Case study · International SEO
From cross-border confusion to global visibility.
How a golf simulator retailer selling in five markets grew rankings, clicks and AI Overview presence in about six weeks.
The challenge
Five sites, one big tangle.
A golf simulator retailer was selling across the UK, USA, Australia, Germany and France, but its sites were quietly competing with each other. Pages linked across regional domains, content aimed at one country appeared on all of them, and search engines could not tell which site belonged to which market.
What we did
Phase 1: untangle the markets.
Cleaned up cross-regional internal linking
Over 1,200 internal links across blog posts, product pages and collection pages were manually updated so each region linked to itself.
Reset the regional signals
Removed the old hreflang setup and made the first adjustments to give each domain clearer regional targeting.
Updated the main navigation
Aligned navigation with each market so visitors and crawlers stayed in the right region.
Briefed developers on template and backend fixes
Linking issues that came from site templates were documented and handed over to be fixed at the source.
Added a German language version
Delivered as an extra to support the German market.
Results at a glance
All of this in about six weeks.
From 11 February to 24 March 2026.
Keyword visibility, indexation and search feature presence rose in all five regions, with the biggest gains in Australia, the USA and France.
Results by market
Market by market, the numbers.
Keywords in the top 10
Search clicks
| Metric | 1 Jan to 11 Feb 2026 | 12 Feb to 25 Mar 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total clicks | 6 | 286 | +4,666.7% |
| Total impressions | 211 | 6,886 | +3,165.5% |
| Ranking keywords | 23 | 840 | +3,552.2% |
| Keywords in the top 10 | 21 | 526 | +2,404.8% |
| Ranking pages | 8 | 44 | +450% |
| Product snippets | 2 | 17 | +750% |
| Indexed pages | 7 | 56 | +700% |
| Metric | 11 Feb 2026 | 24 Mar 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Keywords in the top 3 | 144 | 181 | +25.7% |
| Keywords in positions 4 to 10 | 467 | 554 | +18.6% |
| Keywords in positions 11 to 20 | 303 | 421 | +38.9% |
| Keywords in positions 21 to 50 | 1,018 | 1,372 | +34.8% |
| Keywords in positions 51 to 100 | 1,130 | 1,274 | +12.7% |
| Total keywords | 3,293 | 4,115 | +25% |
| AI Overviews | 19 | 34 | +79% |
| Other search features | 212 | 279 | +31.6% |
| Metric | 1 Jan to 11 Feb 2026 | 12 Feb to 25 Mar 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total clicks | 104 | 276 | +165.4% |
| Total impressions | 3,907 | 9,983 | +155.5% |
| Ranking keywords | 372 | 754 | +102.7% |
| Keywords in the top 10 | 202 | 398 | +97% |
| Ranking pages | 120 | 128 | +6.7% |
| Product snippets | 54 | 85 | +57.4% |
| Indexed pages | 486 | 507 | +4.3% |
| Metric | 11 Feb 2026 | 24 Mar 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Keywords in the top 3 | 266 | 292 | +9.8% |
| Keywords in positions 4 to 10 | 251 | 315 | +25.5% |
| Keywords in positions 11 to 20 | 240 | 259 | +7.9% |
| Keywords in positions 21 to 50 | 445 | 486 | +9.2% |
| Keywords in positions 51 to 100 | 321 | 320 | -0.3% |
| Total keywords | 1,680 | 1,805 | +7.4% |
| AI Overviews | 30 | 40 | +33.3% |
| Metric | 11 Feb 2026 | 24 Mar 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Keywords in the top 3 | 9 | 15 | +66.7% |
| Keywords in positions 4 to 10 | 24 | 33 | +37.5% |
| Keywords in positions 11 to 20 | 16 | 30 | +87.5% |
| Keywords in positions 21 to 50 | 65 | 60 | -7.7% |
| Keywords in positions 51 to 100 | 43 | 47 | +9.3% |
| Total keywords | 175 | 215 | +22.9% |
| Other search features | 18 | 30 | +66.7% |
The flagship keyword
“Golf simulator” climbed everywhere.
The retailer's main keyword improved in average position in every market where it was tracked.
| Market | Average position before | Average position after | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| UK | 4 | 3 | +33.3% |
| USA | 10.9 | 8.2 | +32.9% |
| Australia | Not ranking | 10.1 | New ranking |
| Germany | 11.9 | 10.1 | +17.8% |
| France | 48.9 | 18.5 | +164.3% |
What comes next
Phases 2 to 4: from fixed to flying.
Individual regional storefronts
Localise currency, language, contact details and messaging for the UK, USA and Australia, and strengthen topical authority.
Domain merging and hreflang
Consolidate the European domains and rebuild hreflang and language selectors properly.
Targeted optimisation for each region
Fill regional content gaps, run keyword research per market and add further schema markup.