International SEO on Shopify is mostly one decision followed by one implementation detail that is easy to get wrong.
The decision: subfolders or domains
Subfolders — yoursite.com/fr — concentrate authority on one domain. Every link anyone builds to any market strengthens all of them. This is the right default for most brands.
Country domains — yoursite.fr — signal locality more strongly and are genuinely separate properties for SEO purposes. They make sense when a market is large enough to have its own content operation and its own link building.
Subdomains — fr.yoursite.com — the worst of both. Avoid.
Unless a single market is a substantial share of revenue and has its own team, subfolders. Splitting authority across domains is a cost you pay every month and notice in year two.
The implementation detail: hreflang
Every localised page needs hreflang tags listing itself and every alternate, plus an x-default. The rules that get broken:
Reciprocity. If the English page points at the French one, the French page must point back. One-way hreflang is ignored entirely.
Correct codes. Language, optionally language-region. Using a country code where a language code belongs is the most common error.
Pointing at live URLs. Hreflang pointing at a URL that redirects is discarded. This happens constantly after a domain or path change.
Self-reference. Each page must include itself in the set.
What Shopify handles and what it does not
Markets generates hreflang automatically for market-specific URLs, and for most setups that is correct out of the box. Where it needs checking is when you have custom routing, a mix of domains and subfolders, or translations managed outside Shopify.
The non-technical half
Rankings in a new market also depend on things that are not markup: local payment methods, a returns position stated for that market, prices that look local rather than converted, and content in the language rather than machine-translated into it.
We covered the conversion side in why your new market is not selling. The SEO and the conversion problems are usually the same problems.
Talk it through
Tell us which markets you sell into.
We will check your hreflang, tell you whether the structure is right, and flag what is costing you in the markets that are underperforming.
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About the author
Manpreet Singh
Founder of Proscube. Leads the studio's Shopify, headless and CRO engineering, and works directly with founders rather than through account managers.
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