Multi-country WordPress

Serving several countries from one WordPress installation is mostly a decisions problem. The technology is the easy half.

Decide the URL strategy first

Language subdirectories, country subdirectories and separate domains all work. What does not work is changing your mind after launch. Subdirectories concentrate ranking signals on one domain and are usually the right default; separate domains make sense when legal or commercial entities genuinely differ per country.

hreflang is a contract, not a tag

hreflang works only if it is reciprocal and complete. A missing return annotation is the single most common reason a correctly tagged rollout still shows the wrong language in search results. We audit the full matrix rather than spot-checking pages.

What varies, and what must not

Separate currency, tax rules, legal pages and support hours. Shared components, design system and content model. Localising everything produces an unmaintainable fork; localising nothing produces a site that reads as foreign everywhere.

Typical rollout work

• URL and hreflang architecture
• Translation workflow and review gates
• Currency, tax and shipping rule handling
• Country-specific legal and compliance pages
• Shared component library across locales

For stores

Multi-country commerce adds payment methods, tax and fulfilment. See Enterprise WooCommerce.