Kira Internaltional SEO
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[00:00:00]
Kira: Straight off the bat, international SEO is when you're trying to expand into multiple countries or languages within the same country.
I think that's why international SEO is quite untouched. So not, not so many people really get into it because there's so much that can go wrong.
Olga: Hi everyone, it's Olga Zarr from SEO Sly. This is my SEO podcast. It has a new name and now it's called. SEO podcast by Olga Zarr. So today I have a guest, , and I met her at, SEO Mastery Summit in Saigon. , Kira, how are you doing?
Kira: I'm
Olga: What's up?
Kira: yeah, good. I wish I was back in Saigon, otherwise very good.
Olga: Yeah. Like, did you enjoy the weather in Saigon back then? Or was it like too hot for you?
Kira: It was, I mean, when I was there, I was like, Oh God, it's so hot. And now that I'm back in the UK, I'm like, I kind of wish I was back in Saigon.
Olga: Yeah. Same thing here. Yeah. Okay. In case someone doesn't know you, can you [00:01:00] briefly introduce yourself? I think you will do it in the best way. And yeah, tell me, what are you up to in, in SEO?
Kira: Yeah, well, my name is Kira. Um, nice to meet everyone who I haven't met before. And I'm the founder of Diary of an SEO. So I'm a specialized SEO agency owner, and I myself focus on international SEO. So that goes from technical to just country keyword research. And to the most important thing that I'd love to talk about today is the cultural nuance in international SEO as well.
Olga: Yeah this last part is, I think, something that's, A lot of people, a lot of agencies do not even think about, so I am, happy we'll be talking about it. Okay, but, one thing that, I was very surprised by was when I learned, like, how old you are versus How much you have achieved, because like with your, with the number of things you have achieved and the company you have, I would expect you to be at least like 35, [00:02:00] but tell the audience how old you are actually.
Kira: I'm almost 35, I'm 26, so I'm, I'm getting on a bit. But yeah, I, I haven't been doing SEO all that long. So compared to, you know, my absolute idols. So Olga, like yourself. So I used to read your work before I even knew what SEO actually was, which is a little bit weird. crazy thing. So I'm, I'm starstruck. I'm going to be talking about it all day today that I'm on this podcast with you.
But yeah, I've been doing SEO for three years in total, maybe a tiny bit over three years. And my agency has been running just over a year and we have accelerated really, really quickly just because I'm very obsessive, I think.
Olga: I know a thing or two about being obsessive, so
Kira: Yeah.
Olga: okay. Okay, so I thought it was, around like six years at least, so three years.
Kira: Hmm.
Olga: really.
Kira: Yeah. I'm still a baby.
Olga: So, it's like, let's think what will happen in like 10 years. Who you [00:03:00] will be.
Kira: Yeah. I hope.
Olga: assuming SEOs, assuming SEO still exists.
Kira: exactly. I, I hope I'm doing this because it is, I mean, I'm sure you can share the same opinion that SEO is such a great thing to get into. And when you do it with a passion, you get much better results as well. So yeah, I don't see myself switching anytime soon.
Olga: Yeah, totally. I think like, If you don't have passion for SEO, you will simply, I think, go crazy and you won't be able to like be in that, , for a long time. , before we get into that topic, , tell me how big your team is and like, , are they spread across the world or are they based where you are?
Kira: So my team has very recently gone from nobody to five people. So almost overnight, um, and everyone's all over the world. So I've got one person who is in Thailand, one person who's in Bulgaria. I've got a couple of people here in the UK and I've got freelancers, um, and full time staff in the Philippines as [00:04:00] well.
So we're all international, which I guess makes sense with the international SEO
Olga: That's, what I was going to say. , okay, cool. . let's, start with the topic. And the most basic question I could ask is what is international SEO? Like, how does it different from, let's say, normal SEO?
Kira: Yeah. Good question. Straight off the bat, international SEO is when you're trying to expand into multiple countries or languages within the same country. So there's terms like international localization and whatnot, but the simple way to think about it is if you've got a business and say you want to expand into five different countries, Germany, Italy, U.
S., Morocco, something else. That would be international SEO. So how do you get your brand and your business website out to those people who are looking for you in those countries and what do you need to consider before you start rolling those things out?
Olga: Okay, let's say I am this And I want to expand exactly [00:05:00] into, those countries. How do I get started? I contact you, but what do you do?
Kira: Yeah, that's a really awesome question as well, because I've had this recently. So a company, well, say you're the company, you come to me and you say, Kira, I really want to sell in Spain, Germany, and France. My first question will be, why do you think that? Why, why do you think you want to sell in those countries?
