Localize your website for a new country

For most small teams, a country folder on your existing domain is the better choice, because the new pages inherit the search authority your main site has already built. A folder such as yoursite.com/de or yoursite.com/en-gb sits on the same site, so it shares your links, your history with Google, and your analytics. It's also one site to maintain.

A separate country domain, such as yoursite.de, sends the strongest local signal to visitors and search engines. But it starts with no search history, and it's effectively a second website to run. It suits a company that will operate the market as its own business, with a local team, local pricing, and its own marketing. A subdomain, such as de.yoursite.com, sits between the two and is usually chosen for technical reasons rather than marketing ones.

Kite recommends a structure based on how you plan to run the market, how much the new country matters to the business, and how your site is built today. It records the decision and its reasons in your team's knowledge base, so later pages follow the same pattern. On a website Kite hosts, Kite builds the country folder directly. If you choose a separate domain, Kite can build the country version as its own site on that domain.

One related decision is how visitors reach the right version. Kite recommends a language or country switcher in your navigation rather than redirecting people automatically by location, and it builds the switcher into your site. Automatic redirects trap travelers and expats on the wrong version, and they can stop search engines from seeing every version of your site.

Kite localizes the pages where a foreign visitor decides whether to buy, before the pages that only inform them. A visitor will forgive a blog post written for another market. They won't forgive a pricing page in the wrong currency or a checkout that doesn't mention their country.

For most companies, the first set includes the homepage, the pricing page, the main product or service pages, and the pages that handle the next step, such as contact, booking, or checkout. Kite also checks your shipping, returns, and terms pages, because those carry the promises that change most from one country to another.

If your website already gets visitors from the new country, Kite uses that as evidence. On a site Kite hosts, its built-in analytics show which countries your visitors come from, and Kite can break your signup or purchase funnel down by country to see where foreign visitors drop off. If you connect Google Search Console, Kite can also filter your search results by country to see which pages people there already find. A page that already draws visitors from Germany is a strong candidate for the first German version.

Kite rewrites each page for the market rather than translating it line by line, because a translated page keeps all of the home-market assumptions the original carried. It writes in the language and spelling of the new country, then works through the details a local reader would notice.

For example, suppose you sell project-management software from the United States and you're launching in the UK. Kite writes in British English, so "organize" becomes "organise" and "fall" becomes "autumn." It shows prices in pounds and says whether they include VAT, because UK business buyers expect to know. It writes dates as day, month, year, and it replaces a US phone number with a UK one if you have it. If your page promises "same-day support," Kite checks whether that's still true across the time difference, and asks you before keeping the claim.

Cookie consent and privacy wording also change by market. In the EU and the UK, a site generally needs a visitor's consent before it sets advertising and most analytics cookies, and the banner has to make declining as easy as accepting. Kite writes the consent banner text and the privacy wording in the local language and points out where the new market's rules differ from home. Your legal adviser should confirm what your company needs, especially if you collect personal data through forms.

Kite writes every page in your brand's voice and builds it from your site's existing sections, so the local version looks like the rest of your website. On a site Kite hosts, it also adds the language tags, called hreflang tags, that tell Google which page is meant for which country and language. Each local page points to its original and to every other version, so a searcher in Austria sees the German page while a searcher in Ohio sees the English one. Kite adds the new pages to your sitemap, and the check it runs shortly after each publish includes whether those language tags are valid.

If you'd like a native speaker to review the first pages, Kite can share a preview before publishing. When your reviewer corrects a word or a phrase, Kite records the correction as a rule, and every later page in that language follows it.

Local proof is the part of localization most teams skip, and it's often what decides whether a foreign visitor trusts you. A testimonial from a company in Chicago tells a buyer in Lyon that you serve companies in Chicago.

Kite starts by asking what you have in the new market. That might be a few existing customers there, reviews from that country, press coverage, a partner, a local office, or a local phone number. It might also be practical proof, such as prices in euros, delivery to that country, local payment methods, or support in the local language. Kite puts the strongest of these where a visitor will see them, such as near the pricing and the call to action.

Kite uses only the proof you actually have. If you have no customers in the market yet, it leaves the customer-logo section out and leans on practical commitments instead. As you win your first local customers, Kite can draft the request for a testimonial and add it to the page once you have it.

Kite measures the localized pages by what visitors from that country do on them, so you can see whether the work is turning foreign interest into customers. On a website Kite hosts, its built-in analytics show visitors by country, the pages they view, where they came from, and how many submit a form or click a call to action.

Kite compares the localized pages with the original pages and with the period before launch. If visitors from France now reach the pricing page but stop at checkout, Kite looks at what the checkout still says in English or in dollars. If you connect Google Search Console, Kite also reads the searches the local pages appear for in that country and how often people click through.

Kite then proposes the next round of work. That might be localizing the next set of pages, fixing a detail that's costing conversions, or adding local proof as it arrives. If you want to plan and track search rankings for the new country in more depth, that work is covered in Plan and track SEO for a new country.