International SEO: hreflang and multilingual stores in PrestaShop

PrestaShop is multilingual out of the box: enable a language and every page gets its version under /en/, /fr/… What is not automatic is those versions ranking.

Structure

• Subfolders per language (tienda.com/fr/): what PrestaShop does by default. The domain’s authority is shared. It is the recommended option in most cases.
• Domains per country (tienda.fr): a stronger local signal, but each domain starts from scratch. Only worth it with serious investment in each market.

Hreflang

The hreflang tag tells Google which version to show each user according to their language. Every page must link to all its versions, including itself, and they must all link to each other:

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="https://tienda.com/es/…" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr" href="https://tienda.com/fr/…" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://tienda.com/es/…" />

Current PrestaShop themes generate these tags. Check that the language code is correct: PrestaShop sometimes uses country codes such as gb for English, and hreflang expects language codes (en, or en-GB).

Translations

• An unreviewed machine translation may be considered low-quality content.
• Also translate SEO titles, descriptions, friendly URLs and image alt text.
• Research keywords in each language: people do not always search for the literal translation.

And what is not SEO

Currencies, taxes (the OSS scheme in the EU), carriers and legal texts in each language. Selling abroad is more than translating.