pretty much worldwide um they had

7:03 67 so over 60 targets and they had separate domains for all of them so the

7:09 the core understanding of how to roll out a strategy is missing a lot of the time so you'd have 67 websites and

7:16 they're they're not using their website to the best potential so that that would be the biggest one and most 90% of

7:24 global SEO projects that we have to fix usually start with wrong implementation

7:29 of the structure okay now uh how do you

Keyword Research for Global Markets

7:35 approach keyword research for different marketing uh different markets and languages good question it's really

7:43 difficult you can get yourself in quite a rabbit hole but you have to obviously it's all keyword Le so you have to for

7:50 each country there's each each own group of keywords and a lot of countries are

7:55 bilingual some of them are trilingual as well so if we have a look at Canada for

8:00 example you've got Quebec which is the french- speaking region you've got English as the one of the other national

8:06 languages so you are doing research now in French and English to see where the search volume lies you could have

8:14 because search is predominantly English even if you're abroad are you doing

8:20 English keyword search for say Morocco or Canada or are you doing

8:26 French do you need both or do you need one um if you need both then it becomes

8:32 more difficult but usually you would end up with one one or the other um so

8:37 beyond just having a page that's translated you need targeting for both of those pages as well um and you you do

8:44 the same thing per region also with the keyword

8:49 itself the the type the the way it's written is very different so if in English a keyword is I don't know

8:56 negotiation training it's not going to be the same if you do it in Portuguese or in Chinese the format will be

9:02 different so you can just go into chat GPT and say translate this into 100 languages you have to have someone who

9:08 can verify if that is the keyword that people use to search for the service

9:14 okay so is there any specific keyword research tool you use or it's more common sense I really like mang gouls so

9:23 it I don't know if it's uh well known abroad but in the UK I know a few companies that use mang ghouls it gives

9:30 you a really it's never really accurate but it gives you a good overview of the trends of each keyword and you can even

9:37 drill down to region so something that's really useful in the UK is you can filter by like counties or regions so

9:44 you can do West Midlands so you can expand your search and you can do that in for every single country pretty much

9:52 every single country you can imagine with mangals so that would be my recommendation and it is multilingual as

9:57 well yes yeah very good too yeah okay now uh when optimizing for uh

Issues with Automatic Content Translation

10:05 multiple language so choosing keywords uh with translating keywords is a bad

10:11 idea is automatic translation of the content also a bad idea or how does it

10:16 well it depends because SEO is obviously done on a landing page level not a domain level so for pages that you're

10:23 not using to to move the needle to bring in Revenue you can trans you can bulk

10:30 translate those but for the pages the commercial Pages or the important informative content you have to bring

10:37 someone in um I would recommend using AI because it's very good and it's getting better every day but you need that human

10:44 element to fact check um because there is no way it's never accurate and it's

10:50 never because there's two versions there's translation and then there's transcreation transc creation is when

10:57 you actually make the content appropriate for that region using their analogies their wording um so it's it's

11:05 important to have a a healthy mix and kind of have a bit of critical thinking with how you're doing it but the way we

11:12 put it into compartments is if this page doesn't matter for us we can bul translate or even the Google plug-in you

11:19 know just if people need to understand what's going on but a commercial page I would never ever do Google translate or

11:26 just chat GPT translate you you have to put and the work for those now now how do you handle content

Content Translation and Localization Strategies

11:34 translation and localization at a scale is there I mean AI is a big one um if you

11:42 have a good system if you do the the start with AI then it goes through a a

11:48 human translator to check and make sure that everything's correct um if you if

11:54 you're doing it at scale as in say hundreds of thousands of pages then you

11:59 would need to use AI you would need to use things like zapier to um I'm sure everyone uses it now to make your life a

12:06 little bit easier um and to automate that process because there's no way you're doing it manually so usually if

12:14 it's something that has hundreds of thousands of pages you you just do a an

12:20 automated system and then you check the manual checks have to happen and then you check them in bulk based on the

12:27 importance so we do tier one two and three regions and the tiers are broken

12:32 into how much search volume there is and what the conversion intent is for each region so obviously the thing that's

12:38 going to bring you the most money has to get the most attention and that's how we do it that process is a lot longer but

12:45 the the automation obviously doesn't take a long time okay let's talk a little bit more

