Link building is already hard enough for a one-country website. For a business with several national versions, it's even harder. Your international website doesn't require authority in one country but in each country and in each language. Do it right, and you'll have local authority wherever you are. Do it wrong, and your multilingual pages remain unseen as your competitors get all the traffic.
This guide is aimed at SEO providers dealing with international projects. Here you will find tips on how to make your international link building efficient, accompanied with illustrative examples. Please take the latter as general cases of our practices in Intseo Media.
What Makes International Link Building Different
Search engines analyze the authority and the relevance of websites in relation to each particular market. The English-language links won't bring any benefits to your German or Japanese page because it competes with other German and Japanese websites for the searchers from Germany and Japan respectively. And local signals are important here: links from the publishers in your country, in your language, pointing to the correct localized URLs.
So international link building is the set of several independent campaigns conducted simultaneously. Here you will learn how to run them properly.
Tip 1: Build Links Per Language and Market, Not Just Per Domain
The most common mistake is the treatment of multilingual websites as one entity, resulting in directing all links to the homepage or the English-language version. Instead, you should direct the links to each version and to the corresponding localized URLs.
Tip 2: Use Local, In-Language Publishers as Much as Possible
A link from a publisher in your country and writing in your language gives much more relevance signal than the link from an international publisher. Also, local publishers can reach the audience you want to attract.
Tip 3: Have a Correct Technical Foundation for Link Building First
Your links won't work effectively if your website doesn't specify which version is for which audience. Having proper hreflang tags, correct URL structure and canonical URLs in each language is required. Otherwise, your French links can bring value to another version.
Tip 4: Use the Native Outreach Specialists
The outreach is the relationship building, and every editor can recognize the automatically translated text right away. International link building requires the people speaking the language of the target market.
Tip 5: Customize Your Anchor Text and Content in Each Language
You should customize the anchor text in a natural way according to the language of the target market. And the keyword research should be done in this language too.
Tip 6: Localize Your Digital PR for Each Market
The digital PR is one of the best sources of links, and it can travel around the globe if you localize it properly. One article with the results of your data research can be customized for each market in order to give them the unique angles.
Tip 7: Vetting Should Be Careful in Any Market
No matter what market you are in, no relaxation is allowed when checking the quality of links. The prospective website has to be relevant and to have healthy organic traffic. The stable traffic growth is preferable, not the decline. Backlink profile, outbound links to reputable resources and editorial standards – all of these should be evaluated along with the metrics, such as Ahrefs Domain Rating, Majestic Trust Flow, or Moz Domain Authority, together with the actual traffic data.
This is crucial now. Google analyses the link patterns in real time, and the spam update during the past year devalued the links in bulk and acquired from the irrelevant sources. The relevance and the genuine authority of links are the qualities that determine their value in any language.
Tip 8: Take into Account Regional Search Engines
In most markets, Google is the dominant one. But not in all of them. The Baidu is the dominant search engine in China and Google is absent there. The Yandex has a major share of searches in Russia along with Google. And the Naver remains highly influential in South Korea. If your brand operates in these markets, your international link building and content strategy has to consider their peculiarities, not only the ones of Google. However, for the vast majority of markets, a Google-focused link building with relevant local links is the best strategy.
Measuring the Results in Several Markets
You have to report in every market separately and to track the referring domains, positions and organic traffic per language and per country, since the average values over all markets can conceal some weaker ones. Such reporting gives you the opportunity to see where the authority is building up and where it is needed to pay more attention.
Why Should You Choose an International Link Building Agency?
An international link building requires specialization. The localization of content and the native outreach for each country is hard to be implemented in-house, especially for the several markets. This is why you need an international link building service.
Intseo Media is made to solve this problem. Our native outreach specialists conduct campaigns in dozens of languages and markets. We show you the list of target sites for approval before we start to contact them, and we check each of these sites for the quality described above. All the links are gained via the manual outreach and digital PR, not the automation and PBNs, so your backlink profile will be compliant with Google's spam policies. Because we build the genuine authority for your clients, we also support their positions in the AI search where the tools like AI Overviews and Perplexity cite the trusted and well-linked websites. If you want the backlinks from different markets to be earned in the same professional way, this is the kind of international link building service you should choose.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is international link building?
The practice of earning backlinks for your website in several countries and languages so that each version builds the authority in its own market.
Why can't I just use one domain for all my links?
Because search engines analyze the authority of the website in relation to each market and each language. English links can't bring any benefit to your German or Japanese pages, which compete against the local websites in German and Japanese markets respectively.
Do I need different strategies for different countries?
Yes. The language, culture, local media, the way of search, and in some markets the leading search engine are all different. The effective international link building requires tailoring the outreach, content and anchor text to each particular market.
Ready to Build Authority in Every Market You Serve?
If you provide international SEO services and you need a professional partner for building the links in different markets, Intseo Media is happy to help you. Share your target markets, languages, and keywords with us, and our team will develop the clear and transparent strategy of gaining backlinks worldwide.
Book a free strategy call or Request a custom proposal today.
About the author
Fabi Gylgonyl
Link building specialist · Intseo Media
Fabi Gylgonyl is a link building specialist who helps international and multilingual brands earn authoritative, editorial backlinks across dozens of languages and markets. He focuses on manual, white-hat outreach and digital PR that holds up through algorithm updates.