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Case study · International SEO

The catalog reaches the first page in three languages at once

A Spanish manufacturer of machinery for professional cannabis processing, with customers across Europe and North America, hands us its organic visibility: its machines sell on reputation within the industry, but anyone searching for them on Google in French or German can barely find them.

45 → 167
keywords in Google's top 10 in Spain, more than triple the starting count
6 → 101
top-10 keywords in France, the market that started almost from zero
+43 %
organic visits by the close of the measured period, across every market
01 · The starting point

A brand respected at trade shows, invisible in search

The cannabis-processing sector is growing fast, and the manufacturer has ridden that growth through the industry's classic channels: trade shows, distributors, and professional word of mouth. On Google, it's a different story: the multilingual site is half-built, and the markets with the most at stake barely exist.

The accessory pages show the English version written in Spanish, and the French and German versions have no content at all. The result: 6 top-10 keywords in France and 8 in Germany, in a market where the professional buyer compares machinery straight from search.

The starting position
  • 6 keywords in Google's top 10 in France; 8 in Germany
  • French and German versions of the catalog with no content
  • Duplicate pages across languages competing with each other
  • Indexing errors and 404s piled up by the catalog's growth
02 · The strategy

The catalog, language by language; the knowledge, out in the open

01 Every machine, optimized in every language Every category and product page rewritten for search in each market, using the terms the professional buyer in each country actually uses. Indexing cleaned up and 404 errors fixed at the root.
02 A technical blog that educates the buyer Content in English on the real decisions the sector faces: hand trimming versus automated, choosing a machine by production volume, extraction methods, European certification. Each article links to the machine that answers the question.
03 The United States launch, on a deadline Preparing the leap into the American market with the sector's flagship trade show in Las Vegas as the delivery date: a dedicated landing page for the event, product photography, and the architecture of the new web presence.
03 · The numbers

Three markets, three steps up

The comparison from the project's status report: keywords in Google's top 10, from the start to the close of the period, market by market.

  • Organic visits: +42.95% across every market
  • Every category and product optimized in all languages
  • Hundreds of keywords that sat beyond page 10 break into the top positions
Spain · ×3.7 From 45 to 167 top-10 keywords. The home market, the most mature of the three, more than triples its first page.
Germany · ×8 From 8 to 61. The sector's most competitive market in Europe goes from token presence to a real footing on the first page.
France · ×17 From 6 to 101. The market that started almost from zero multiplies the most: once the catalog finally speaks French, search responds.

Keywords in positions 1–10 by market · project status report · SEO tool reading the domain

04 · What the reports don't show

A ×17 impresses less once you show the baseline

Multiplying France's keywords by 17 sounds spectacular, and it's less so told in full: the starting point was 6. Growing from a small base always produces big multipliers; that's why on this page the percentages always come with the absolute numbers, and Spain's ×3.7, from 45 keywords, is worth as much as France's ×17.

The other honest part is the diagnosis: much of the jump wasn't magic, it was finishing what had been left half-done. A catalog with empty French and German versions didn't need tricks, it needed content. When the pending work is that clear, the merit is in executing it well and in every language at once.

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