International SEO fails for structural reasons, not effort reasons. Teams translate a site, add hreflang tags, and then watch the wrong page rank in the wrong country while their strongest market quietly loses traffic. This playbook is the decision framework that prevents that, written from live multi-market programmes rather than theory.
What it covers
Market selection using demand, competition and serviceability rather than gut feeling. Choosing between country domains, subdirectories and subdomains with a decision tree and the migration cost of getting it wrong. Hreflang implemented correctly, including return-tag validation, x-default handling and the four errors responsible for most broken implementations. Currency, pricing and trust signals per market. Localisation versus translation, with keyword research done natively rather than translated. Local link acquisition. And a consolidated reporting model that shows performance per market without forty dashboards.
How it is written
Every chapter ends with a checklist and a worked example. Six anonymised case walkthroughs show real decisions, including two where the initial call was wrong and what the recovery looked like. There is no filler chapter explaining what a meta description is — this assumes you already run SEO and need the multi-market layer.
What comes with it
A market prioritisation scoring spreadsheet, an hreflang generator and validator sheet, a localisation brief template for translators, a migration runbook with rollback criteria, and a reporting template built around market-level share of voice. All in editable formats.
Delivered as a PDF for reading and an EPUB for e-readers, with lifetime access to updates as search behaviour and platform guidance change.
The download includes the book in PDF and EPUB, a companion folder of editable spreadsheets and templates, and a one-page quick-reference card summarising the hreflang rules and the URL architecture decision tree.
Any PDF or EPUB reader. The companion templates open in Google Sheets, Excel or any spreadsheet application. No tools or subscriptions are required to use the material.