And usually the answer is, well, our CEO wants to, or, oh, some of the people that buy from us say they're from those countries. So that's the first, usually it's the first mention of caution. So with SEO, we would do the research to tell you, should you be going in those countries? Or should you go somewhere else?
And also to make it more complicated, do you enter those markets in English or do you enter them in the native language? So it's all search driven. So that research phase is really, really important because a business can lose lots of money if they're like, I want to go into 150 countries, but you're not bringing in revenue from them.
So that's the most important part of it.[00:06:00]
Olga: Okay. Okay. So what could be like other reasons why you would say to a business that no, you shouldn't go into those countries. Maybe some examples from the past.
Kira: Yeah, so,
Olga: that you will, sell better in those other countries.
Kira: well, usually, so we had, um, it's actually the case study that I used in Saigon. So these people were already in 68 countries with different websites. So it was a whole thing that 68 different websites. And they were one of the countries that I remember is Morocco. So they were trying to target Morocco in English.
So first of all, there was no search for their service in Morocco. Second of all, the search, whatever search there was, wasn't in English, it was in French. So that would usually be something when I'd say, you don't really go into this now, because with SEO, I'm sure you'd agree, you want to maximize ROI as quickly as possible for the client to show them that this strategy is bringing money in, and then you can [00:07:00] expand into the slightly smaller countries.
So not only would we say, maybe don't. If we want to go into this right now, we can say, A, don't go into it at all, or let's go into these huge five money making countries, and then we'll go into those smaller, more niche countries. So it's, it's all kind of a process. You have to strategize quite carefully, especially when, say, budgets aren't, like, like, they're not printing money, which not many people are.
Mm hmm. Mm
Olga: Yeah, it makes sense. , okay. Let's say that, , we decided that, yeah, we are going to expand into those. I will listen to your, advice. How do I, based on what do I decide if I want to target English or a different, language in, the case of countries where like both or three, languages or even more are used.
Kira: Yeah, so
Olga: official language is something else, but English is mostly used and used.
Kira: Yeah, God, it's complicated, isn't it? So it's all search driven. Honestly, I mean, no matter how many times I've done this, every [00:08:00] time a new thing comes up, I'm like, Oh my God, what is happening here? So it's search driven. So we, everything we ever do is based on how many people searching for it, in what language, for what type of keywords as well.
So again, everything, the end KPI is to drive, Results. And the results are obviously net revenue to the business. So we would see, we would do our keyword research and we would do it in all of those languages. So I'll just use an example, Canada. So Canada is bilingual because Quebec is like a French influenced state.
So we would do the research in French and in English to see if there is any scope. So we actually did a project for one of the banks, um, In the UK, who are trying to break into the Canadian market, and we had to see is there actual demand in French or in English, but as we all know, predominantly, search is actually in English, so a lot of the time, even when you search in your mother tongue.
Sometimes English results will come up as well. So in that case, we need to see, is it worth going after? Is there a search? Is [00:09:00] there conversion intent? And if it's a yes to all of those, then we'd probably go into it. There are cases where we'd actually have an English and like a native language page as well, which is an added layer of, of like just brain pain.
Olga: Yeah, this is what I wanted to ask about. Let's say that the use of language and, , the, volume of searches is evenly distributed, like 33 percent into three languages. Do you, in that case create three pages for one country in three different languages? Or you'd rather have, like, just English or just
Kira: Yeah, that, that is a great question. I, I mean, I usually do not. So the reason being, when you spread yourself so thin, you lose sight of actual conversions because the reality is you will not convert exactly the same in those three languages. So then you take the extra step and you have to do some cultural research and consumer trends in those countries, and do a bit of A B testing as well.
So situations like that. Usually, I mean, [00:10:00] to have everything exactly the same in search volume is quite rare, but if it does happen, our deciding factor is actually that cultural nuance, which I'll talk about a bit later, and the conversion intent.
Olga: Yeah, okay, interesting. But let's say, I have , an English website, , but like some of my offers, some of the, pages are for, specifically for the US, for the UK, for Australia, Canada, and some other English speaking countries, , would you recommend having, like, a, a Five different, , language versions, even though all would be in English, maybe with some variants and having, the location indicated, or this could create too much like cannibalization.
Kira: God, these are really good questions and I somehow I realized that there's an example for all of these. So someone that I work with, uh, now they convert classic cars to electric and they had this question as well. So they wanted to expand into multiple countries, but they were [00:11:00] already ranking really well.
In all of those countries because the competition is well, there's not much of it really Then you have to see so like I said, sometimes you appropriate the content to whatever the country is But I would always say Pick the ones that would really move the needle, because a lot of the time you can get a single URL in English to rank in those locations as well, depending on the competitive landscape of those pages.