Cultural Nuances in SEO

12:50 about languages and of course you mentioned culture is also important when it comes to International suu now Beyond

12:56 keywords how do uh cultural nuan's effect at Su strategy that is such an overlooked area

13:05 for me at least because people it starts with translating I um brought this up at

13:11 the Indo conference that um KFC did a campaign and their slogan is finger

13:18 looking good and then China replicated it one for oneto one translation and it

13:24 ended up being you will eat all your fingers or something really weird like that so that is a really good example of

13:31 how right so you you would think they would check and do a little bit of trans creation but they didn't and that

13:38 obviously it's never really that bad but it happens um so that that's a really

13:45 important bit that you need to take into account then culture in terms of the people that you're targeting so you put

13:53 them into groups um so I compartmentalize what I feel and

14:00 obviously what research shows is the cultural behavior of each region so European countries would be more similar

14:07 to each other um then you've got the africas you've got Middle East um you've got Central Asia you got southeast Asia

14:15 all of those regions have their own culture right so you have to put them into what kind of people are they so for

14:21 example uh a lot of the Indian population they they're very family

14:27 oriented so you know I was saying in the beginning of our call that that the culture is so friendly and amazing and

14:33 welcoming you have to use that information and make sure that your

14:38 content is to their liking so again if you're doing a negotiation course or

14:44 something along the lines and you're trying to cater to the Indian population you would make sure that the way that

14:51 the training is structured or the way that you use the wording on that page is

14:56 interesting to them so if I'm from India and I'm very family oriented and I really care about um a solution that

15:04 makes us both happy for example in corporate negotiation training I need to deliver that thought to people if you're

15:12 trying to sell to an American a lot of the time so again I want to say that I'm not generalizing but this is just some

15:19 examples that we've picked up is that for them it's more about Capital so the

15:26 you know the No No splitting the difference solution so I take it all kind of thing so you have to keep that

15:32 in mind as well and there's so much there's so many countries and each place has its own little unique Nuance so if

15:40 you do want to do some research on different demographics you can use Google Scholar uh Google Scholar is has

15:48 been publicly available for many years and you can find market research on uh

15:54 purchasing behavior of many different countries so they usually compare it as they do to US dollar so it's country

16:01 versus America but we a lot of us know what Americans are like so it's quite helpful to see the difference right

16:09 right right so and is how do search Behavior varies between markets like us

16:15 UK and Asia I understand the family how does search uh Behavior varies that's a good

16:23 one so UK US um in the UK there's a lot more of the informative side so yeah

16:31 I've noticed that in the UK it's how to where to why is this the best why is this in the US it's very factual and

16:39 revenue driven so again like the the capitalist mindset so it would be um how

16:45 the value of your car goes up X amounts if you service it every year so that kind of title would be a lot more useful

16:53 uh Americans are quite a lot more to the point so they want the biggest the best deal

16:59 uh and and very quickly so it would be next day 24hour in the UK people tend to

17:05 think a little bit more of what they want to buy so you you have to be more patient with the purchasing process with

17:10 them so the content is usually a little bit longer but it's a bit more

17:18 informative okay now many Brands struggle with href Lang tax can you

17:24 break down the best practices um so to be honest atra flang if you're doing it

17:30 manually that's when it gets really tricky but I know that well most websites are built on WordPress Magento

17:37 Shopify strappy all the the main ones that we know and all of them have very

17:44 comprehensive um International tools so the popular ones are WordPress

17:49 multilanguage on WordPress we've got uh poly Lang and we've got weak lot those are the three main ones for WordPress

17:56 and all of the most other major CMS platforms they all have their own tools

18:03 so if HF flang was quite scary before it's completely automated now so you

18:10 really don't have to worry too much about the manual uh implementation of it if you do

18:17 decide to do it manually so there are tools like atraf flang Builder where you can build out an atra flang sit map so I

18:23 would say to save you some time and I mean nobody should do it manually if you

18:29 do decide to then I I don't know why you would ever do that um you would have to

18:34 use a tool but you have to make sure that you follow standard practice so

18:40 obviously you have to have each variation of the other language plus itself what that means I know that

18:46 sounds completely confusing but say if you've got um the agency Insider

18:53 show.com and then you want to go into five different countries and your

18:59 homepage will have the the code will have itself so agency insider.com then you would havein or SL

19:08 slz SL this all of those so every single URL has to reference the other version

