International SEO Audit: A 20-Point Checklist for 2+ Markets

An international SEO audit checks whether search engines can find, index and serve the right language or country version of your site to the right people. For a small business selling in two or more markets, it comes down to five areas: URL structure, hreflang, canonicals, indexing and the content itself. Most problems that make a second market invisible sit in the first three, and you can check them in an afternoon with Search Console, a crawler and the checklist below.

Run the checks in order. A wrong URL structure or a cross-language canonical makes every later fix pointless, so start with the foundations and finish with content and keyword targeting. Each item links to the Google rule it is based on, so you can tell a real error from a style preference.

The international SEO audit checklist

Twenty checks, grouped by area, with what "pass" looks like.

The rest of this article explains the checks most likely to fail, and what to skip.

How do you audit URL structure for international SEO?

Confirm that every language version has a stable URL Google can reach without being redirected.

Google's guidance on managing multi-regional and multilingual sites recommends different URLs for each language version rather than cookies or browser settings. It also notes that Googlebot usually crawls from the USA and sends requests without an Accept-Language header. If your site auto-redirects by location or browser language, Google may only ever see one version.

On domains, Google lists the trade-offs: a ccTLD like example.de is a clear country signal but can only target one country, while subfolders on a gTLD are easy to set up and low maintenance. One detail matters for SaaS founders: Google treats some country-code domains, including .io, .ai, .co and .me, as generic. A .io site is not geotargeted to the British Indian Ocean Territory, so subfolders on it work like subfolders on a .com.

The recommendation for most small businesses: subfolders (/de/, /fr/) on the domain you already have. They inherit existing authority and need no new infrastructure. Skip new ccTLDs unless you have a local entity and budget to build each one up separately. The international SEO strategy guide covers that decision in more depth.

Auditing hreflang: what to check first

Check reciprocity and codes before anything else, because those errors make Google ignore the annotations.

Google's localized versions documentation states that if two pages don't both point to each other, the tags are ignored. It names three common mistakes: missing return links, incorrect language codes and incorrect region codes. Specifying a region alone is invalid, and reserved codes such as EU, UN or UK have no effect.

Crawl the site with a tool that reports hreflang, export missing return links and invalid codes, and fix them at the template level. The hreflang tags guide has the syntax and code examples. Two less obvious checks are worth adding: hreflang URLs that redirect or return 404, and hreflang tags placed below an invalid element in the <head>, where Google stops reading.

Canonical and indexing checks

Make sure each translation is indexed under its own URL, not folded into the original.

The single highest-impact check in an international SEO audit is the canonical on translated pages. Google's canonical guidance says that when you use hreflang you should specify a canonical in the same language. A German page whose canonical points to the English page is asking to be dropped.

For indexing, open Search Console's URL Inspection tool on one page per language. Compare the user-declared canonical with the Google-selected canonical. If they differ, or the page isn't indexed, you have found the reason that market is invisible. Then check the page indexing report, filtered to each language folder's sitemap, for pages excluded as duplicates.

Content and keyword checks

Translated pages need to be genuinely in the target language and target the terms locals use.

Google determines a page's language from its visible content, not from the lang attribute or the URL, and it recommends using a single language for content and navigation on each page. Pages where only the template is translated look like duplicates and serve users badly.

Literal translation of keywords is the most common content failure. The phrase a German buyer types is often not a word-for-word translation of the English term. Research each market separately, even with free methods like the ones in keyword research without tools, and use the local term in titles, headings and the first paragraph.

Common international SEO audit mistakes

Most audits waste time on low-impact items and miss the structural ones.

• Looking for the International Targeting report. Google deprecated it and no longer supports country targeting in Search Console. Hreflang is still supported.
• Adding geo meta tags. Google ignores locational meta tags such as geo.position.
• Relying on the lang attribute for language. Google doesn't use it to determine page language; keep it for accessibility and browsers, but don't expect it to fix indexing.
• Fixing pages one by one. Hreflang and canonical errors come from templates. Fix the template, then recrawl.
• Auditing once. Every new page, redesign or URL change can break clusters. Re-run the hreflang and canonical checks after any site migration.
• Treating machine translation as finished. Unedited output with the wrong market terms will be indexed and still not rank.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an international SEO audit?

An international SEO audit is a review of how well search engines can crawl, index and serve the right language or country version of a website. It covers URL structure, hreflang annotations, canonical tags, indexing status and localized content. The goal is to find why a market isn't getting search traffic and fix the causes in order of impact.

How often should you run an international SEO audit?

Run a full audit when you launch a new market and after any redesign, migration or URL change. Between those, a light check each quarter is enough for most small sites: inspect one URL per language in Search Console, check the page indexing report per language sitemap, and recrawl for hreflang return-link errors.

What tools do you need for an international SEO audit?

Google Search Console is essential, mainly the URL Inspection tool, the page indexing report and the Sitemaps report. Add a crawler that reports hreflang and canonicals, such as Screaming Frog's SEO Spider, whose free version crawls up to 500 URLs. A single-page hreflang tester helps spot-check individual pages.

Does Search Console still have an international targeting report?

No. Google deprecated the International Targeting report, and country targeting through Search Console is no longer supported. Google says it continues to support and use hreflang. To check international setup today, use URL Inspection to compare declared and Google-selected canonicals, and use a crawler for hreflang errors.

Should a SaaS on a .io domain use subfolders or country domains?

Subfolders are usually the better choice. Google treats .io as a generic domain, so it isn't tied to one country, and subfolders like /de/ or /fr/ share the authority the main domain has already earned. Separate country domains make sense mainly when you have local entities and can invest in each one separately.

Where to start

Start your international SEO audit with the checklist table: URLs, then hreflang reciprocity and codes, then canonicals on translated pages, then indexing per language, and finally content and per-market keywords. The first three areas explain most invisible second markets, and they are template fixes, not page-by-page work.

Once the foundations pass, the remaining work is publishing good content in each language consistently. Agent Solo's Growth plan publishes in two languages with hreflang, canonicals and per-market keyword research built in, and Scale covers up to five. Request early access to put that on autopilot.