Chapter 20 — Exercises

Work these in order; they climb from recall to real diagnosis. For the hands-on items you will need a web browser and, ideally, access to a multi-language or multi-region site (your own, an employer's, a client's, or a large public brand's — every global retailer has hreflang you can inspect). A free crawler such as Screaming Frog (free up to 500 URLs) or a web-based hreflang checker helps for the validation items; nothing here costs anything. Items marked with a dagger (†) have full worked solutions in Appendix — Answers to Selected Exercises; odd-numbered items are worked there too. Attempt every item before you look.

A reminder in the spirit of the chapter: the first and best answer to most international-SEO questions is "you probably don't need this." Keep that honesty in hand as you work.

A. Recall and vocabulary

Exercise 20.1 — Define international SEO, and name the two independent axes it addresses. Give one example of a site that needs one axis but not the other.

Exercise 20.2 — Expand ccTLD and give two examples. In one sentence each, state its biggest advantage and its biggest disadvantage for SEO.

Exercise 20.3 † — State the return-tag rule in your own words. Then explain why it means hreflang cannot be verified one page at a time.

Exercise 20.4 — What is x-default, and what problem does it solve? Give a typical page you would point it at.

Exercise 20.5 — Distinguish localization from translation. Give one concrete example of something you would change in localization that a translation would leave alone.

Exercise 20.6 — In an hreflang value like en-gb, which part is the language and which is the region, which standards do they come from, and what is the common error people make with the United Kingdom's code?

B. Applied reasoning

Exercise 20.7 — A company expanding by language only (same products, same single country of operation, now offered in three languages) asks which URL structure to use. Recommend one of the three, and justify it in terms of authority rather than folklore.

Exercise 20.8 † — Explain why a ccTLD targets a country but not a language, and give a real country where that limitation actually bites.

Exercise 20.9 — State precisely what hreflang can do and what it cannot do. Then rewrite this sentence to be honest: "We'll add hreflang and start ranking in Germany."

Exercise 20.10 — Your colleague says server location is important — "we need a German server to rank in Germany." Explain why this advice is outdated, and name the signals Google actually uses for country targeting now.

Exercise 20.11 — A manager asks, "Where in Google Search Console do I set our target country?" Answer honestly, and explain what changed.

Exercise 20.12 — Explain why choosing an international URL structure is described in the chapter as a "measure twice, cut once" decision. What does reversing it later actually require? (Name the chapter.)

C. Diagnose the broken hreflang

For each scenario, name the specific failure mode (from §20.5) and the fix. Some have more than one problem — find them all.

Exercise 20.13 † — The /de/ (German) page carries correct hreflang tags for all versions, but its canonical tag points to the /en/ (English) page. The German page has vanished from Google's index. Diagnose and fix.

Exercise 20.14 — Page A lists hreflang for A, B, and C. Page B lists hreflang for A and B. Page C lists hreflang for A, B, and C. Which relationship is at risk, and why?

Exercise 20.15 † — A site's hreflang values include en-uk, es_ES (with an underscore), and hreflang="German". Identify what is wrong with each and give the corrected value.

Exercise 20.16 — A page's hreflang href attributes point to http:// URLs, but the site runs on https:// and redirects all HTTP traffic to HTTPS. Why is this a problem, and what is the fix?

Exercise 20.17 — A /fr-ca/ page is tagged as French-Canadian in hreflang, but the page's body text is actually in English. What is the failure, and why might Google distrust the whole annotation?

Exercise 20.18 — A brand-new /it/ (Italian) locale was added last week. The Italian pages have full, correct hreflang sets. Yet Google is still showing the English page to Italian users. Name the most likely cause and where you would look.

D. On your own site (use a free tool)

Exercise 20.19 † — Pick any large global retailer or brand. Open one of its product or landing pages, view the page source (or use a browser extension), and find the hreflang block. Record: (a) how many language/region versions it lists; (b) whether it includes an x-default; (c) whether the page references itself. Write one sentence on whether the set looks complete.