19:15 of itself so that that is very important and if you're updating your URLs to have

19:22 more or less languages you have to make sure so the tool would do this for you but you have to make sure that that

19:28 reference is either removed or added because if it's not that's how things start to Break um but a lot of the time

19:35 with hreflang people also use if they're doing it manually the wrong language and

19:41 country codes so for example Ian UK so English for the UK but UK doesn't exist

19:48 as a as a region it's NGB so those little things and South Africa people

19:54 say sa but actually it's Za a um so but those are all publicly available online

20:01 if you Google ISO code list you have it all so there there's There is almost no

20:07 excuse for getting the the basic technical things wrong because it's it's all available um and um obviously I'm

20:13 sure you know but I've got a guide on my website it's free and easily accessible that lists all of this stuff um and you

20:20 can just do it step by step okay so when when we used to do HF FL I would say the

20:26 best website is go to apple.com and that's what I say yeah exactly yeah I

20:33 think it's um the the patience is quite an important factor and if you just sit there and you look and then you do that

20:39 and you follow the instructions you won't get it wrong the unpopular opinion but the technical the basic technical

20:46 side of things it's probably the easiest thing you will do with International SEO it's the the slightly softer skills and

20:53 then the expansion that gets really difficult but getting it right now especially 2025 is not going to be very

21:01 difficult to get it right yeah yeah let's talk a little bit about technical SEO for Global Outreach AS Global reach

Technical SEO for International Projects

21:07 as well now what are what other are the other key technical aspects for

21:13 international SE that brand overlooks the brands Overlook um I would

21:20 say the the indexing SL the no indexing of a lot of their pages so I see this a

21:26 lot on e-commerce websites cuz with e-commerce you don't you don't have to have every page indexed it's not just

21:33 for ecommer but a lot of the time Brands something that I said in the beginning about SEO being on a landing page level

21:40 instead of a domain level people don't really seem to do that a lot so they've

21:45 indexed every single page on the website it's wasting your craw budget it's wasting your time um this is not a

21:53 technical SEO B but every page is translated with with a A Team that that

21:59 Wast a lot of your resources uh and because you've got your atra flang if

22:04 you do decide to no index them you've got an atra flang pointing to no index page and that starts to cause a lot of

22:12 problems so that's another thing based on your previous question of um technical SEO mistakes and what's

22:18 overlooked if you've got an HRA flang pointing to a no index page that that tends to be quite a

22:26 confusing Factor so you need to make sure in the beginning don't don't index

22:32 pages that aren't serving you and if you do decide to no index after you hear me say it make sure you've just removed

22:38 the HRA fly as well right now how do you handle Geo

Geo Targeting vs Language Targeting

22:44 targeting versus language targeting so one way you said of course using the correct en or correct ISO codes so is

22:52 there another method yeah so if you're doing regions again it's all keyword Le

22:58 so what what drives our decision a lot of the time well 100% of the time is

23:04 what the search is like in all of those regions um we've sometimes seen that

23:10 really strange things happen in terms of visibility for Regions things that

23:15 shouldn't really make sense um this is more of a local example but it's still

23:21 it shouldn't really make sense um I worked with a local company and they were catering um to Southern England so

23:29 for Google it it does understand but Southern England is not something that people use in their metadata or their

23:36 content they would say like Bristol or or bath or something like that but we decided to to use Southern England as as

23:46 a key a keyword okay and and it seemed to work and then I thought well why

23:51 don't we do I don't know why why can't we do the same internationally as well

23:57 so and don't don't take this advice because I've got no no Theory to why it

24:05 works um um so if you if you want to do a regional targeting you have to see a

24:12 could it make sense I would do a bit of AB testing to be honest because sometimes if you don't do country

24:18 targeting but you do a whole region a big example would be Portuguese so

24:23 Brazil you call it the Portuguese Market which is Portugal and

24:29 Brazil they're they're not very close to each other but the language connects

24:34 them so that kind of targeting would work um if you're doing French as well so you can connect by country you can

24:41 connect by language um I wouldn't connect by continent I think that's a

24:47 bit large especially Africa you you won't say oh we're this in in Africa um

24:53 but again focus on the keyword volume so if if you will see if there's demand

25:00 because you will see the keyword research um and again mangl gives you Regional search so it'll be quite easy

25:07 to tell if there is demand or there isn't demand okay now uh how do you approach

