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How We Dominate The APAC Market With International SEO
Choosing Website Structure For International SEO:
- Country Code Top-Level Domain (CCTLD): e.g. a .sg domain for Singapore and a .my domain for Malaysia
- Subfolder: e.g. example.com/sg/ and example.com/my/
- Subdomain: e.g. sg.example.com and my.example.com
- There is no right or wrong here, any of these setups work but they do have implications on implementation of hreflang tags and localised content.
Hreflang Tag Implementation:
- Hreflang tags inform Googlebot on which market audience the page is for.
- It also informs Googlebot on corresponding pages in other market folders.
- When hreflang tags are done correctly, Google gets complete information on which page to serve to the local market (signalling local relevance).
Local Directories And Backlinks:
- Building citations on local directories and local publishers is key to spreading brand awareness and empowering audiences to find you.
- Having backlinks from local publishers further signal relevance for the specific market.
Using Localised Keywords and Content:
- Beyond language translation to the preferred lagnuage of the market, localisation also needs to be done.
- Each market has their own set of unique terms and examples that needs to be accounted for.
- In line with this, having found the correct localised keywords is important for getting traffic here.
The APAC Markets We Have Worked In
We are well known for international SEO campaigns for businesses expanding from Singapore to Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Myanmar, New Zealand, and Australia.
Our work is Google-first, which reflects where our clients’ audiences actually are. Google is the dominant engine across Southeast Asia, Taiwan and Hong Kong. In Japan, Yahoo! Japan is powered by Google’s search results, so a site optimised properly for Google is optimised for both.
We are deliberate about where we claim expertise. Markets built on Naver or Baidu are a different discipline with different tooling and different rules, and we would rather tell you that up front than learn it on your budget.
Solving Your Hreflang Tag Challenges
Every agency will tell you they implement hreflang tags. The harder part is keeping them correct across a network of country sites that are all being edited by different teams. These are the failures we find most often when we audit an international site:
Incorrect country codes: Hreflang uses ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country codes. Made-up or guessed codes are ignored by Google.
Missing return tags: Hreflang only works if every page in a cluster points back at every other page. This requires all the country offices to implement it in a coordinated effort between us and your various offices.
Tags pointing at non-indexable pages: Each office updates its own site on its own schedule. Pages get noindexed, redirected, or retired without the wider network being told, and the hreflang cluster quietly starts pointing at pages Google cannot use.
Country sites that do not mirror each other:ย This is the problem nobody warns clients about. Market sites are rarely built to the same page inventory, one market may have two pages covering what another market handles on a single page. There is no clean one-to-one mapping, and we have to advise you on what makes the most SEO sense when mapping for hreflang.
Every agency will tell you they implement hreflang tags. The harder part is keeping them correct across a network of country sites that are all being edited by different teams. These are the failures we find most often when we audit an international site:
Incorrect country codes: Hreflang uses ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country codes. Made-up or guessed codes are ignored by Google.
Missing return tags: Hreflang only works if every page in a cluster points back at every other page. This requires all the country offices to implement it in a coordinated effort between us and your various offices.
Tags pointing at non-indexable pages: Each office updates its own site on its own schedule. Pages get noindexed, redirected, or retired without the wider network being told, and the hreflang cluster quietly starts pointing at pages Google cannot use.
Country sites that do not mirror each other:ย This is the problem nobody warns clients about. Market sites are rarely built to the same page inventory, one market may have two pages covering what another market handles on a single page. There is no clean one-to-one mapping, and we have to advise you on what makes the most SEO sense when mapping for hreflang.
