International SEO for Tech Companies
Event Recap
On Wednesday evening (25th June 2025), I had the pleasure of speaking at the NZ Tech Marketers Group (TMG) event held at EPIC Innovation in Christchurch. The session focused on International SEO for Tech Companies and brought together a brilliant mix of solo marketers, in-house specialists, and curious minds looking to better understand how to scale into global markets.
Over the years, I’ve worked on more than a dozen international SEO campaigns across industries including tourism, manufacturing, SaaS, and ecommerce. Drawing from these experiences, the session combined both strategic insight and practical technical guidance, designed to leave attendees with clear, actionable steps, whether they were just starting out or refining an existing international strategy.
We began by exploring the common challenges and exciting opportunities tech businesses face when moving beyond their local markets. I emphasised that a one-size-fits-all approach rarely works; understanding the cultural, economic, and behavioural differences across regions is essential.
Using New Zealand, Australia, France, and Japan as examples, I demonstrated how regional nuances - such as device usage trends, search behaviours, and content expectations - can influence both your SEO strategy and broader digital marketing approach.
A major theme throughout the talk was the importance of localisation over direct translation. We discussed how personas might share similar core characteristics across regions, but diverge significantly in their expectations, behaviours, and decision-making processes.
For English-speaking markets in particular, I shared data showing significant differences in search queries between Australia and New Zealand, highlighting why international keyword research and competitor analysis must be treated as region-specific exercises.
From there, we moved into the technical foundations: site structure, hreflang implementation, non-ASCII character support, hosting, and page speed. I walked through the pros and cons of subfolders, subdomains, multisite setups and country-level domains, noting that business resourcing and scalability often drive architectural decisions.
My advice? If a change in site structure doesn’t deliver meaningful value to your users or business, it’s often best to keep things consolidated.
We also looked at how to serve multiple language versions, the risks of relying solely on machine translation, and the impact of localisation on the entire user journey, from website to third-party platforms.
Lastly, we examined how structured data, backlinking, and local directories support visibility in each target region.
The Q&A at the end touched on some very real challenges faced by smaller tech companies.
Where should they start? My suggestion: focus on building a strong understanding of your target persona and look for easy wins, like country-specific blog content or multimedia that’s properly localised and discoverable.
We also discussed methods for researching international personas, including working with freelance researchers to gain deeper insight into unfamiliar markets.
Unfortunately, while I did film the session, the audio recording didn’t work as planned, so a full version of the talk isn’t available. However, I’ve shared the slide deck below for anyone who’d like to revisit the key points.
A huge thank you to NZ Tech Marketers Group for hosting and supporting these kinds of professional development opportunities in our community. It was a pleasure to be part of the event.
Got questions about international SEO or planning to take your product to a new market?
Feel free to get in touch for a free 30-minute consultation.
Alternatively, if you’re new to SEO and would like to build a solid foundation, you’re welcome to join my 7-week SEO Strategy course with NZIE.
