International SEO

Two language markets. One of them is quietly losing.

Companies operating or expanding across the English/French boundary in either direction — French businesses entering English-speaking markets, or English-speaking businesses entering France.

See packages ↓See pricing

Duotone graphite and vermilion macro photograph of a railway track switch where two rails diverge from one.

How one market quietly loses to the other

You operate in English and French markets, and one of them quietly underperforms with no obvious cause.
Hreflang tags exist but were never audited against how search engines actually read them.
The same content appears at two URLs in two languages with no canonical relationship declared between them.
A market expansion is planned or already underway, and nobody has checked the technical architecture that will carry it.

What the audit actually checks

Deliverable	What it covers
Hreflang implementation audit	Every reciprocal tag checked, not just declared — including the ones search engines silently ignore
Duplicate-content audit across markets	Which pages compete with their own translated or regional counterpart
Sitemap & geo-targeting review	Whether language and region signals are consistent across sitemaps, hreflang and Search Console settings
Canonical & redirect audit across markets	Cross-market redirects and canonicals checked for signal loss
Prioritized fix list	Ranked by which market is losing visibility because of it

Hreflang implementation audit: Every reciprocal tag checked, not just declared — including the ones search engines silently ignore
Duplicate-content audit across markets: Which pages compete with their own translated or regional counterpart
Sitemap & geo-targeting review: Whether language and region signals are consistent across sitemaps, hreflang and Search Console settings
Canonical & redirect audit across markets: Cross-market redirects and canonicals checked for signal loss
Prioritized fix list: Ranked by which market is losing visibility because of it

Not included

Translation or localization of content (this is a technical audit, not a translation service) · Ongoing bilingual content production outside the Bilingual Growth Program · Currency, legal or logistics review for market entry · New-market research or demand sizing

How we fix cross-market signals

Audit current hreflang, sitemap and canonical setup across every language/market version live today.

Identify which specific tag, redirect or duplicate is suppressing which market.

Correct hreflang, canonical and sitemap architecture, or hand over a fix list ready to build.

Confirm both markets are indexed and ranking independently against the baseline.

A market-by-market read of what changed.

Evidence

Auditing hreflang and sitemap signals

Every declared language/market relationship on a site, and which ones don't reciprocate correctly — the diagnostic behind every International SEO engagement, run against your own site's architecture. The panel alongside is an illustrative rendering.

See the full artifact →

Duotone graphite and vermilion photograph of a hand-drawn site-architecture map on paper with one connecting line traced in vermilion ink.

Two ways to fix cross-market signals.

foundation · STL-HRF-TA

Hreflang & Multi-Market Audit

A full technical audit of your hreflang, sitemap and canonical setup across markets.

€1,480 excl. VAT

A full manual audit of hreflang, sitemap and canonical setup across every live market
One round of clarifying questions before the report is finalized
Direct access to the analyst who ran it
The full deliverable set below, reported in the same fixed format every audit client receives

See package details

program · STL-BGP-PRG-M

Bilingual Growth Program

Ongoing hreflang maintenance and bilingual on-page optimization as you publish.

€1,900 /mo excl. VAT

Everything in the Hreflang & Multi-Market Audit, maintained on a monthly cadence
Bilingual on-page optimization as new pages publish
A monthly market-by-market ranking report
A direct contact for questions between reports

See package details

Frequently asked questions

Do you only work with English/French?

That's the practice's own working language pair, and where the deepest expertise sits — the audit method applies to any language pair; ask on the Contact page for anything outside EN/FR.

We're a French company expanding into English markets — does this apply to us?

Yes — this service works in both directions: French businesses entering English-speaking markets, and English-speaking businesses entering France.

Is your own site bilingual?

The site ships in English first, with the full bilingual routing architecture already built and ready — the same discipline this service audits. French pages are the next phase, not a bolt-on afterthought.

What's the difference between the audit and the program?

The audit is a one-off technical read of what’s currently broken. The program maintains hreflang correctness and bilingual on-page optimization as you keep publishing in both markets.

Related services

Content & On-Page SEO Content rebuilt around topic and entity clusters, with internal linking and earned links as part of the same engagement. Technical SEO Audit Crawlability, indexation, Core Web Vitals and the log-file analysis that shows what Googlebot actually does on your site.

Get both markets ranking on their own merits.

See both packages ↓Talk to us about bespoke scope