Exercise 20.20 — If you run a multi-language or multi-region site, crawl a sample of its URLs with Screaming Frog (free tier) or a web hreflang validator. Record any missing return tags, missing self-references, or invalid codes it reports. If your site is single-locale, note that — and write one sentence explaining why that is a feature, not a gap.

Exercise 20.21 — For a multi-region site you can access, open Google Search Console → Performance, add a Country filter, and check whether traffic from each target country is landing on the version built for it. (If you have no such access, note that Search Console setup is the Chapter 27 task and record when you will do it.)

Exercise 20.22 — Take one page of your own (any site) and run its most important keyword through Google in a different English market's terms (e.g., search the U.K. spelling/word if you're in the U.S., or vice versa). Note any difference in the results — evidence for why same-language localization is real work.

E. Read the report

Exercise 20.23 † — Interpret this crawl excerpt and give a prioritized fix list.

FIGURE E.20a — "hreflang crawl summary"                         [constructed teaching example]
  URLs crawled: 60 (20 en-us, 20 en-gb, 20 fr-fr)
  hreflang issues found:
    - "Missing return tags": 14 URLs
    - "Missing self-reference": 20 URLs (all fr-fr)
    - "Non-200 hreflang URL": 3 URLs (point to redirected pages)
    - Canonicals: all fr-fr pages canonical to their en-us equivalent

Which single problem would you fix first for the biggest recovery, and why? What is the second?

Exercise 20.24 — Interpret this decision brief and recommend a structure.

FIGURE E.20b — "Structure decision brief"                       [constructed teaching example]
  Business:   A 12-year-old .com content site, strong domain authority, one language today (English).
  Plan:       Add Spanish and French versions of the best 200 articles; no country-specific commerce.
  Team:       Small; one shared codebase; wants to keep everything maintainable in one place.
  Budget:     Modest; cannot buy or run multiple domains well.

Name the structure you would choose and give the two strongest reasons, tied to the chapter.

F. Myths, ethics, and judgment

Exercise 20.25 † — Spot the myth. A vendor says: "Translate your site into 20 languages with our one-click AI tool and rank worldwide overnight — and don't worry, hreflang prevents any duplicate-content penalty." Identify three separate falsehoods or half-truths, and replace each with what the chapter says is true.

Exercise 20.26 — An agency offers an "international SEO guarantee": pay them, add hreflang, and you'll rank on page one in five new countries within 90 days. Using the chapter's model of what hreflang does, explain in three sentences why no honest practitioner can promise this — and what they can honestly promise.

Exercise 20.27 — A startup with real product-market fit in one country wants to "look bigger" by launching machine-translated sites in eight languages it cannot support. Beyond SEO, name the business and ethical problems with generating leads and inquiries in languages and markets you cannot serve.

Exercise 20.28 — The chapter says "duplicate content across languages" is a myth. State precisely where the concern is entirely unfounded and where it has a grain of truth, and give the correct remedy for the latter (which is not to merge or canonicalize the pages together).

G. The Strategy File (Rivertown Home Services)

Exercise 20.29 † — Marisa and Tony Delgado read a blog post about "going international" and ask whether Rivertown should buy ccTLDs and launch country sites to "grow beyond the metro." Write the honest three- or four-sentence answer you would give, grounded in the one fact that settles it.

Exercise 20.30 — Rivertown's dispatchers report a rising number of Spanish-speaking callers in two of the five service areas. Sketch the lightest correct response using this chapter: which URL structure, which kind of hreflang (language or country), what the canonical rule is, who should review the content, and the one piece of evidence you would want before building anything. State clearly what Rivertown should not do.

Where these go next. Keep your answers to 20.20, 20.21, 20.29, and 20.30 — they are the international page of your running Strategy File (Appendix C's worksheet). For most readers, that page is a single honest sentence recording that international SEO does not apply, which is exactly the right deliverable. You will fold whatever is relevant into the full technical audit in Chapter 38 and the complete strategy in Chapter 40.