Many SaaS companies sell internationally from one English site, which often works. Localised pages make sense when buyers in a market search in their own language, when pricing or regulation differs, or when local competitors own the results. Done badly, international pages create duplicates that compete with each other.
Short on time? Comppound does this work for SaaS companies. AI-native, and a person reviews every page.
Have us do itDecide whether to localise
Look at Search Console by country and at sales by market. Search the key buyer questions in the target language. If buyers search in that language and the results are local pages, localisation is worth considering.
Choose a structure
Subfolders such as /de/ are the simplest to manage and share one domain's authority. Country domains send a strong local signal but split authority. Choose one and apply it consistently.
Comppound can do this for you
Want your SEO foundations handled?
Comppound finds the searches your buyers make, fixes what stops Google reading your site and builds the pages that win them. Our system is AI-native, and a person reviews every page before it ships.
- Buyer search map from your sales calls
- Technical fixes on the pages that matter
- Pages published to your CMS
Use hreflang
Hreflang annotations tell search engines which language or regional version of a page to show to whom. Each version must reference all others, including itself, and an x-default can name the fallback.
Translate properly
Localise rather than just translate: pricing in local currency, local examples, local integrations and the words buyers in that market actually search for. Machine translation without review produces pages that read badly and rarely rank.
Worked example · an illustration, not a client result
Tallyroom's first local version
German-speaking agencies were a growing share of sign-ups, and the key searches were in German with German results. Tallyroom localised its top commercial pages first.
Do it yourself
Test one market
- 1Check Search Console and sales by country.
- 2Search five buyer questions in the target market's language.
- 3If local results dominate, plan a subfolder for that language.
- 4Localise your five most important commercial pages, reviewed by a native speaker.
- 5Add hreflang for every version, including x-default.
Free tool for this: SERP snippet preview
Common mistakes
Automatic redirects by IP
Forcing visitors and crawlers to a version by location can stop search engines seeing other versions.
Hreflang without return links
Each version must reference the others, or the annotations may be ignored.
Unreviewed machine translation
Pages that read badly do not rank or convert.
Rather not do it yourself?
Want your SEO foundations handled?
Comppound finds the searches your buyers make, fixes what stops Google reading your site and builds the pages that win them. Our system is AI-native, and a person reviews every page before it ships.
- Buyer search map from your sales calls
- Technical fixes on the pages that matter
- Pages published to your CMS
Questions
Usually not, unless pricing, spelling or offers differ enough to matter.
It helps the right version show in each market. It does not boost rankings by itself.
Key terms
- HreflangHreflang is an annotation telling search engines which language or regional versions of a page exist, so each searcher gets the right one.
- x-defaultx-default is an hreflang value that names the fallback page for users whose language or region does not match any version you list.
- Country code top-level domainA ccTLD is a two-letter domain ending for a country, like .de or .fr. Google uses most ccTLDs as a strong signal that a site targets that country.
- International Keyword ResearchInternational keyword research finds how people search in each target country and language, rather than translating an English keyword list word for word.
- Search LocalizationSearch localization is how engines adjust results to a searcher's country, region and language, and how sites signal which audiences they serve.
- Subdomain vs subfolderSubdomain vs subfolder is the choice between blog.example.com and example.com/blog. Google says it handles both; the practical differences are real, though.
