International SEO Guide
International Keyword Research: How to Find What Each Market Actually Searches
International keyword research is the process of finding the search terms buyers in each target country actually type into Google and AI assistants — in their language, checked against their local search results. It is not translating your English keyword list. A translated list gives you correct words that locals often never search for, and that gap is where most international SEO efforts quietly fail.
This guide walks through the full process: choosing markets, building seed lists, validating keywords in local SERPs, researching AI prompts, and tracking results per country. It is written for marketers, founders, and small business owners doing SEO themselves — no agency budget required.
In short
A step-by-step guide to international keyword research — pick markets, build local seed lists, validate keywords in each country's SERPs, and track results per market. Free checklist and template included.
The core problem
Why Translated Keywords Fail (With Real Numbers)
The single biggest mistake in international keyword research is assuming a translation tool gives you the keyword. It gives you a translation — a different thing.
Take a US HR software company selling payroll with time tracking. Its English page targets "payroll timekeeping software." A literal Spanish translation is "software de nómina." But in Spain, people actually search for "programa de nóminas" (payroll software) and "control horario" (time tracking). The data shows the gap:
| Keyword (Spain, monthly volume) | Origin | Volume | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|
| "software de nómina" | Literal translation | 40 | 8 |
| "programa de nóminas" | Localized | 250 | 7 |
| "software control horario" | Localized | 800 | 31 |
The literal translation gets roughly a sixth of the volume of the term locals use. (Flying Cat Marketing, 2026)
Four reasons this happens in every market:
Local terminology
The same product gets different names. Vets in North America say "SOAP notes"; vets in the UK and Europe say "medical records."
Local regulation
Laws create search demand with no English equivalent. German marketers search "dsgvo double opt in" — pairing the German name for GDPR with a consent process.
Loanwords
Some B2B categories keep English names in certain markets and get local names in others. Only local data tells you which. In Germany, buyers search "payroll software" in English 700 times a month, but the German term "lohnabrechnung software" delivers about 16 times more traffic potential at similar volume. (Flying Cat Marketing, 2026)
Different intent
A literal translation can match a different page type in local results. The product page that ranks in the US may lose in Spain, where comparison roundups dominate.
Here's the scale of the opportunity you're missing: English is the language of about 49.5% of website content but only about 25.9% of internet users. (W3Techs; Wikipedia, checked October 2026) That mismatch — far more English content than English-speaking searchers — means most non-English markets are far less competitive than the US.
The process
International Keyword Research in 6 Steps
Here is the process, end to end. Steps 1–3 are thinking work you can do in a spreadsheet. Steps 4–6 need keyword tools and local SERP checks.
Spreadsheet work
Tools + local SERP checks
Step 1 of 6
Pick Your Target Markets (Country First, Language Second)
Start with two or three markets where your business has the best odds, not ten at once. Rank candidate markets by:
- Existing demand signals. Do you already get orders, signups, or emails from that country?
- Competition level. A market where the current top results are weak forums beats one owned by three funded startups.
- Language fit. Who can write or review content in that language?
Then decide what you're targeting: a country (Germany) or a language (German, including Austria and Switzerland). The answer shapes your URL structure and hreflang tags later. "French" is not one market — the version of French used in France, Canada, and Belgium differs in vocabulary and search habits.
One practical note: don't assume people search in the local language. In Norway, one agency found local-language keywords had low volume and low competition, and they converted better than English ones because they built trust. (AS Marketing via Weglot, 2024) Check both.
Step 2 of 6
Build a Seed List the Way Locals Search
A seed list is the set of starting phrases your keyword tool expands into a full keyword set. For each market, build it from five sources:
Your own data. Google Search Console queries filtered by country, site search logs, and sales call notes show the words real buyers use.
Local competitors. The vendors ranking in that market reveal category terms and feature names. Run their domains through a keyword tool with the country set to the target market.
Local communities. Country-specific forums, LinkedIn groups, review sites, and YouTube comments show how practitioners actually talk.
Regulation and the business calendar. Local laws, tax deadlines, and retail events create search demand your English list never contains.
Google autocomplete from the country. Suggestions, People Also Ask, and related searches, run from the target country in the local language.
If you don't speak the language, a native speaker with some SEO knowledge is worth the small cost for this one step — or use AI to generate candidate phrasings and have a native speaker correct them. The seed list is where translated lists go wrong, so it's where to spend effort.
Step 3 of 6
Localize, Don't Just Translate
Localization means adapting the keyword to what locals actually call the thing — sometimes replacing it entirely. Compare every localized term against the literal translation of your English keyword, and keep both in your spreadsheet. The comparison does two things: it shows where demand really sits, and it produces evidence you can show your boss or client for why native research matters.
Then check search intent. Search intent is the goal behind a query — learning something (informational), comparing options (commercial), or buying (transactional). The page types ranking in the local results tell you what Google thinks the intent is, and it often differs from the US. In the US, a software keyword might return vendor product pages; in Spain, the same concept might return "best of" roundups — meaning you need a comparison page, not a product page.
