International SEO is the work of making a website findable by searchers in every country it serves. Multilingual SEO is the language half of that work: researching the words people actually search with in each language, and writing the pages, titles and descriptions around them. For a hotel, resort or travel brand, it decides whether a guest in Tokyo, Seoul or Shanghai who searches in their own language finds your pages or someone else’s.
A translated website has two jobs that pull against each other: it has to be found by people searching in the new language, and it has to read as though it was written for them. Content optimised only for search reads mechanically; content written purely for feel often misses the words people actually search for. Doing both means building the keyword work into the writing rather than bolting it on.
The most common and most expensive error is to translate an English keyword list. That gives you the English concept rendered into another language, which is reliably not what local users type.
This piece covers how multilingual keyword research differs from translation, the on-page and technical items a multilingual site needs, and where the user-experience half sits.
Key Takeaways
- Research keywords in the target language, with local users in mind. Translated keywords are a
different thing from local keywords and routinely underperform them. - Build the findings in as the copy is written. Retrofitting terms into finished translated text
is how pages end up reading mechanically. - The technical layer (hreflang, localised titles, meta descriptions, URLs, headings and
alt text) is cheap, mechanical and the most frequently skipped part of the job.
What international and multilingual SEO mean for hotels and travel brands
International SEO asks “which market is this page for?”; multilingual SEO asks “which words does that market use?”. A hotel selling to several source markets needs both.
Take a resort in Bali that wants more guests from Korea, Japan and Australia. International SEO makes sure each market is served the right version of the site, with the technical signals that tell search engines which page is for whom. Multilingual SEO makes sure the Korean and Japanese pages are written around the terms Korean and Japanese travellers actually type, rather than around English terms rendered into those languages.
Four building blocks carry most of the weight:
- Target-language keyword research. Done in each language, with local searchers in mind, before the copy is written.
- hreflang. The markup that tells search engines which language or region each version of a page serves, so the Japanese guest lands on the Japanese page.
- Transcreated metadata, not translated metadata. Page titles and meta descriptions are the first copy a searcher reads. Written for the market around the local term, they persuade; translated from the English, they often contain no local search term at all.
- Local search habits. Google is not the main search engine everywhere. In mainland China, Baidu is the dominant search engine, and in South Korea, Naver is widely used alongside Google. Travellers also search inside booking sites, maps and social platforms, so the same research should inform content well beyond your own website.
The rest of this guide takes each of these in turn, starting with the most common failure.
Why translated keywords underperform
People in different markets look for the same thing using different words, different phrase lengths and sometimes different platforms.
Three distinct gaps open up. First, vocabulary: the term a market uses for a room type, a trip type or a product category is often not the direct equivalent of the English word. Second, phrase shape: some markets search in short noun strings and others in full questions, and the content has to answer in the shape being asked. Third, intent split: one English term can map onto two local terms with different intents behind them, and a single page cannot serve both well.
None of those is visible from an English keyword list, however carefully it is translated. They only appear when the research is done in the target language.
How we handle multilingual SEO
Target-language keywords are researched first and then built into the transcreation process itself, rather than added to finished text.
That ordering matters more than it sounds. If the terms arrive after the copy is written, someone has to insert them, and inserted terms are exactly what makes translated pages read mechanically: the sentence was not built around the phrase, so the phrase sits in it awkwardly. If the writer has the terms before starting, the phrase and the sentence are designed together and the page reads as copy rather than as optimised copy.
Keyword research done this way also informs content decisions, not just wording: if a market searches for something the site does not currently have a page for, that is a content gap worth knowing about before translation starts, not after.
To be clear about where we sit: our part is the language. We build target-language keywords into the transcreated copy as it is written. The technical items below, and search visibility as a discipline, are the job of your web team or an SEO agency; the copy they work with should arrive already written around the words each market uses.