So it is really never a cookie cutter type of technique. So when people come and they say, Oh, what do you think? So what I say now might not be the case if someone else comes to me and says, well, look at my website. So it's really, I think that's why international SEO is quite untouched. So not, not so many people really get into it because there's so much that can go wrong.
Plus there's so much uncertainty and there's so much nuance every time.
Olga: Yeah. And you have to make the decision and there could be like different, you can. Implements different, it, in a very different ways and basically all of them could potentially work [00:12:00] depending
Kira: Exactly.
Olga: assuming that the idea is, like correct from the SEO standpoint.
okay, . Another hypothetical situation, , I am expanding into other countries and should I use like the local domain with like TLD with like, , which is correct for the country or should I just go with dot com slash or use a subdomain?
Basically, these are the three most popular, , ways. Which ones? Do you think work best or is it like always dependent on the situation?
Kira: Yeah, that, I always, I, I'm annoying myself that I keep saying it depends, but it really, it does depend on, on so many things. So my preferred method is subfolders. And that is purely because of the types of clients that I've worked with. The, the, The management that goes into it and the, the output. So, you [00:13:00] know, you have to submit the hreflang tags in one of the three options that you have.
So from that perspective, from like a, an SEO user, so when we're building something for a website. For us, it's always the best option to do subfolders, so that will be example. com slash ru or example. com slash cn. So you, you have each country in a little folder. But, And everyone in SEO will hate to hear this.
It's not always about SEO in a company. In which case, if it's for example, on the sneaker company, so they, they don't have a single management. So they've got obviously franchises across the globe, but there's different management in each of those countries. And people usually don't like the subfolder structure when they have separate management in multiple countries.
And no matter what, what you recommend to them, they won't want to do it because they, they have teams all over the world who need to manage their own dashboards and you just can't have that structure. So in that case, we usually go for either the [00:14:00] country's specific domain. or just a top level domain so they can autonomously manage that on their end.
So we do have that a lot. And we have to remember that it's not always about SEO for larger corporations, especially, uh, and from an SEO perspective, sub folders are the most useful because you consolidate all of your authority in that sub folder. So if you've got, you know, like a sub domain, That, that does
Olga: Uh huh.
Kira: the authority a little bit and what we want.
So 99 percent of the time, you know, people want to, you know, get their feet on the ground. They're like, come on, launch it, do it quick as possible. I want to see returns. And the quickest way to do it is to do it by subfolder. And then if you're for link building, so a nuance with link building is that separate domains are better for that because you can build country specific links into those.
But you can also build it into the subfolder page. So, but it does seem like it's the most versatile structure, uh, at least out of the ones that I've worked with, I, I would prefer, and I would recommend it as [00:15:00] well.
Olga: Okay. Because my next question was supposed to be about SEO benefits from both of those, implementations. And if I were to choose, I would probably choose a different top level domain. And, And I was wondering, your subfolder structure, your, recommended solution, , have you ever, you probably have, how popular, how often does it happen that those in , the case of your clients, that , one website with like, , languages, set up in this way that they have cannibalization issues or the wrong page is ranking based on my , agency experience, where, I worked a little bit on that. , at like Procter and Gamble websites, there were like tons of everything. And very often, this was like a total, mess. So, , does it happen? How often, how you fix that? Thanks.
Kira: It happens. Um, yeah, yeah. I wish [00:16:00] I could say no, it never happens, but it does happen. And sometimes. We don't understand why, so usually cannibalization happens when either there's some sort of minor fault in the hreflang implementation, but also there doesn't have to be a fault at all.
Google can sometimes just decide that I want to show the Saudi Arabian page in the UK because it makes sense somehow. So in that case, we would always check. So one of the issues that I found, is when I check the actual structure of the pages. If you remove a page, cause you know, with hreflang, it's version of itself, plus all of its counterparts.
A lot of the time you remove pages. So when it's like a live project, you edit URLs, you remove them, you redirect them, and that can actually cause like a bit of turbulence in the structure. So I've seen that when we update URLs and remove them, sometimes we forget, you know, Oh, I should have. I should have put that back where it belongs.
I should have set the default. So it's, I mean, it's not always human error because we all know Google [00:17:00] has a mind of its own, but when this does happen, so the example of Saudi Arabia and the UK, that's unfortunately a real life example. What we did then is we assess the whole hreflang structure. We found a flaw in it.
We don't know if that's exactly what And then we built, so we updated content and then we built a lot of local links into it as well, and that fixes the problem. So it takes a long time though. It's not that you sit there, you know, for half an hour and you're like, Oh, I see the problem now. It takes a long, long time.