Site Architecture for Multilingual Websites

25:14 site architecture for a multilingual websites I know they always all different people talking different

25:20 things so how do you what is your approach for that I mean it really it's not as complicated as a lot of people

25:27 make it out to be um you you follow the same practice you know you've got your

25:32 content clusters that support your target pages one thing that I would also

25:38 do is link informative content that's been translated into multiple versions

25:44 so this is something that people don't really do as much so if you've got a page in French and then you've got the

25:52 informative content in French Spanish and German link that all on the same

25:58 page page as well so you can Interlink content because you're showing Google that this is similar content it's

26:05 related to each other in multiple languages so all you're really doing is building a spider

26:10 web logically to help Google craw your site so that but again the structure

26:15 would vary for e-commerce or like a medical website for example but we would always do

26:22 commercial page then we'll possibly have some informative content or supporting cluster content so it just builds out a

26:29 little hierarchy and within that we're interlinking the different variations of

26:35 translated Pages um and I do want to just say one more thing that came into

26:40 my mind um in terms of the technical aspect is your best bet is to add all of

26:48 the pages all the variations via sitemap implementation that is the quickest way

26:54 that you're going to get all your pages crawled because they're all there so in instead of I've seen people have

26:59 different little sit maps all over the place have one sitap have all of those pages there then you can have all your

27:07 International versions referenced as quickly as possible okay now are IP direct is still

IP Redirects in SEO

27:14 a good strategy or they are outdated um it depends um I personally don't like

27:22 them that much because I so if you look at jeep.com um the car company

27:28 they do this really well so they do kind of have IP redirect but they so I'm

27:35 Googling Jeep India from the UK I can access Jeep India straight away but it

27:41 says looks like you're um searching from the UK would

27:47 you like to switch or would you like to stay on this version just pops up like the thing and that gives me a choice do

27:55 I want to stay or do I want to go for example what if my dad lives in India and I want to buy him a Jeep I I should

28:01 be able to access whatever I want to access um so I I don't think it's a good

28:08 idea uh I worked with a website it was um part of Manchester Airport it was

28:13 like a big parking website and they did IP redirect you would not be able to access

28:20 it would even override your VPN like it was really intense um you can't access

28:26 anywhere other than where you're sat so that just seemed to me a little bit

28:31 counterintuitive if you do it in the medical field like home care for example

28:36 say if you're looking for home care for your parents in a different country and

28:42 said so you you need to give people a choice so in my opinion it's not very user

28:48 friendly um be or you can have those little popups say I I see that you're searching from this country do you want

28:54 to stay or do you want to go um so and there's a lot of technical issues that come with that as

29:01 well so if you do goip redirects Google craws are all done from Silicon value

29:08 so it it just technically doesn't make so much sense um at least to me from

29:14 from my I'm not saying that but obviously I'm right in this but logically speaking you should give

29:21 people the choice to search whatever they want wherever they want um and not also this is more than but withholding

29:29 resultss in different countries based on where they're from so you're kind of manipulating what people see um which I

29:36 don't really agree with so that that's how I feel about it yeah so uh just a

29:43 disclosure we do use IP redirects on our website but not manipulating but the

29:48 pure reason is our offering and packages in the US market are slightly different price than the Indian

29:55 prices so the whole thing doesn't work that way so yeah I guess yeah it depends

30:01 on on what you do and why you do it it's like I said with um it goes beyond SEO

30:07 you know it it company structure what you're targeting but I guess it it's the type of websites you work with um so for

30:15 you guys it makes so much sense for some home care company it wouldn't really make sense so because for us it's the

30:22 local number the India has the different number somebody reaches the US number from India so yeah yeah that makes sense

Subdomains vs Subdirectories for SEO

30:30 yeah now uh what are your thoughts on using subdomains versus Sub directories

30:36 for different languages and regions I always say it depends that's like my my default answer but it it does

30:44 in fact depend uh on your company structure size of your website so so I I

30:51 like um the subfolder structure it it is it makes a for most makes a lot of sense

30:59 uh for most websites it's the easiest to manage it gets the quickest results um

31:05 but subdomains so you said subdomains and subfolders right so subdomains are

31:11 used a lot with larger websites so for example if you go to hid Global

31:17 accessibility they use subdomains to break up their blog page so to break up

