SEO for Multiregional Websites: A Guide to Google Ranking in 2025

Planning to scale your business and conquer a new market? Achieving top rankings in local search results and driving organic traffic from different countries is not an easy task, especially when it comes to search visibility across various regions. Valeria Karpova, Head of SEO at Boosta, reveals the secrets of SEO for multiregional websites and, using a real case study, discusses common issues that can impact rankings.

“A common problem is that either you're 100% sure we're doing everything right, only to realize later that we’ve made a fatal mistake, or the specialists just don't know how to do it right.”

Here’s a helpful summary of the presentation with detailed insights from the expert on why multiregional SEO is essential for effective international promotion and the strategies that will help you achieve success with little to no room for error.

Multiregional SEO is a promotion strategy used to ensure your website's visibility on Google search results and drive traffic when targeting different countries or regions. Translation alone isn’t enough — technical and content-related details must be considered. Only then can you get organic traffic, improve your brand's reputation, and diversify your risks.

Features of multiregional SEO:

• The website targets different countries or regions.
• It must ensure top rankings in various countries.

The main risks include:

• Page cannibalization (caused by conflicting pages ranking for the same queries).
• Duplicate pages.
• Incorrect geotargeting.

At the preparation stage, it’s important to conduct a thorough analysis and plan a step-by-step strategy. First and foremost, this concerns ranking for target keywords in the specific region you plan to target, as well as competitors.

You have to analyze:

1. What’s dominating the top 10 of competitors: local domains, subdomains, or subdirectories?
2. Is product positioning different in various markets?
3. Will there be language version differences in content?
4. Will there be a noticeable difference in SEO and PR strategies?
5. Do you have the human and financial resources to implement multiregional SEO?

Without answers to these questions, you can’t expect successful implementation. In fact, it’s essential to prepare for issues like these right from the start:

• Lack of strategy due to not understanding target markets or your own capabilities.
• Changing geotargeting for a domain that has already been targeted to other markets or using multiple domains/subdomains/subdirectories under the same network for one geo. If a domain has already ranked well in one market, changing its geotargeting and getting Google to see it for another market is very difficult. The same applies when trying to split geo into separate websites, but they remain in the same network — there's a risk of cannibalization, where pages compete for the same queries.
• Full content duplication across multiple domains. This is a common mistake: copying content to multiple sites gives you very little chance for good rankings.
• Lack of technical optimization. Setting up correct hreflang tags is a classic issue — there’s plenty to talk about, but the mistakes never go away.

One of the key tasks of multiregional SEO is ensuring that search engines can easily identify a website’s different regional versions. It can be challenging to get the correct page ranking in the target country. Choosing the right URL structure is the first step in setting up a multiregional website.

Choosing the right website structure

There are a few options for implementing a website structure, each with its own pros and cons.

Creating separate websites in the target countries’ domain zones (e.g., site.de, site.fr, site.ca) provides full isolation of each resource, allowing content and SEO strategies to be tailored to specific countries, minimizing risks. If one site gets banned by Google (e.g., due to grey-hat SEO methods), the other sites remain unaffected.

On the other hand, promotion of each domain will have to start from scratch, which means higher budgets for content, links, SEO experts, and technical support for each version. Additionally, in some countries, it is difficult or impossible to purchase a local domain due to legal restrictions (e.g., .de or .au), which means using a .com domain, already reducing the strength of the local geotargeting signal for Google.

Creating local versions of the website on subdomains (e.g., fr.site.com, ca.site.com) is technically simpler, cheaper, and faster to implement. Subdomains can be individually adapted for each market: changing content, design, and strategies.

However, be prepared to allocate a separate budget for SEO and link building: search engines often treat subdomains as separate sites, isolated structures that require individual optimization. Without this, proper ranking is impossible.

Subdirectories are the simplest in terms of implementation and the least resource-intensive option. In this case, all local versions work under the same domain, passing down its trust and backlink profile. Other advantages include easy management, fast scaling (new regions can be added easily), and quick indexing of new pages.