Uh, and sometimes Google doesn't change that either. So I had an example as well with, um, That was also part of my presentation with the Singapore ministry of foreign affairs. So I was trying to apply for a visa in the UK and I was getting the Indonesian application form. That was, that was their error.
But again, so that's why it's so important to check your hreflang tags, because in my case, so I'm a real life user that tried to do something and where the, you know, the hreflang faults stopped my progress in getting to where I want to go. [00:18:00] So I think it was in your presentation too, you told me about some government website, or all of us, and they had an issue with, um, I think something, and then you were like, yeah, and then I told them and they fixed it.
Olga: Yeah, they had like a test website live and it was like indexed. Yeah.
Kira: so they, it's funny when the, like, the big dogs make mistakes on their government websites, and we're like, hmm.
Olga: So which one is like a stronger, signal canonical or hreflang? Based on your experience, which one, yeah, you would say Google, will listen to.
Kira: Google never listens, um, but. If it has to, I mean, hreflang, a lot of the time, it, it would prefer the hreflang, because Google, you know, it, there's a higher chance of it ignoring the canonical, which happens all the time. But,
Yeah, so, so in, in my personal experience, I know not everyone has had the same one, but hreflang is usually the [00:19:00] stronger, um, Um, factor, because along with the hreflang, you've also usually got the linguistic aspects, the local links and whatnot.
So Google has gotten intelligent enough to actually differentiate that and choose the most relevant results, especially with all the algorithm updates, they're cracking down on irrelevant stuff coming up in search, which helps a lot with our, um, localization projects as well.
Olga: Okay. before we get into this, , aspect, , of like making, looking at the culture, not only the language. A lot of people, when they want to have another language, they simply like auto translate the website into other languages. And let's, not think about users. Just like Google and technical SEO.
Do you think Google can do it? will somehow treat that, website, , that translation, like in a different way? Will it be, like somehow deranked or like filtered or I wouldn't say penalized, probably that won't happen, but, , have you, noticed anything like that?[00:20:00]
Kira: So, so you mean when you translate content across to different countries, if you,
Olga: Yeah, it is just like auto translation with Google Translate, when Google can probably tell, I think.
Kira: yeah, so Google, it actually worked quite well for a while. So there was a time when chat GPT first came out and everyone jumped on the AI content. train and it was working really, really well. So I remember I used to get 50 snippets a day from my clients with ChatGPT. It was a great one. And that ended very quickly.
So we kind of, we, we did know, so you jump on the train, you make as much out of it as you can. Traffic flew, they got quite a lot of conversions and then that got shut down really quickly. So you're absolutely right that Google can tell. And with translations, I, I never say translate. The whole website, you know, if you've got an e commerce website, that's like hundreds of thousands of pages You can't just sit there and and have a professional translator go through every single page You you can translate non money pages Just automatically if it's an [00:21:00] information page that you're not using to rank I have no problem with just auto translation for that and nor does Google But what Google does have a problem with is when you take, but I want to bring an example of Germany and South Africa, for example.
If you're trying to sell the same thing to them, your content cannot be translated. If, if the original language was German and you're translating it to, um, Afrikaans, I mean, the culture, the culture could not be more different and the language used, and also the way that you deliver that information down to the number of words on the page and also their GDPR laws.
So there's the poppy act in South Africa, and there's different types of other strict GDPR in Germany. So you, you can't, you physically cannot just auto translate that again, if you compare Saudi Arabia and Japan. The culture is different. So the Japanese, they're more minimalistic, you know, they, they find eco friendliness very important to them and sustainability.
Saudi Arabia, [00:22:00] it's more, you know, luxury, premium. So if you're selling cars to them, then, then how can you expect to, you know, Connect with those audiences and those countries if you don't know what they're like. So that's something that I'm very passionate about. I always say that the technical part is, well, it's definitely not easy, but it's, it's easier to learn because you've kind of got a step by step process to an extent of what you can do.
You can get the traffic, you can get the rankings, but you will not get the conversions. If your money page is not tailored to those people and that's been at least for us proven time to time again with the work that we've done so we've seen incredible growth. So first we did the technical analysis. So again, the same example of the website where they had 68 different websites for every single country.
which caused crazy problems. We put it all into a subfolder, we localized all that content, and you know, they went from 500, 000 to almost 3 million in turnover because of all the All the traction and I [00:23:00] always bring it back to the financials because for for clients and for businesses That's all they care about.
So that's the the way we show the value that if you connect with the audience You can 5x your ROI, you know, I wouldn't say, you know with a click of your fingers, but it You connect with the audience so you sell more Exactly
Olga: it is nice to have high rankings, a lot of organic traffic, but if it doesn't impact the revenue, then it is kind of useless, right?
okay, can you like give me a more detailed example from like a real example of how you created, translated the page and what exactly was different from like one, you kind of touched upon this like between one culture and another, like, , the biggest differences, like, you, have seen.