The on-page and technical layer
This half is mechanical, inexpensive and skipped more often than any other part of a multilingual site.
| Item | What it needs | Common failure |
|---|---|---|
| hreflang | Every language version declaring itself and its siblings, with a sensible default |
Missing, or self-referencing only, so search engines serve the wrong language |
| Page titles | Written in the target language around the local term, not translated from the English title |
A translated English title that contains no local search term |
| Meta descriptions | Written per market, within length, as persuasion rather than summary |
Left empty, or machine-rendered from the English |
| URLs | Readable and consistent, with a language segment the site actually honours |
English slugs under a localised path, or inconsistent patterns per market |
| Headings | Carrying the local term, in the local phrase shape | Literal renderings that lose the search phrase |
| Image alt text | Localised along with the page | Left in the source language |
| Structured data | Language-appropriate values, especially for currency, dates and addresses |
Source-market values carried across |
| Performance | Fast on the devices and networks the market actually uses | Assessed only from the head-office market |
None of this requires creative judgement, which is precisely why it should never be the part that is missing.
The user-experience half
Search engines aim to send people to pages that satisfy them, so the two halves are less opposed than they look.
What satisfies a visitor who arrived in their own language is a page that does not read as imported. That is partly the copy and partly everything around it: dates and currencies in local format, an address field that accepts local addresses, a phone format that validates, imagery that does not assume the wrong hemisphere, and a booking or checkout flow whose labels still fit their buttons after the text expanded.
Those are localisation items rather than translation items, and they are set out in full in what localisation means. The point here is that they affect search performance too, through the behaviour of the people who land on the page.
Beyond search engines: AI answers and agents
More and more travellers ask an AI assistant instead of typing keywords, and the assistant answers in the language it was asked in.
ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode write answers rather than listing links, and AI agents can compare hotels or start a booking on someone’s behalf. A Japanese question gets a Japanese answer, built from whatever content the system can find and understand in Japanese. The same foundations apply: clear, factual pages, consistent facts across every language version, and native-language copy written around the words local travellers use. Machine-translated pages make a weak base for those answers.
Making content easy for AI systems to use is often called generative engine optimisation, and some brands work with a GEO agency on it. What it depends on, in every market, is content that exists properly in that market’s language. Our guide to AI search, GEO and AI agents for hotels and travel brands explains what changes and what content helps.
What to ask a supplier
- Who does the keyword research, in which language, and is it done before the copy is written or after?
- Are page titles and meta descriptions written per market, or rendered from the English?
- Who is responsible for hreflang, and will they check it after launch?
- Does delivery include publishing into the content management system, or does it stop at files?
- Is the Translation Memory dedicated to your brand, so that terminology settled now is reused later?
The wider supplier-evaluation version is in how to choose a translation vendor for a hotel group.
How the work runs
A supplier that can name its steps can tell you which one you are in. Ours runs in six:
- Understand the Project Brief. The content, the markets, the purpose and the constraints.
- Pre-Transcreation Study. Reviewing brand materials, style and tone, and uncovering the market-specific technical jargon and colloquial terms the content will need.
- Transcreation. The writing, drawing on the Translation Memory built for your brand.
- Client Review. Your own market teams read the content before it is live.
- Update and Approval. Revisions, then sign-off.
- Final Delivery. Into the system it has to live in, or as artwork ready to print.
What we can evidence
Website programmes delivered into the client’s own systems rather than handed over as files.
- For Frasers Hospitality we relaunched the website in 15 languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and German: over half a million words in eight weeks, integrated into the client’s Adobe Experience Manager system, alongside CRM content, sales brochures and fact sheets.
- For COMO Hotels & Resorts we localised website content into 7 languages (Arabic, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, French, German, Russian and Spanish), publishing into the Drupal back end alongside the client’s digital agency, and extended the programme to CRM content, in-room directories, spa and F&B menus and press releases.
- For Far East Hospitality we are an appointed language service provider, handling Sitecore websites and CRM content (in-room directories, sales brochures and fact sheets) in Simplified Chinese, Bahasa Indonesia and Japanese for the China, Indonesia and Japan markets.
- For Millennium Hotels & Resorts we are an appointed language service provider, producing brand content for China, Taiwan, Japan, the UAE, Spain, Italy and France on Sitecore, with quality assurance before go-live.