Step 4 of 6
Validate Volume, Difficulty, and Intent in Each Market's SERPs
Now run your localized keywords through a keyword tool with the country set to the target market. Evaluate three things:
- Search volume — how many monthly searches in that country. Treat low volume as a flag to investigate, not an automatic no: local tools often under-report demand in smaller markets. Italian and Spanish B2B terms frequently show near-zero volume while buyers search them weekly. If competitors run commercial pages against a "zero volume" term, they see demand you don't.
- Keyword difficulty — how hard it is to rank. Difficulty scores in small markets are often lower than you'd expect, which is exactly the opportunity.
- Traffic potential — the estimated total traffic the top-ranking page gets from all its keywords. A 150-searches-per-month term can support a page earning 1,700 visits from related searches. Judge topics by this, not single-keyword volume. (Flying Cat Marketing, 2026)
Then do the "eye test": open Google in the target country (or use a SERP tool or VPN set to that location) and look at the live top 10. Check the page types, who ranks (global vendors, local vendors, publishers, government sites), the SERP features (AI Overviews, People Also Ask, video, local packs), and how much the results overlap between candidate keywords. Two keywords whose results share most URLs can live on one page; two with no shared URLs each need their own page. Cluster keywords this way per country — a cluster in English may split into two in Spanish.
Votrix AI does this for you
This is also where a lot of the manual grind lives: pulling volumes per country, checking SERPs per keyword, comparing your rankings against local competitors. This is keyword research and competitor analysis that Votrix AI runs automatically — it does keyword research and competitor analysis, checks your backlinks, site authority, and your link gap versus competitors (data from DataForSEO), and shows your real rankings, clicks, and impressions once you connect Google Search Console. Free within its free tier, pay-per-use beyond that.
Step 5 of 6
Research AI Prompts in Each Market
Buyers in Paris, Munich, and Madrid now ask ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode the same "which tool should I use" questions US buyers ask — and most keyword guides haven't caught up. Google expanded AI Mode to more than 200 countries and territories and 35+ new languages in October 2025. (Google, 2025)
Two findings matter for international keyword research:
Analyzing over 10 million ChatGPT prompts, Peec AI found that 43% of the background searches behind non-English prompts ran in English. (Peec AI, 2025)
Studying 3.25 billion AI citations across 14 countries, Profound found that the language of the query changes which sources AI assistants cite — more than the country does. (Profound, 2025)
Practical takeaway: write your AI prompt set in the local language, run it from the target country's location, and record which vendors get named and which pages get cited. Those cited local pages become your placement and content targets. And rankings still feed AI visibility: in one study of 488 product pages, those with five or more top-10 rankings reached 10+ AI citations 76% of the time, versus 10% for weaker pages. (The Search Spot, 2026) A strong local keyword set is the foundation of AI visibility in each language.
Votrix AI tracks this for you
Tracking this manually across markets is painful. Votrix AI tracks whether ChatGPT, Claude, and Google AI Overviews mention you, so you can see your AI visibility per market without running hundreds of prompts by hand. It also checks whether Google and AI crawlers can actually read your site — worth verifying before you publish localized content, because a crawl-blocked page earns no AI citations anywhere.
ChatGPT
Claude
Perplexity
Google AI Overviews
Step 6 of 6
Turn Research Into Decisions, Then Track Per Market
For each English page and each new topic, your local data points to one of four decisions:
| Decision | When the data supports it |
|---|---|
| Localize | Local results show the same page type for the localized keyword — adapt your English page |
| Rewrite | The topic has demand, but local results favor a different angle or format |
| New page | Local seeds or prompts reveal demand your site doesn't cover — write from scratch in the local language |
| Skip | No local demand or no product fit — keep it English-only |
Keep every market in one spreadsheet with the same columns: money topic, English keyword, literal translation, localized keyword, volume and difficulty, traffic potential, local page types, SERP features, cluster, related prompts, decision, and target URL. The "literal translation" column is the one that wins budget approvals — it shows in your own data how far a translated list would have missed.
After launch, track rankings, clicks, and conversions per market, against that market's own baseline. Blended global averages let one strong market hide a weak one. Google Search Console's Performance report filtered by Country is the free way to do this; Votrix AI connects to Search Console directly and shows real rankings, clicks, and impressions, plus it finds pages that aren't ranking and rewrites them — useful when a localized page underperforms its English original.
Once keywords are chosen and content is live, the next bottleneck is usually authority: local pages need local backlinks. Votrix AI sends outreach emails to earn backlinks and mentions on its own. For the research side of related topics, see our guides on , , , , and .
Avoid these
Common Mistakes in International Keyword Research
01
Translating the keyword list and calling it done. The number-one failure mode, and the whole reason this guide compares literal translations with localized terms.
02
Trusting volume numbers blindly. Tools under-report small markets, and a zero-volume term can still convert if competitors run commercial pages against it.