Kira: Uh, word count, uh,
Olga: WordCom.
Kira: tone of voice,
number of images used across the, the webpage.
Olga: Okay.
Kira: So it's, you know, it seems like they're quite [00:24:00] simple things, you know, you'd be like, Oh, well, you know, everyone could have thought of that. People don't. And that is a bit terrifying. So a real life example, again, UK versus US electric car conversion company.
So for the UK, it's both in English. Content's completely different. Completely different. So it's, with the American market, we found that they've got interesting, not interesting views, but very varied views on privacy and GDPR so they don't really care that much a lot of the time. What they do care about is that you're the best of the best so your language has to be, I wouldn't say more aggressive, more assertive, that's a better word.
So more, I am the best of the best. I will sell you this, you will need nothing else, so it's quite authoritative. What, what we found across the American automotive market, at least. In the UK, it's more about what, what is my warranty? How, how, um, what is the range of this car? What is the torque? What is this?
What is that? So it's more of a, of a Q and A basis. So same [00:25:00] page, completely different content, same language as well. So you can imagine when we go from, let's do some really interesting Afrikaans into Mandarin Chinese. So if English versus African English is already different than Afrikaans versus Mandarin Chinese is going to be You could not find something more different.
So GDPR is one of them Obviously language structure, so people in China, you know how in Europe we have slightly broken up text all over the place because everyone's got quite a short attention span? It's not really the case in China, so everyone's still got an attention span over in China, so you can put like a block of stuff.
Olga: Oh.
Kira: Seems to work better? So it's quite, it's quite funky, isn't it?
Olga: Yeah.
Kira: It's a lot of stuff, and they don't, like, care about images that much, so you can just have
Very, like, conservative page and be like, Put it in the basket if it's an e commerce site, or get in touch or call us. So, yeah, and it's all case by case as well.
So that's why international SEO takes so long. Because [00:26:00] if you want to go into, say, even five countries, you have to remember that. Then you have to get translators, so there's translation, and then there's transcreation. So transcreation is what I'm talking about. about when I say the, the difference in the language type.
So yeah, it's a lot. And then this will be very much your area of expertise. The, the technical and the auditing for those things as well
.separate headache as well.
Olga: Exactly. Yeah. Super interesting. But, , you, mentioned like the differences, , in the U. S., U. K., but are there like universal, , truths you have observed regarding the U. S. market? Like, the U. S., what's, what are the things they like? On the website, how it is structured, like, which, would probably apply to most of the niches because I'm now wondering because like my biggest audience is, , the US then it is uk.
So maybe I could like maybe balance the two better. So
Kira: Yeah.
Olga: be your, your tip.
Kira: My tip would [00:27:00] be reviews. So credibility. So let's go back to the very basics of EEAT. So that is the universal language of love in SEO that everyone, absolutely everyone wants to see that you are actually credible. So that's one thing that's identical throughout every single project. So there's not going to be a country that's like, no, I don't really want to see any of your reviews.
I trust you. So that's not a thing. So you always have to have a very powerful messaging. But it just depends on how you deliver it. So the, the review widgets that people tend to forget about, so sort of testimonials, some imagery around what people have experienced, um, that's something that we put for most.
Well, all, all, every single one. We, we would always have maybe a short Q& A and a testimonials or quite strong EAT factors across the board. Um, a lot of the time, so I know I keep saying, well, content has to be 100 percent different. Sometimes you will find that it doesn't need to be so different, but that is all based on what market you're going to, what product you're selling.
So of course, [00:28:00] selling, um, um, A classic Land Rover that's been converted to electric power is going to be quite different to, I don't know, if you're an e commerce website, for example. So you have to, you have to kind of get into the shoes of your customer and kind of see what they'd want to buy. So your American audience, they would probably be more interested.
They would probably know what they'd want to see on a web page. So that's one of the beauties of being local and trying to get into the local market because you're like, well, I'm my target customer. What would I want to see? Um, same in the UK, same in, I don't know, Poland, everywhere. So you, you need to, you need to do your research, but you also need to use your common sense.
Because people buy from people, credible companies, where there's enough information. And if it's an e com site, you've got your shipping policies and privacy policies in place. If it's a YMYL, you've got, again, your GDPR, your privacy, your guarantees, your contracts. So you have to have those basics ready before you go into the fancy translation of content as well.[00:29:00]
Olga: Okay. So, like, technically and practically, my website is like, is global. So it is just like looking at, traffic, I see that U. S. is like the biggest part. , and if it is global and, , I write mostly in American English, like I think only in American English. , does it influence? My rankings in the UK, if I wrote in like UK version of English, , setting aside other like, , differences that, I could, , implement, do you think like just the variation of English here, , can have an impact.