- For Resorts World Sentosa we are the appointed language service provider to the Digital and Regional Marketing teams, covering Sitecore websites, leaflets, in-market brochures, display ads and eDMs in Chinese, Japanese, Bahasa Indonesia, Tamil, Vietnamese, Thai and more, with a Translation Memory maintained per language.
We do not publish traffic or ranking outcomes for client sites. What we can state is the languages, the scope and the systems the content was published into: Adobe Experience Manager, Sitecore and Drupal among them.
The cost argument is about the programme, not the first invoice. A Translation Memory dedicated to your brand records how your content has been handled in each language, so repeat and updated material draws on work already paid for. Transcreated copy that is right first time avoids the redo cycle that literal translation sets off. And one partner across every touchpoint and market removes the coordination overhead of several suppliers, each interpreting your tone differently. Our clients cite those Translation Memory savings as one of the reasons they stay.
At IPPWORLD, we are an award-winning transcreation agency that specialises in creative translation and marketing localisation for the hospitality, travel, lifestyle and retail sectors. The award is Best Hospitality Creative Translation & Localisation Agency 2019, at the LUXlife Hospitality Awards. We have worked in this field since 1994, from Singapore, with an editorial team in Shanghai, and we work in 30 languages: 18 Asian, 10 European and 2 Middle Eastern.
Conclusion
A multilingual site succeeds when the keyword work and the writing are the same piece of work. Research the terms in the target language, hand them to the writer before they start, and make sure the mechanical layer (hreflang, titles, descriptions, URLs, alt text) is actually done.
That sequence gives you pages that can be found and that read well. The reverse sequence produces pages that do neither particularly well, which is the usual outcome of translating a site and optimising it afterwards.
Next step
If your translated pages are accurate but not landing with the guests they target, or they were written without target-language keyword research, an audit is the sensible first step: here is what a translation audit looks at and what to do with the findings. Then get in touch with IPPWORLD to explore options.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is international SEO?
International SEO is the work of making a website findable by searchers in each country or region it serves: the right language version served to the right market, technical signals such as hreflang, and content written around what each market searches for. For hotels and travel brands, it is how a guest searching from another country in their own language finds your pages.
What is the difference between international SEO and multilingual SEO?
International SEO covers targeting markets: which version of the site serves which country or language. Multilingual SEO is the language part: keyword research in each target language and pages, titles and descriptions written around those terms. A hotel serving several source markets needs both.
Can you just translate your keywords into another language?
No, and it is the most common error in multilingual SEO. A translated keyword is the English concept in another language, which is frequently not the term local users type. Vocabulary, phrase length and the intent behind a term all differ by market, and only target-language research surfaces that.
Should keyword research happen before or after translation?
Before. If the terms arrive after the copy is written, someone has to insert them, and inserted terms are what make translated pages read mechanically. When the writer has the terms first, the phrase and the sentence are built together.
What is hreflang and does our site need it?
It is the signal that tells search engines which language or region each version of a page is for, so the right one is served. Any site with more than one language version needs it, and it needs checking after launch: missing or self-referencing-only hreflang is one of the commonest faults on multilingual sites.
Do meta titles and descriptions need writing per market?
Yes. They are the copy a searcher reads before deciding to click, so they are persuasion, and they also have to contain the local search term. Translating the English title usually produces a title with no local search term in it at all.
Does optimising for search make the copy read worse?
Only when the two are done in the wrong order. Terms chosen before writing can be built into natural sentences; terms inserted afterwards cannot. Search engines also aim to send people to pages that satisfy them, so copy that reads as locally written works with search rather than against it.
Who should own the technical SEO items on a multilingual site?
Agree it explicitly before launch, because it falls between the language supplier, the web agency and the in-house team and therefore often falls to nobody. Whoever owns it should be checking hreflang, localised URLs, titles, descriptions and alt text after each release, not only at launch.
Does multilingual SEO help with AI search?
The foundations overlap. AI assistants answer in the language they are asked in, using content they can find and understand, so clear, native-language pages written around local search terms are the same base that AI answers draw on. See our guide to AI search, GEO and AI agents for hotels.
More on the service is on our website localisation and marketing translation pages, the process on How We Work. Related reading: website translation for hotels, website translation for travel brands, website translation for global customers and what localisation means.