Reaching the next billion users means breaking out of the high-speed, desktop-focused, Google-centric experience. In order to take the idea of going global from c-suite vision board to tactical reality, you’ll need to get technical. From servers to CDNs, hreflangs to JavaScript, Jamie will share the real-life lessons you'll need to identify, launch, and successfully monitor your growing international market. In this session Jamie will talk about server stability, location, and parity (or how I learned to stop worrying and love the world's trickiest game of telephone), the real cost of ccTLDs vs subfolders vs subdomains and shrinking screens and the rising costs of JavaScript.

1. #SMX | @jammer_volts
The Technical Foundations
of Successful
Internationalization

2. Who is this session for?
You want to expand your business to a new
audience-- either linguistically or geographically.
#SMX | @jammer_volts

3. Hello!
Hello!
#SMX | @jammer_volts

4. #SMX | @jammer_volts
Hello!
Hola!

5. #SMX | @jammer_volts
Hello!
Hallo!

6. A multilingual website is any
website that offers content
in more than one language.
#SMX | @jammer_volts

7. Wie man
Dungeons und
Drachen spielt?
#SMX | @jammer_volts

8. A multi-regional website is
one that explicitly targets
users in different countries
#SMX | @jammer_volts

9. + =
Dungeons und
Drachen
Spielerhandbuch
kaufen
#SMX | @jammer_volts

10. Language and geography
are independent variables.
#SMX | @jammer_volts

11. #SMX | @jammer_volts
successful internationalization
#SMX | @jammer_volts
● business
● users
● search engines
● code

12. #SMX | @jammer_volts
Business Foundation

13. Viable Audience Service
#SMX | @jammer_volts#SMX | @jammer_volts

14. ✔
✔
✔
✔
❌
✔
✔
✔
❌
✔
✔
❌
#SMX | @jammer_volts

15. #SMX | @jammer_volts
An interested audience
#SMX | @jammer_volts

16. #SMX | @jammer_volts
Macro Conversion Micro Conversion
Online Sale Sign up for email
Phone (Offline) Sale Play video
Download white paper
Add item to cart
Utilize Chat
Email for price

17. #SMX | @jammer_volts
Tap Google Analytics to look at existing users

18. #SMX | @jammer_volts
Users Foundations

19. #SMX | @jammer_volts
Shared language between
your company and humans.

20. #SMX | @jammer_volts
Translations Localization≠

21. #SMX | @jammer_volts
J'ai
chaude!

22. #SMX | @jammer_volts
Prioritize translating hero content
Source:User-centricPerformanceMetrics

23. #SMX | @jammer_volts
No translation? Noindex.
Source:TomekRudzkiviaReddit

24. !!robots.txt won’t prevent crawling
or indexing
#SMX | @jammer_volts

25. Let users move seamlessly between languages
#SMX | @jammer_volts

26. Logic for detecting user language
#SMX | @jammer_volts
● Give them the version they requested (best case)
● Have they chosen a language before? Use a cookie!
● What language was the content of their last visit in?
● What is the default language of their browser
● Don’t auto redirect

27. Shared functionality and efficacy between
your code base and user devices
#SMX | @jammer_volts

28. 63%
of worldwide website traffic is generated
through mobile phones
#SMX | @jammer_volts

29. 47%
of internet traffic is from mobile
only users
#SMX | @jammer_volts

30. 2.2B
2BDesktop
/Cross Device
Mobile Only
#SMX | @jammer_volts

31. To be successful
internationally, you need to
be mobile first fast.
#SMX | @jammer_volts

32. Mobile dominance varies by region
Source:comScore

33. Source:AddyOsmani

34. 1MB = 5 seconds on
3G connection

35. #SMX | @jammer_volts
Source:OpenSignal

36. Time = Money
but also...
#SMX | @jammer_volts

37. 1.5MB page
can cost
$0.19 USD
to load
#SMX | @jammer_volts
Source:Whatdoesmysitecost?

38. #SMX | @jammer_volts
Search Engine
Foundation

39. #SMX | @jammer_volts
For content to rank, it has
to be seen.

40. #SMX | @jammer_volts
Google best practices
universal best practices
≠

41. #SMX | @jammer_volts
Source:MatthewCapala
#SMX | @jammer_volts

42. If your site relies heavily on JavaScript,
visibilities is an concern.
Source:BartoszGóralewiczviaMoz
#SMX | @jammer_volts

43. Make Hero Content and Structured Data Available in HTML
Source:User-centricPerformanceMetrics
#SMX | @jammer_volts

44. For ecommerce, use currency representative of the geotarget
#SMX | @jammer_volts

45. #SMX | @jammer_volts
Clear signals about the intended
audience.