Kira: So Theoretically, yes, but practically, I've seen that it's still a no a lot of the time, so you will You will rank, for now, because they, um, they said that cultural nuance, including language variations in English, will make a big difference, even if you use, like, Australian slang, then they, Google would try to point that towards [00:30:00] Australia, but I have seen, um, American English in UK SERPs, it just, and at that point I think it depends a lot on the competitiveness because again Google wants to show the best results so they won't, they won't say well Olga spelt this with a Z. So I won't show it to people in the UK because you will be the best result and the most useful result to all of those people, despite the language that you've chosen, um, the language variation. So yeah, so in, in reality, it's just, it's still the best result, but I'm hoping that Google will be able to adjust dynamically, potentially, maybe that's a bit of wishful thinking, but they would be able to deliver.
Localized language, because for, for colonized, like ex colonized countries as well, like in Singapore, they technically should be spelling things in British English. But their whole SERP is American English, and I don't know why, and it shouldn't be like that, because their national is British Singapore, so British English in Singapore, but that's not the case a lot of the time, so that I'm not really sure about, and [00:31:00] I'd like to see How it progresses, because I'd love to, I'd love to see the dynamic changes that they've been promising us for a while.
Olga: Okay, but what if my domain was susli. us? Do you think in that case, , it would give me like, like better rankings in the US and worse rankings in the UK, or it wouldn't matter? Yeah, yeah,
Kira: I think it would, again, theoretically, it should give you better rankings if you've also, so if you've got the domain and if it's set to EN US, so you've got the language variant, then it should make you rank better because the domain is a very strong signal for, for the
Olga: yeah, but, I mean like the top level domain, let's say without like, using hreflang tags, because I am just global, but if I had this domain. us, in that case, just, having the domain,
Kira: Just the domain and.
So, hmm, yeah, it would, it technically should make you more visible in the U. S. than in the U. [00:32:00] K., because that, like, the domain itself is a super, super strong signal, and of course it would depend where the links are from, but on face value, I would say that it should make you more visible in the U.
S., but it doesn't mean it will, knowing all of the search
Olga: Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. Okay. Okay. So, , any, like, funny Examples, stories, maybe some, things that went horribly wrong, and it was Google's fault to share.
Kira: so one, one thing that I find really funny is um, it was a KFC campaign a while back and I don't remember what language it was in but basically, you know their slogan, finger licking good in English. I think they translated it to either Chinese or Japanese or I don't remember but basically it ended up being you will eat your fingers and they just translated that and everyone was like what is going on and there was another one but I don't remember that one it was something about like um the Chinese language because they've got a lot of idioms so it was something really really morbid about death So that's, that's what comes with like [00:33:00] automatic translations, like you're gonna say like you'll eat your fingers, which is really funny and I, you know, we can tell everyone about it, but then for KFC it wasn't the best thing in the world.
So that's,
Olga: I can imagine.
Kira: yeah, it's, I find that hilarious and that's such a good example of, of why you should pay a little bit more attention to it. And some, again, disastrous stories, not super funny, but, um, Saudi Arabia and the UK, I've once seen. a New Zealand domain in the UK. New Zealand's really far away. New Zealand has nothing to do with us, well, with the UK.
So it was pulling those results. And, um, it was a company, an e commerce website, I think selling aircon parts or something. And they had They had the Moroccan result in the UK, and a Spanish result in Morocco, and a Swedish result in Hong Kong, and at that point, I was like, what is happening? This is really strange.
So it was just completely jumbled up beyond repair. [00:34:00] And yeah, so I just think to, because it's easy to mess up hreflang, but to mess it up to the point where it's like polar opposite sides of the globe is, is
Yeah. Mm
Olga: Yeah. Okay. This is something, another question. I am based in Poland. I am mostly not using any VPN, but my computer is set to English and everything is basically in English. And I think location is set to Poland, , in like settings of Mac,
Kira: Mm hmm.
Olga: very, very often when I search for something in Polish, in Google, I get English results even on my phone.
Kira: hmm.
Olga: Why is it like Google getting wrong what I want or like what do you think? Is it just because I have this language set up so Google ignores that I'm in Poland?
Kira: So you, you, you conduct the search in Polish as well?
Olga: Yeah. Yeah.
Kira: Yeah, so that,
Olga: Not always. Sometimes. Yeah.