31:24 parts of their website and the reason being is that they've got different managements across the world so they've

31:30 got a whole team somewhere else managing the the informative section it would be

31:35 the same for uh International SEO if you're breaking up into countries do they have different management because

31:41 subfolders all managed on One dashboard larger companies don't like

31:46 that a lot of the time because they want autonomy so they're they're different departments want autonomy

31:54 um with the SEO aspect of the value the

32:00 subdomain still passes value throughout all of the different subdomains but the

32:06 subfolder it it does it better um but like I said you you have to have two two

32:14 parts of your brain working in this because it's not all about SEO it doesn't mean that if if they if your um

32:23 client says we can't go for a subfolder it's not the end of the world it doesn't

32:28 mean that your SEO strategy won't work it just means you'll have to adapt and do it a little bit differently so the

32:34 example I brought with the uh client with 67 websites they were brought into

32:40 a subfolder structure but that took a lot of convincing and a lot of explaining why

32:48 why this will work and it was sometimes I wonder if it was even worth the pain of trying to like fight about how what

32:55 should be the right way to do it so if you if you've got many many pages on

33:01 your website and if there is a little bit of friction about bringing everything and

33:07 consolidating everything you can go for the subdomain it's a strong signal um

33:12 obviously each has its pros and cons subfolder for example you will need a CDN so that that's a drawback of the

33:19 subfolder is obviously the the subdomain and the um country code top level

33:25 domains very strong local signals don't need a CDN so the server location is not

33:31 relevant for subfolder you have to have a CDN because if your server says in the

33:36 UK but you've got what's really far away New Zealand if you've got a subfolder in

33:42 New Zealand you you have to you can't just leave it all to to fate to decide how

33:47 long it will take to load so there's so many factors that I'm throwing at people

33:53 now but this is all that goes through our head when we're recommending things to people there is no one siiz F all for anybody

34:02 so if I say I prefer subfolder purely is because most of the clients that we've worked with end up

34:09 going for a subfolder structure when the time comes so like I said hid Global if

34:15 the time comes that we have to use subdomains or even country code top level domains then we will but we will

34:22 make sure that it's working perfectly for them okay now now uh what tools do you

34:29 swear by while doing an international Su the classics um so you've got the

34:36 semrush the HRS um site bulb I really like to use it's got a lot of features

34:42 it's kind of like screaming frog but I Cloud yeah yeah it's it's like um

34:49 screaming frog on steroids I would say um and it also gives you my favorite

34:54 thing is you can compare audits which is so good especially when you're doing a big International SEO project you're

35:00 like what what can go wrong and everything can go wrong and it can just tell you what might happen which is good

35:07 um all my keyword research tools um so I use I now use SE ranking for tracking uh

35:16 and rank watch so what I like to do is if you've noticed you know I use site

35:21 bulb and screaming frog I use SE ranking and rank watch so they're they do the same thing but slightly different

35:28 so with International SEO you want to get an aggregate of everything the tools are telling you and then make a decision

35:35 because they're they're all they're all wrong but you have to get an average of that um and a lot of it some a tool

35:43 that's often overlooked is just looking like with your eyes and analyzing um

35:49 because over Reliance On Tools can be quite dangerous um so we do a lot of

35:56 manual work as well um especially for the language aspect but for technical um

36:02 side bul all the way yes now let's talk a little bit about

International SEO for Agencies

36:08 International SEO for agencies now many agencies struggle with the scaling

36:14 International SEO services so what's your advice um

36:20 so good question uh what is my advice I think kind of just doing

36:27 this is probably going to be such disappointing advice but start small you know you can start with uh expanding

36:33 into one country but with every expansion you learn a little bit more um I would also

36:40 say do free overviews for people if you're trying to scale first um

36:46 depending on the size of the agency obviously but if you're introducing the service people get quite skeptical

36:52 because International SEO is really expensive and I'm not saying it shouldn't be it should be very expensive

36:59 um very labor intensive but I would say if someone comes to you with

37:04 International SEO questions don't withhold information this could be a bit counterintuitive because I've noticed

37:11 SEO people they say oh well I'm not going to tell you everything until you pay me or something like that which I I

37:19 don't agree with so anyone who ever asks me anything about SEO I give that

37:24 information to them for free so we we never charge for any of

37:30 that the reason is that no one's going to do it themselves uh bless you no

37:35 one's going to do it themselves uh you can tell them and they'll say yeah wow okay great I'll go home and do it and