46. HTML Lang Attribute
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en-us">
<head>
<title>Good morning, SMX!</title>
#SMX | @jammer_volts
W3 attribute recognized by all search engines

47. HREFlang + UX = Codex*
#SMX | @jammer_volts
* no love from Baidu, Naver, and Bing

48. (language) x (country)
“nl-be” ✔
#SMX | @jammer_volts

49. only language
“nl” ✔
#SMX | @jammer_volts

50. only region
“be” ❌
#SMX | @jammer_volts

51. @methode
#SMX | @jammer_volts

52. HTML Tags Sitemaps
HTTP
Headers
Implementation Options (Choose 2)
#SMX | @jammer_volts

53. HTML Tags
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-US"
href="https://www.arrow.com/en/categories/computers-and-peripherals" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en"
href="https://www.arrow.com/en/categories/computers-and-peripherals" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-FR" href="https://www.arrow.com/fr-
fr/categories/computers-and-peripherals" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr" href="https://www.arrow.com/fr-
fr/categories/computers-and-peripherals" />
#SMX | @jammer_volts

54. Sitemap
<url>
<loc>https://www.arrow.com/en/categories/computers-and-peripherals</loc>
<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr" href="https://www.arrow.com/fr-
fr/categories/computers-and-peripherals" />
<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="de"
href="https://www.arrow.de/categories/computers-and-peripherals" />
<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="it" href="https://www.arrow.com/it-
it/categories/computers-and-peripherals" />
</url>
#SMX | @jammer_volts

55. HTTP Header
<https://www.arrow.com/cloud/starting-up-your-own-cloud-business.pdf>;
rel="alternate"; hreflang="en",
<https://www.arrow.de/cloud/starting-up-your-own-cloud-business.pdf>;
rel="alternate"; hreflang="de-de",
Use HTTP Headers for non-HTML files (like PDFs)
#SMX | @jammer_volts

56. Use x-default for
unmatched languages
#SMX | @jammer_volts

57. How effective is
consistent
hreflang use?
#SMX | @jammer_volts
South Korean subfolder
launched with noindex,
blocked via robots.

58. #SMX | @jammer_volts
Code
Foundation

59. #SMX | @jammer_volts
What is the best structure for
international content?

60. #SMX | @jammer_volts
Consistent and language specific

61. TLD
$$$
x
Subdomain
$$
x
Subfolder
$
x
Parameters
$
x
#SMX | @jammer_volts

62. Internationalized Domain Names
.みんな
.ไทย
.рф
#SMX | @jammer_volts

63. Are you
launching a
new CMS
instance?

64. 50 products x 5 countries x 5
languages = 125 PDPs
#SMX | @jammer_volts

65. Keep scalable sanity with
consistent URL structures
#SMX | @jammer_volts

66. Putting the tech gap to scale
#SMX | @jammer_volts

67. Imagine your
favorite restaurant
opened a new
location in town!
But not really. They
just added a second
“optimized”
business name.
#SMX | @jammer_volts

68. If you’re launching in a new region, you
need servers in the region.
#SMX | @jammer_volts

69. Same region, new language?
Ensure existing servers handle an
increase in crawl rate.
#SMX | @jammer_volts

70. Mind your CDNs
and load balancers
#SMX | @jammer_volts

71. #SMX | @jammer_volts
Content delivery
networks (CDNs) and
load balancers are
common components
of large or
international sites.
Often they have
public-facing DNS
records.

72. “We never told
Googlebot to
crawl there.”
#SMX | @jammer_volts

73. Life, uh,
finds a
way.
#SMX | @jammer_volts

74. It’s hard to
know what you
don’t know.
Make new
friends.
#SMX | @jammer_volts

75. Tap into your server logs

76. Verify each public-facing server’s
hostname/IP in Search Console.
Especially if it should never be
indexed.
#SMX | @jammer_volts

77. Do you get the same
content from every server?
#SMX | @jammer_volts

78. Hosts file + webcrawler
#SMX | @jammer_volts

79. Use POCs to get developer resources
#SMX | @jammer_volts

80. If you’re sharing scripts or
APIs across TLDs, check
your cross-site resources
#SMX | @jammer_volts

81. Being flagged for cross-site scripting (XSS) malware can
result in elements being blocked from loading in Chrome or
removed from SERP.
Test proactively:
● CSP Mitigator (Chrome extension)
● CSP Evaluator
Mitigate an active malware alert:
http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=www.example.com)
#SMX | @jammer_volts

82. #SMX | @jammer_volts
Life pro tips
from hard life lessons in
internationalization

83. Get fast insight into crawl errors with server logs
#SMX | @jammer_volts

84. Inconsistent/incomplete hreflang detection?
Check the <head> for iframes
#SMX | @jammer_volts

85. #SMX | @jammer_volts
Cross-Domain Analytics
ga('create', 'UA-XXXXX-Y',
'auto', {allowLinker:
true});
ga('require', 'linker');
ga('linker:autoLink',
['example.de']);
ga('create', 'UA-XXXXX-Y',
'auto', {allowLinker:
true});
ga('require', 'linker');
ga('linker:autoLink',
['example.com']);
on Example.com on Example.de
(Don’t forget your referral exclusion!)

86. #SMX | @jammer_volts
Create new views with hostname filters
for data integrity & consistency

87. #SMX | @jammer_volts
@jammer_volts
/in/jamie-alberico