Kira: Yeah, so that, that would still show you a lot of the time in English [00:35:00] result, and that's what I was saying with, um, the search being predominantly in English. And a lot of the time why that happens is because search in, in the UK and the US is quite developed, developed in terms of specialists going in and optimizing this content and making it extra strong, extra relevant.
But. Especially in Eastern Europe. I mean, there's a lot of amazing SEOs in Eastern Europe, but the search itself isn't as strong and as developed. So that's why I think a lot of the time when you search something like again, so if I search something in Russian, I would still get something in, in English back on Google.
So I think the, the reason being is because the signals aren't that strong and Google itself is English. It is an American
So that's, that is why. So it could be multiple reasons, the big one being Google's Google, and the second one being the search is more developed, more links being built, more just specialists like spamming in the best way possible these results.
And also Google doesn't understand, so it makes mistakes and it thinks it's [00:36:00] giving you what you want. I think, It should be giving you a local language result if you're searching for it in a local language, but, you know, we can't have it all. I think maybe, when you search, is it a Polish website written in English?
Olga: Not necessarily. No. Different, like a lot of like com results
Kira: be.
Olga: or a mix of like some are Polish, some are English. Very often this is a mix.
Kira: Yeah. So that's what I mean. It's quite jumbled up and because the, so the com is a strong domain, obviously. So,
It popping up absolutely everywhere, but I do think, yeah, but we see it a lot, you know, we see it in lots of languages, and I do notice that the search isn't developed in, in other languages, and I wish it was, I kind of want to make that, like, my life goal, as well, with the agency, is to, to like, to globalise the search.
Olga: Yeah. Yeah. In, 10 years when you are 35, probably that will,
Kira: Maybe.
Olga: in, in nine, sorry.
Kira: yeah.
Olga: , okay. [00:37:00] One, thing, , when I was, , I think at SU agency, I had this case and I'm wondering if you had this case. We probably have. So, , the website had like. A ton of languages and, , , they were displaying the language based on user's location and because of that, Google crawling from the U.
S. Only got to see the US version and, , this was like something that, , the company couldn't like decipher for a very long time what, what is going on. So have you had some similar situations? Do you even, like, suggest, , doing that dynamic change of, language based on IP? Of course you can, like, use Google's, you can exclude Google's, , IPs, but still, like, I am, wondering what your thoughts on that are.
Kira: That's a really good question and, um, example as well. So IP redirects are good. I [00:38:00] think they're okay when they're used correctly. And a lot of the time they're not used correctly and they're not very user friendly as well. They're quite infuriating, if I must say as well. So, if. If I want to buy a Jeep, okay, let's use Jeep.
com as an example, what Jeep do really well is that they do IP redirects based on where you are, which is lovely. But if I type in now, Jeep India. And I click on it, it will let me access that Indian website, but it will say, Hey, it looks like you're not in India. You're actually in the UK. Do you want to switch to the UK version?
But maybe my mum lives in India and I want to buy her a Jeep. So no, I want to stay on the Indian version. That is my favorite use case of, um, IP redirects because it, Prompts you to go the right way, or where they think is the right way, but they're not forcing you into it. Uh, websites like Fiverr, so I mean that's slightly more [00:39:00] user generated content, but um, So there's a, an international, uh, parking app.
It's called Skypark Secure. And they do quite strict IP redirects. But what if I don't want the one here? What if I want the one in Holland and you can't get to it unless you've got VPN and even then it kind of bypasses it a lot of the time so you can never get onto that search? So in that case I, I wouldn't recommend using it unless you give people the option.
to go where they want to go. So on, on. com does it quite well as well. The shoe, um, the sneaker brand sportswear. So they actually have a section at the bottom where you can pick the country that you want. So it's in the footer. It says, Oh, where are you? And that's really good because it gives you the option.
So I think you have to remember it from, you know, a user perspective as well, because again, we live in such a globalized world. You know, people's parents might live halfway across the globe. You want to get them a gift, like say you're moving to that country next month. I don't know. There could be so many things and by limiting people with IP redirects and just forcing them into seeing things only where they are.[00:40:00]
In my personal opinion, I don't think that's a great thing to do. And it is annoying for people and it also can mess you up a little bit in terms of how you implement it. So you can also get it wrong. There's a lot of room for errors and you have to fix them. So I would say if you get, get your hreflang right, as I was, what I would say, get the country targeted, right.
And give people the option. So white press also have this, they have it in the header. They've got a dropdown. Of all the countries we service. So you can put it in the header, let people choose without IP redirects, put in the footer with IP redirects, or let people Google whatever they want. Click on the result they want, not redirect them, but prompt them into the right area.