37:42 then two months later they're like I'm not going to do it can you do it and that um someone who told me that in the

37:48 beginning when I first started was fairy um fairy from um what is it click

37:54 intelligence yes or search intelligence yes that's the one um he he said so when

38:01 I did my first talk in Vietnam I was getting advice from all of the really impressive

38:06 people and he said give all your information away for free because no one will do it themselves and no one will do

38:12 better than you even if they learn everything that you've just said um and that is the reason well part of the

38:18 reasons why fair is so successful on LinkedIn and as a business person he gives it all away for free he never Gat

38:25 keeps he never says things like oh well he me and then I I'll give you my secrets or something um so that that is

38:32 your way in um you only really need one lucky break with International SEO to

38:37 then get a good review and then continue doing it more and more right right right

38:43 and I Absol absolutely resonate with the idea that more you give free I mean I've

38:48 seen people go to the conferences take notes but I I hardly believe that in fact some of the time we don't go back

38:54 and Implement half of P somebody to do it so yes because you're a business person and

38:59 you know your time is valuable and someone else will probably do their expert field better yeah yes yeah now uh

Pricing Strategies for International SEO

39:08 what are the best pricing strategies for international SEO Consulting I know you mentioned it's expensive but what are

39:14 the best pricing strategies well the way we do it is it depends on how many countries you're

39:20 trying to get into it depends where you are in your journey um so let's say if

39:26 you're kind of established already so we we price on a by country basis so if you

39:34 want to expand into five countries versus 67 countries the price is going

39:39 to be very different it also depends on if you want local links if you would so

39:45 the volume of what you're delivering and we also understand the

39:50 company's Revenue so if someone is selling rubber bands online or if

39:55 they're selling gold vaults in the Swiss Alps they're going to be um they're

40:01 going to be priced very differently so um obviously you can't charge a an

40:07 e-commerce website selling rubber bands £1 155,000 a month but you can if it's a

40:12 gold vault company so you have quite um have a bit of critical thinking um I I

40:19 don't believe in just set pricing structures as an agency that's why our website doesn't have like a a pricing

40:25 page because you have to speak speak to the person see what they want um a lot of the time International projects start

40:32 with just a a big technical audit which is a one-off price um we do oneoff

40:38 audits as well just to so they're very extensive they're 150 hours long uh but

40:47 it's it's not offered to everyone and that is very expensive as well but the

40:53 the value PE people don't care about how much it costs they care about how much value it brings so if you can if you can

41:00 explain the value of what you're about to do then money is is never an issue agree now uh how should agencies

Pitching International SEO to Clients

41:09 pitch International Su to clients who thinks they don't need it well I like to take the slightly

41:18 aggressive approach and usually I say you can't afford not to do this because if you want to expand um

41:27 they they would say something like well we we want to expand into India America

41:33 and Mexico and I say why do you have why do you want to expand there and they say

41:38 well we we just want to have a presence there and then you can say something

41:43 like if you expand into these countries without having any understanding of how much revenue it will bring to your

41:49 business you're going to lose x amount so you you it's all when you're speaking

41:55 to decision makers you have to speak their language and their language is money so you have to explain how much

42:02 are you going to lose how much are you going to make and you can figure you can have an approximation doesn't have to be

42:08 an exact number you can say if we get you into these countries in the top

42:15 three or your service cost or your product cost x amount you can quite

42:21 easily figure out the approximate range of Revenue that it will bring to their company or how much money they lose if

42:28 they don't go for this um so you can say you've got 15,000 searches a month in

42:33 Germany for this keyword that you're trying to sell it's going to be relatively straightforward to rank you

42:40 for this you're missing out on half a million pounds and then they're oh and then you

42:48 say well this strategy will cost you x amount which is not half a million pounds it's a lot less um and all of a

42:54 sudden it just clicks with them um but if you if you come in with the mindset

43:00 that you're truly adding value with SEO which we are um I know there's a lot of

43:05 skepticism from companies because there's a lot of you know scammy seos people think that we're just trying to

43:10 take their money but if you show them how much money they can make then it's no conversation there's there's never

43:17 concern they say how how do I start like we need to start yesterday um so there

Language-Based Pricing for SEO

43:22 yeah now uh one followup question now now let's say if uh there are two things