03
Copying your US content strategy. Search intent varies by culture. Some markets want detailed comparison guides before buying; others want a buy button. Match the local page types.
04
Ignoring dialects. Spanish in Mexico differs from Spanish in Argentina in vocabulary and search patterns. One "Spanish" page rarely covers both well.
05
Skipping hreflang. These small tags tell Google which language version to show which users. Without them, your localized pages can cannibalize each other.
06
Forgetting search engines other than Google. Google holds about 89% of search share in Europe (StatCounter, September 2026), so Google data works there. But Baidu leads in China, Naver in South Korea, and Yandex in Russia — each needs its own tools and research process.
Baidu
Naver
Yandex
07
Treating keyword research as one-time. Volumes shift and competitors move. Revisit each market's keyword set at least quarterly.
Free checklist
Your International Keyword Research Checklist
Work through these in order, for each market you launch.
- Pick 2–3 priority markets based on existing demand and competition
- Decide country vs. language targeting for each
- Pull seed terms from Search Console (filtered by country), local competitors, communities, and local regulation
- Build the seed list in the local language — with a native speaker if possible
- Compare every localized keyword against its literal translation; record both
- Validate volume, difficulty, and traffic potential per country in your keyword tool
- Read the local top 10 for each priority keyword: page type, who ranks, SERP features
- Cluster keywords per country by overlapping ranking URLs
- Write and run a local-language AI prompt set from the target country
- Assign each topic: localize, rewrite, new page, or skip
- Track rankings, clicks, and AI mentions per market against a per-market baseline
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
What is international keyword research?
It's the process of finding the search terms buyers in each target country use, in their language, validated against their local search results. It produces a separate keyword set per market, not a translated copy of your English list.
How is international keyword research different from regular keyword research?
The process is similar — seeds, volume, difficulty, intent — but every step runs per market. Seed terms must come from the local language, volumes must be pulled with the country filter set, and intent must be confirmed in the local SERPs, because all three can differ from your home market.
Can I just translate my English keywords?
You can, but you'll usually miss what locals actually search. Real examples show literal translations getting a sixth of the volume of localized terms, and local regulations or loanwords creating demand a translated list can't see. Keep translations in your sheet for comparison, but target the localized term.
Which tools are best for international keyword research?
You need a keyword tool with per-country volume data (Ahrefs, Semrush, or similar), a way to view SERPs from the target country, Google Search Console for real per-country performance, and an AI visibility tracker for prompts. Votrix AI combines keyword research, competitor and backlink analysis (via DataForSEO), Search Console data, and AI mention tracking in one tool, with a free tier.
Ahrefs
Semrush
Google Search Console
DataForSEO
How do I check search results in another country?
Use a SERP analysis tool with location settings, a VPN set to the target country, or simply Google's country-specific domain with the local-language keyword. Results depend heavily on both location and language settings, so always check from the market, not your office.
Do people in other countries search in English or their own language?
It varies by market and category. Some B2B terms keep their English names in certain markets; elsewhere the local term wins on both volume and conversion. Check both in local data rather than assuming — one agency found local Norwegian keywords converted better than English ones despite lower volume.
How many markets should I start with?
Two or three. Pick where you already see demand signals and where competition looks weakest, get the process right there, then expand. Each additional market roughly multiplies your research and content workload.
Sources
Sources
- Flying Cat Marketing — International Keyword Research: A Native-Linguist Guide — https://flyingcatmarketing.com/international-seo/keyword-research/ (updated Oct 2026)
- W3Techs — Usage statistics of content languages for websites — https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_language (checked Oct 2026)
- Wikipedia — Languages used on the Internet — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_used_on_the_Internet (checked Oct 2026)
- Google — AI Mode expands to more languages and locations — https://blog.google/products/search/ai-mode-expands-languages-locations/ (Oct 2025)
- Peec AI — 43% of background searches behind non-English ChatGPT prompts run in English — https://peec.ai/blog/chatgpt-searches-in-english-even-when-you-don-t (2025)
- Profound — How query language reshapes AI citations — https://www.tryprofound.com/blog/how-query-language-reshapes-ai-citations (2025)
- The Search Spot — Product pages with 5+ top-10 rankings and AI citations — https://thesearchspot.substack.com/p/product-pages-with-5-top-10-rankings (2026)
- StatCounter — Search engine market share, Europe — https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/all/europe (Sep 2026)
- Weglot — International SEO Keyword Research: The Definitive Guide (AS Marketing quote) — https://www.weglot.com/blog/international-seo-keyword-research (2024)
- AIOSEO — Simple 6-Step Guide to International SEO Keyword Research — https://aioseo.com/international-seo-keyword-research/ (2025)
- EC Innovations — International Keyword Research for SEO: A Step-by-Step Guide — https://www.ecinnovations.com/blog/international-seo-keyword-research/ (2026)
Link to this guide: https://votrixai.com/guides/international-keyword-research
Find what each market actually searches
Run keyword research, competitor analysis, and AI mention tracking per market automatically — free to start.
