International Link Building: 8 Strategies That Work

Summarize this post with: 8 min read

International link building means earning links from websites in each country and language you target, and pointing them at the matching language version of your site. A link from a respected German trade site to your German page tells search engines more about your relevance in Germany than another link from a US blog to your English homepage.

The tactics are familiar (digital PR, partners, useful content, outreach), but they have to be run per market, in the local language, with local sites. This guide covers eight strategies that work, how to choose target sites, how to handle anchor text in other languages, and what Google counts as link spam, so you don’t pay for links that hurt.

Key takeaways

Build links market by market: local sites, in the local language, to the local page.
Local relevance beats raw authority. A mid-sized site read by your buyers in that country is worth more than a large unrelated one.
Start with links you can earn from existing relationships: partners, distributors, customers, associations.
Create content that local journalists and bloggers want to cite, such as country-specific data.
Stay inside Google’s rules: no buying links that pass ranking credit, no excessive link swaps, no automated links.

Why international links work differently

Two things change when you leave your home market.

Relevance is local. Search engines judge links partly by context: the site’s topic, its audience and its language. Links from sites your target customers actually read in that country are the strongest signal that your page belongs in that country’s results.

Links go to specific pages. If your site has /de/, /fr/ and /es/ versions, each version competes on its own in its market. A French article should link to your French page, not your English homepage. Hreflang tags connect the versions so Google shows each searcher the right one (our complete hreflang guide covers the setup), but links still need to point at the right language to build that version’s authority.

Before you start: get the foundations right

Outreach is wasted if the page you’re promoting isn’t ready.

Each market has an indexable page. Translated pages need their own URLs (sub-directory, sub-domain or country domain), not just a script that swaps text in the browser.
The page is actually translated. Title, headings, body, meta description and calls to action. Local sites won’t link to half-English pages.
Hreflang and canonicals are correct, so the linked page is the one that ranks.
The content is worth linking to in that market. Local prices, local examples, local contact details.

8 international link building strategies

1. Start with partners you already have

Distributors, resellers, suppliers, integration partners, agencies and local customers often have websites in the local language. Ask for a link from their partner, supplier or “where to buy” pages to your local page. These are the easiest links to earn and among the most relevant.

2. Publish country-specific data

Journalists and bloggers link to original numbers. Run a small survey, analyze your own anonymized usage data, or compile public statistics for one country, then publish the result on the local page in the local language. “How [country] businesses do X” gets cited in that country; a global average rarely does.

3. Localize your best linkable assets

Look at the pages on your main site that already attract links: guides, tools, calculators, templates, research. Translate and adapt the best ones for each market, with local examples and sources, then promote them to local sites. A calculator in the local currency or a template that follows local regulations is far more linkable than a translated copy of the US version.

4. Do local digital PR

Pitch local journalists and trade publications with local angles: a new office, a local customer story, local hiring, market-specific data, or expert comment on local news in your industry. Write the pitch in the local language, or work with a local PR partner. English pitches to non-English media usually go unanswered.

5. Contribute expert content to local industry sites

Industry blogs, magazines and associations in each country publish contributed articles. Offer genuinely useful, original pieces in the local language, written or reviewed by someone fluent. The goal is exposure to the right readers; a link from your author bio or a relevant reference is the bonus.

6. Get listed where local buyers look

Local business directories, chambers of commerce, industry associations, trade-fair exhibitor lists and “best of” lists maintained by credible local publications. Be selective: Google’s spam policies call out “low-quality directory or bookmark site links”, so skip directories that exist only to sell listings.

7. Reclaim unlinked mentions in every language

Set up alerts for your brand and product names in each target language. When a local site mentions you without linking, a short, polite request in the local language often gets the link added, pointing to your local page.

8. Analyze competitors country by country

Run a backlink gap analysis for the sites that rank in each target country, not your global competitors. You’ll find local directories, associations, media and blogs you didn’t know about. Filter by country and language to see where local competitors earn their links.

Anchor text in other languages

Anchor text is the clickable text of a link. For international links:

Let it be natural in the local language. Your brand name, the page title in the local language, or a descriptive local phrase. Don’t insist on an exact-match keyword.
Match the language of the surrounding text. An English keyword as anchor in the middle of a Spanish article looks odd to readers and to search engines.
Use your local keyword research. If you’ve mapped local keywords to pages (see our guide to translating SEO keywords), descriptive anchors on your own internal links should use those terms.

What to avoid: Google’s link spam rules

Google’s spam policies list the practices that can get links discounted or sites penalized. The most relevant for international campaigns:

Paid links: “Buying or selling links for ranking purposes”, including “exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links”.
Link exchanges: “Excessive link exchanges (‘Link to me and I’ll link to you’) or partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking”.
Automated links: “Using automated programs or services to create links to your site”.
Advertorials where payment is received for articles with links that pass ranking credit.
Low-quality directories and “widely distributed links in the footers or templates of various sites”.

Paid placements and sponsorships are fine as advertising, as long as the links are marked with rel="sponsored" (or rel="nofollow"). This matters abroad because “sponsored article” packages sold by local link vendors are common, and they rarely mark the links.

How to measure international link building

Track per market, monthly:

New referring domains by country and language (most SEO tools can filter by TLD or site language).
Links to each language version of your key pages.
Rankings and clicks for local keywords in Search Console, filtered by country.
Referral traffic from local sites in your analytics.

Expect slow results. Links from a handful of genuinely relevant local sites usually do more than a large batch of weak ones.

How ConveyThis supports international link building

Link building needs pages worth linking to in each language. ConveyThis gives you those pages without rebuilding your site:

Indexable language URLs. Sub-directory (example.com/de/) or sub-domain (de.example.com) structures on the Business plan and above, with hreflang added automatically. See multilingual SEO features.
Translated metadata. Titles, descriptions and structured data are translated, so your local page looks local in search results and in link previews.
Quality control. Use the glossary and the visual editor to make sure the page reads well before you pitch it to a local editor. The features page lists everything included.

Plans, language limits and word limits are on the pricing page. For more general link ideas, see our post on effective link building strategies.

FAQ

Do links from other countries help SEO? Links from relevant sites help wherever they come from. For ranking in a specific country, links from sites in that country and language are the stronger signal.

Should international links point to my homepage? Point them to the most relevant page in the matching language: the local product page, guide or homepage for that language.

Is a country-code domain better for link building? Not necessarily. Sub-directories keep all links on one domain; ccTLDs send a stronger country signal but each builds authority separately. Pick based on your wider international strategy.

Can I buy links from local sites? You can buy advertising, but links that pass ranking credit in exchange for money break Google’s spam policies. Mark paid links with rel="sponsored".

Need local pages worth linking to? Create a ConveyThis account and publish indexable translated versions of your site.