43:28 when people decide okay I want to have my International Su for an English website or an Spanish website so Spanish

43:35 is not a language which is just spoken in Spain so the pricing when you say you

43:41 charge byy per country is this valid when you are talking about languages as well uh well kind of so if it's things

43:48 like Spain or Portugal Brazil so similar language again we this would be an audit

43:55 type of situation before we decide the pricing structure um sometimes the audit

44:01 doesn't have to be a full-on 150 hour audit um just as long as we we're fair

44:07 to the client and we're fair to ourselves with how much time it's going to take so there's no um we we don't

44:13 really see a point of like I don't know overcharging or like really focusing on the financials for for us we just want

44:20 to deliver the most value so if I if I see we're targeting Spanish as a

44:26 language still you're going to have to have multiple subfolders because a lot of people speak Spanish around the world so

44:32 we'll have to see what subfolders we need um and what dialects as well because Spanish is spoken differently

44:40 and then we we see how much work that will take right and then and then we decide so it's all how much time we're

44:47 spending on it um and how difficult it is to get there no now of course because

44:52 a lot of people speak Spanish in the US and lot of they say okay I on the

44:57 English website as well as the Spanish op SEO but it's more focused towards the

45:03 US so does your approach changes while not if somebody just

45:08 optimizing for let's say Portugal and Spain and Brazil and somebody's saying us just the languages but for the US

45:15 audience yeah of course because there's um you you can have English speakers so

45:21 English speakers in the US and you can have Spanish speakers in the US that's very very common

45:28 that's usually it would look like the agency insiders show.com

45:33 us and then slus um because you've got quite a big

45:39 Mexican population in the states so that is the the way it will look um a good

45:44 example um I haven't actually looked at how successful the strategy is but the breakdown on the website of white press

45:51 is quite decent so they do it by um white so everyone knows white press the Ling company um they do it quite well

45:59 with the language and Country in the URL so likeus esus um and then you target

46:06 the demographic that way um that's where AI comes in quite well so you can have a

46:12 little you can even have a dynamic page if you want um if you look at the search volume if there's a lot of search for

46:19 Spanish and English you can have multiple variations of that page if you link them together make it as easy as

46:25 possible for people to see what they want um then it is quite

Overview of International SEO

46:31 straightforward now now let's about International AO the link building part so let's say and also before that one

46:39 more question to what you we were talking now let's say uh if a client

46:44 comes to you and he and for a language which you do not have expertise on how do you go Ahad doing the international

46:52 Su for that l so we if there is ever a time where I

46:58 don't feel that we can deliver to the best potential for the client we don't

47:04 take the job so I I want to be very realistic and I think um I urge everyone

47:10 to be that way um because we're we're all learning and we always want to deliver the best of the best right um so

47:18 if I'll I'll get on to if I do feel like I can do it but first if if I don't if I

47:23 have a look and it's something you know you get intuition and you're like I'm really not sure I could or I want to get

47:30 involved it gives me anxiety or something like that then you you could recommend it to other people so there's

47:36 never an issue it doesn't make you a worst specialist if you say no if you're not sure uh because that is your

47:43 reputation that's the client I I would assume that everyone cares about the people they do work for so we would

47:50 never take it if it's something that we can't deliver because a lot of the time I'm quite um aggressive and saying we we

47:57 will get you there if I don't feel that way or I feel there's too many blockers then we walk away if I see that it's

48:05 slightly difficult I've not done this before but I can pull it off you you bring in a team so you you always the

48:12 beautiful thing about LinkedIn is that you can find the best of the best and everyone

48:18 wants to help so if there's a very um I don't know what language to use as

48:24 an example uh maybe some Chinese dialect or something we would bring specialists

48:29 in that can trans create there's a lot of research that goes into it and also

48:36 bringing a community to get advice as well so that's something that we like to do as well we can get a lot of opinions

48:44 from different people to make the best strategy and to bring it to life um and

48:49 we always so bringing Google Scholar back into the conversation you can do a

48:54 lot of research on the language on the culture on the purchasing behavior of people in that country and people that

49:01 speak that language um it doesn't just go for countries that have um unique

49:06 languages it goes for everything so I'm hoping that maybe in 10 15 years I would

49:12 have read up on every single country every single language um I'm I'm only in

