Question 1

What is international SEO, and what does hreflang do?

Accepted Answer

Making a site work for **multiple countries or languages** so that search engines serve the right version to the right user — and `hreflang` is the mechanism telling them which version is which.

**The first decision: the URL structure**, which is difficult to change later.

**Country-code top-level domains** (`example.fr`) — strongest geographic signal, clearest to users, and the most expensive to run since each domain builds authority separately.

**Subdirectories** (`example.com/fr/`) — everything inherits the main domain's authority, which is usually the **best default**, and the geographic signal is weaker.

**Subdomains** (`fr.example.com`) — somewhere between, and treated as more separate than people expect.

**URL parameters** — not recommended.

**What hreflang actually does.** It marks equivalent pages in different languages or regions, so a search engine can substitute the right one. It is **not** a redirect and does **not** change rankings — it changes which of your pages is shown.

**The rules that trip people up:**

**It must be reciprocal.** If page A points to page B, B must point back to A. **Non-reciprocal tags are ignored entirely**, and this is the most common implementation error.

**Every version must list every other version, including itself.**

**Language codes are required; region codes are optional** — `en` is valid, `en-GB` is valid, and `GB` alone is not.

**An `x-default`** should specify the fallback for unmatched users.

**It can be implemented in HTML head, HTTP headers or the XML sitemap** — the sitemap approach scales best and is easiest to maintain.

**The other elements of international SEO:**

**Genuine translation, not machine output**, and **localisation** of examples, currency, units, sizes and imagery.

**Local keyword research**, since direct translation of keywords frequently misses what people actually search.

**Avoiding automatic IP-based redirects**, which prevent crawling and frustrate travellers — offer a suggestion instead.

**Local hosting or CDN presence**, and local links.

**Duplicate content across regions** is handled by hreflang rather than by canonicals, and mixing the two incorrectly is a frequent failure.

Question 2

What is a canonical tag, and when do you need one?

Accepted Answer

A signal telling search engines which version of a page is the preferred one when the same or very similar content is reachable at several URLs — so that ranking signals consolidate on one address

Question 3

What is local SEO, and how is it different?

Accepted Answer

Optimising to appear for searches with local intent — where the searcher wants a business near them — and it is genuinely a different discipline, because the ranking factors and the results

Question 4

What is internal linking for?

Accepted Answer

Three distinct jobs: helping people navigate, helping search engines discover pages, and distributing ranking signals around a site. It is among the most underused levers in SEO, largely because it

Question 5

What is a site migration, and why do they go wrong so often?

Accepted Answer

Any change that alters how a site's URLs, structure, content or platform work — and they go wrong because a migration is not one project but several simultaneous ones, any of which can destroy years

Question 6

What is crawl budget, and does it matter for my site?

Accepted Answer

The amount of crawling a search engine is willing and able to do on a site — and for the overwhelming majority of sites, it does not matter at all, which is the most useful thing to know about it.

Question 7

What is topical authority in SEO?

Accepted Answer

The idea that covering a subject comprehensively makes a site more likely to rank for queries within it — because depth across a topic signals expertise in a way that a single page cannot. The

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