Yeah,
Olga: I very often had this very unfriendly redirect where I was like trying to enter a website, a U. S. website, and it says people from Poland cannot really, or you are in the country that cannot really see that website, that page.[00:41:00]
Kira: that's another thing that, that is extra annoying, isn't it? I mean, a lot of the time, so for, actually, I found this out today and I found it very interesting from an SEO perspective is there's, um, like a media channel in Russia, but people here cannot see it. I
I think it, I would envision it's due to political reasons, but again, you've, you've blocked someone from seeing your content.
And then they even bypass VPN as well, so it's gone the extra mile. So there's a lot of things like that where you're not allowed to view content from other countries. I guess it could be helpful so people don't, like, try to send you random leads, I guess? Or, like, maybe just, um, keeping bot traffic in check, but I'm not sure that's the right way to do it.
I think there's a better way to control that kind of stuff and also let people access the website they want to access. It doesn't seem very 2024 not to let people go to websites.
Olga: , I think so. I was just wondering like how this could impact rankings because [00:42:00] theoretically Google is crawling from the U. S.
Kira: Hmm.
Olga: won't see that version, but on the other hand, if someone is like putting that version for a different country, they probably don't want to rank in that country.
So maybe that's not an issue. I don't know.
Kira: Exactly. Yeah. I think with IP redirect stuff, if they would probably have like, you know, I don't want to be here. I don't want to be visible here. So it doesn't really matter to them. But yeah,
Olga: Okay. A final question, like, what, would be like your, Top one tip regarding international SEO, hreflangs, like what would you recommend people should do and what you would recommend they shouldn't do.
Kira: that's
Olga: things.
Kira: Yeah, two things. So do I'll take it back to basics. If you are thinking of global expansion, do your keyword research. First, because the search will drive your [00:43:00] revenue in the end and drive your strategy in the end. Um, I want to say, can I do half and half for the do thing? Can I add another?
Olga: Okay. Okay.
Kira: when, when you have figured it out, then, um, You need to see which structure of implementation is best for you.
So if it's a country code, top level domain, a subdomain or a subfolder without being pressured by what seems to be the most popular or what people say, you know, like me, like I said, I like subdirectories. It doesn't a subfolder. Sorry. That doesn't mean you should all go and do it. Do your own research on what works for you.
For you personally, it's never cookie cutter. So that's the do. And the do not do is Translate all your content site wide with a click of a button or chat GPT even worse That is the absolute worst thing you can do. Two pages that you want to be ranking.
Olga: Okay, , cool. And if someone, wants to learn more about hreflangs, wants to get started. [00:44:00] With that area, like, where should they go? Are there any resources you would recommend? Or maybe you have your own resources on that?
Kira: Oh, yeah good Best question of the day. So I mean first of all, I'm a leader who is another idol of mine. She's got a course on SEMrush on International SEO and it's amazing. So, if you don't follow Alida already, Then you need to go follow a leader
Olga: Yeah, definitely.
Kira: yeah, so she she's someone that I also learned from and I'm very inspired by and I also have written an hreflang guide and that's on my website Very embarrassingly my SSL certificate expired.
So if you access it right now, you will not see I know this is really bad so It will be out and about, it's a 30 page guide, it's really extensive, it goes from what is hreflang down to every example, so a lot of those examples that I gave, um, today, I use them in that guide as well, and it's really broken down, so, um, yeah, it's, it's a lot, and it's quite useful, like a useful starter guide, [00:45:00] potentially, to read even before you go into Alida's course, because then you've got some sort of understanding of, of, um, of what you're getting yourself into as well.
Olga: Okay, perfect. I will link the guide somewhere below. , where can people find you, follow you? What's the best place?
Kira: LinkedIn would be the best place. I'm quite active on there, so just my name, Kira Korshalova, um, and yeah, I post lots of stuff about lifestyle, SEO, um, yeah, and Instagram if they want a diary of an SEO, but that's a lot more The, the events that I'm speaking at. So it's a lot more of a lifestyle thing, but if anyone has any questions, I am generally very happy to answer any international SEO related stuff or give advice.
So feel free to reach out if you want.
Olga: Yeah. Cool. Cool. Kira, thank you so much for being my guest. This was a very fruitful conversation for me. And I, I'm pretty sure people loved it. I hope to have you sometime in the future again to maybe even talk about that in a more advanced way.
Kira: [00:46:00] Yeah. Yeah. We can dig deeper into stuff and I just want to say thank you so much for your time. And. I'm incredibly starstruck because you're my idol. So it doesn't really feel real that we're doing this. So yeah, thank you so much for having me on.
Olga: Yeah. That's awesome. Thank you. Thank you so much. And thanks everyone. Bye bye.