49:18 the beginning of the journey but it it it is really interesting as well um I think the more we know about other

49:24 cultures and countries the better Specialists we become come especially International seos right now my other

Link Building for International SEO

49:30 question was how do you do about the link building when it comes to National for different languages or

49:37 region have to have local links have to have a very strong um local link building um strategy so that's where the

49:44 local SEO localization and international SEO comes in uh you have to ideally have

49:51 a local expert not just a link Builder who can sell you links in different places

49:57 a local person in that country who can build you high quality links without

50:02 links you're not going to get very far and they have to be very relevant this is Mission Impossible a lot of the time

50:09 but if you're trying to go after quite a a relevant keyword try to get a link so

50:17 a it's called digital profiling um you get a back link not just for your url or

50:22 your brand name but for that exact keyword on a very high value public it's really hard but one of those links

50:31 if you get um I don't know let's take an example of bathroom wall panels for whatever reason you're selling them in

50:37 the UK and Mexico or something if you get a publication that's don't know

50:43 70D and if you can get a bathroom wall panels anchor text on this

50:49 publication then that is like a celebration so you you you want to try

50:56 to get as many Links of that typee especially when you're starting out cuz how strong a signal is that if you're

51:01 getting exact anchors on high value Publications um that but imagine if you

51:07 have it for 60 70 countries so then you have to prioritize because you can't build for 60 countries at a time

51:16 right now how do you uh of course uh there a lot of things when people talk

Google Algorithm and Language Differences

51:22 about the Google algorithm Works differently for a English language a different ly for some other language or

51:28 let's say it is easier to manipulate or change or play with the algorithm when

51:36 it comes to different languages how true is this I mean it I I'm not sure if um if

51:43 it is that easy to be honest I I know that search is the best in like the the

51:50 the west and by the best I mean there's most of us situated around these areas

51:56 um I know search has gone downhill altogether but the English search is the

52:01 strongest so if you start googling things in Singapore in Mexico in Russia

52:07 on Google it it's not it's not anywhere near I know people complain about our

52:13 search but it it's not been taken care of in other places so I wouldn't say I

52:19 wouldn't say manipulating is the right word to use in my opinion I would

52:25 say that people if you make an effort in those countries you will probably rank

52:31 very quickly uh because there's yeah so I might have said manipulative is wrong

52:37 what I meant is that which is the easiest language or country to rank

52:44 in no idea um probably the one where there's the

52:50 least SEO people um which one that is um but we've had um random L this is I

52:57 don't know why because there's not that many SEO people in Morocco but Morocco is really hard to rank for but mainly

53:05 because Google pulls other results into the Moroccan search because no one's

53:10 doing it but it's very it's things like Harvard and things like so you it's so

53:15 hard to outrank them but no I I don't know which one's the easiest to rank for but if you find out let me

Rapid Fire Round

53:22 know with this we come to the end of our show and uh it's just a quick fire round

53:29 uh where I'm going to ask you some questions you're going to just say first what comes in your mind are you ready

53:34 okay yes yeah all right one your tool you can't live without my gold okay the

53:40 hardest Market to optimize for SAS hardest Market okay yeah uh biggest

53:48 SEO trend for 2025 you think uh AI

53:54 optimization okay one word to describe Google algorithm

54:01 terrible your favorite SEO conference to speaking no

54:12 comment goodness yeah no no com okay

54:18 okay okay what one final piece of advice you would give to marketers looking to

Final Advice

54:23 go glob this is not a rapid question yeah go glob um God my heart rate has gone up so much

54:29 from those quick fires um okay to go Global um my advice

54:36 would be just just go for it don't a lot of Mark especially the ones getting into it for the first time are really scared

54:43 they think I have to know everything before I even touch a global SEO strategy you learn by doing and there is

54:51 no way you will mess things up that much that you'll never do it again so so just be brave your research and try make

54:58 mistakes because that's how you get better okay now uh where can people

Connect with Kira

55:04 connect with you and learn more about your work uh LinkedIn would be lovely um just my my name Kira corova um and you

55:12 can go to my website which is Diary of an seo.com okay so that's a wrap on today's episode

55:19 huge thanks to K for sharing such insightful strategies much bless you and

55:25 if you find Value in this make sure to subscribe to the agency Insider show and leave us a riew until next time keep

55:31 optimizing and keep growing see you soon and thank you so much bye