However, there are nuances: a subdirectory has a weaker geo signal for Google than a separate local domain in the required domain zone. Also, there is no risk diversification: if the main domain gets penalized, all versions will be affected. This option is suitable for those who don’t use grey/black-hat SEO methods or those who are willing to accept the risk of a Google penalty

The hreflang attribute helps Google identify the language and regional version of a page for users. It specifies a language code and, if needed, a country code. Here's the difference between them:

• Language code (e.g., en, fr, de) is used when each version of the site has its own language, such as one page in English, another in French, and a third in German. In this case, you can simply use the language code without specifying the country (if regional targeting is not important).
• Country code is used when targeting multiple countries with the same language (e.g., English pages for the US, Australia, and the UK).

Before setting up hreflang, you need to know how many language versions your site has and which countries each one targets. This helps ensure your pages appear correctly in search results and avoids content duplication or wrong localization.

Incorrect or incomplete use of hreflang is a common issue even on large websites. Here’s what you have to look out for:

• Missing hreflang attribute altogether or partially.
• Missing reciprocal links.
• Syntax errors.
• Incorrect order of codes (language code and country code).
• Hreflang links pointing to 301, 404 pages, or pages with different canonicals.
• Multiple different pages for the same code.

To check hreflang, you can use tools like Sitechecker’s Hreflang Checker:

Another useful tool is the hreflang code generator by Sistrix:

And don’t underestimate using ChatGPT for SEO help – it can offer surprisingly valuable insights.

Also note, that each local version should have its own sitemap.xml file. You also need to set x-default for the global version, which means including the default version with hreflang. Ideally, your local site should use local hosting or a CDN, as this can affect Core Web Vitals, especially page load speed.

Content speaks loudest about localization, which is why it’s crucial to consider the following:

• Unique content and meta tags for each version.
• Use of language considering local dialects.
• Use of local currency and other measurement units (time, date, etc.).
• Local payment methods and shipping options.
• Local address.
• Localization of info pages such as About Us, Privacy Policy.

Ideally, links should come from domains in the country you’re targeting. However, in practice, fully isolated local links are hard to find — especially for English-language content that often ranks in multiple countries. It’s worth looking for domains that at least rank in the target country. If the site has visibility for specific keywords in the desired region, that’s already a good signal.

The key is to choose sites where the target country dominates, and publish links in local media. It’s preferable if the content is written in the local language or dialect specific to the region you're targeting.

One more critically important point: avoid conflicts between link-building strategies for different versions of the site. They must be synchronized:

• Anchor text lists should not overlap between sites.
• Don’t use the same geo-dependent anchors for different domains (this will only confuse Google).
• Each site must be clearly tied to its specific geo.

The Situation: An English-language global .com website targeting primarily the US market, but also automatically ranking well in several English-speaking regions (Australia, Canada, New Zealand).

Goal: Increase presence in the Australian market by creating a localized Australian website, capture the market, and rank both the global and local sites in the top 10.

Result: Completely unsuccessful.

What Went Wrong?

Both the global and Australian sites began competing for the same keywords. As a result, only one site consistently ranked in the top. After another update, the local site could lose rankings for certain keywords and hand over its positions to the global site. In other words, only one of the sites ranks for Australia, even though the global site wasn’t actually targeting Australia.

This is aсtually a classic example of domain cannibalization, which happened because there was no clear geo-strategy from the start, both sites were in English, and the global site had higher trust and a stronger backlink profile.

How to Avoid Cannibalization:

• Correctly set up hreflang.
• Localize the content.
• Ensure every page that is available for indexing has a canonical tag pointing to itself, not other versions.
• Add a country selector for clear interlinking between versions or sites.
• Don’t set up aggressive IP redirects.

❓ Can the code and structure of the site be duplicated for different geos, or is it better to create unique versions?

If it’s your own product and the sites are linked through hreflang, it’s perfectly fine for them to have the same design, structure, and even similar code. The key is to link them with hreflang – otherwise, the second site will be seen by Google as a duplicate, and its chances of ranking will be slim.

❓ For a multiregional site with subdirectories for each region, is it better to follow a unified strategy for the featured brands (e.g., iGaming), or can they be mixed?

Mixing is possible, but this is more of a legal issue than an SEO one. Before launching, you should review the regulations for each market where the brands will operate.

❓ What should you do if one of the local sites gets blacklisted? For example, a multiregional brand site with five locales, and one of them ends up on the blacklist. Should you unlink that locale? Will it affect the others?

If they are implemented as separate domains or subdomains, it’s better to unlink the problematic locale. This helps minimize the risk of negative impact on the other versions. Yes, unlinking will affect the trust of the blacklisted domain (it will lose its connection with trusted domains), but this is a lesser evil. If you don’t do this, the impact could be much worse for all versions.

❓ Is it better to launch a multiregional website with subdirectories from scratch, or can I add more local versions to a site that’s already performing well in one locale? For instance, UK vs. Italy, not similar markets like Canada and the US.

It depends on your resources. I always suggest taking a gradual approach, as it reduces the risk of missing important details. The key is to have a strategy in place, ensure the markets are sufficiently different, and make sure your main domain isn’t already ranking in the markets you plan to add.

❓ Have you ever encountered merging separate local domains with the main global domain using hreflang, with the global domain marked as x-default?

Yes, this is possible, and we’ve dealt with it multiple times. Even sites with different structures and designs can be merged through hreflang, as long as each location has clear geo-targeting and there are no conflicts between them. It’s fine for the global domain to be set as x-default in this case.

❓ Have you measured the impact of local server hosting on local site performance?

Yes, we have a specific case: three English-language sites with similar structures and code (for Australia, New Zealand, and Canada). Two of them (New Zealand and Australia) were geographically distant from the server and showed worse Core Web Vitals performance. Will there be an impact when we fix it? I believe that Core Web Vitals is one of the top indicators for Google, so I think the effect will be noticeable.

❓ Why do SEO specialists often overlook the differences in English variants for different markets (USA, Canada, UK)? Is it a lack of experience or cost management?

It could be both. It might also be that your copywriter isn’t local, as it’s hard to find skilled local copywriters. I would recommend incorporating at least the dialect that is necessary for your niche and commonly used in relevant keywords. Even ChatGPT can be used as a tool here.

❓ Is it okay to place links from the same donor to different language versions of the site?

If there is no cannibalization issue, it’s okay, but I would advise avoiding it. Do it only when your pool of platforms is completely exhausted.

❓ Can AI-generated content be used for a multilingual gaming site, or is hand-edited content more important for promotion?

I’ve noticed that both options work. It depends on the quality of execution. In practice, I use a mix: about 70% manual content and 30% generated. AI content can be quite effective, depending on the clarity of the brief, how well it matches intent, and if it covers the necessary semantics. Of course, after generation, the content is edited and humanized. You can’t generate quality text with just one prompt. You need to experiment and see how it works on your site and compare it with your competitors.

❓ What does “global version of the site” mean? Doesn’t it still need to be optimized for one of the language versions?

It’s the initial, main version of the site, usually on a .com domain, without a subdirectory.

❓ Is it advisable to use hreflang + canonical instead of a regular 301/302 redirect?

It depends on the goals.
Sometimes, when we’re hesitant to make a redirect right away, we first set a canonical to the page we want to redirect to. We make the canonical point to another page, so one is hidden from indexing, and the other becomes canonical.
For a site migration to a new domain, this method is more of a "maybe it will work, maybe it won’t." I prefer 301 redirects, but the decision depends on the goal and the state of the site.

❓ Is it a common practice to link sites in the footer and only refer to the homepage of other language versions, without using hreflang? Is this a valid method?

Mostly, this is considered a bug, as hreflang should be present on all pages of the site. Exceptions may exist for very niche cases or when there are significantly different site structures, but in general, this is more of an exception than a standard practice.

❓ Is it okay if a site uses a different brand name in different geos?

It’s fine. Sometimes, the brand name needs to be localized for a specific country (e.g., through associations or translation), and it’s perfectly normal to have separate sites, different domains, and even different domain names, where the local key or local name is used.

Thanks to Valeria for the in-depth and practical presentation on the key nuances of multiregional SEO. We wish our readers a confident implementation of these strategies and top rankings in every geo!