Ten years of not compromising: what I actually believe about international SEO consulting

There's a version of this post where I list ten things I learned in ten years. You've read it before, written by someone else, and you didn't finish it.

This isn't that.

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Time is short. At some point in my mid-twenties, that stopped being a philosophical observation and became a practical one. I wanted to build a life I could live on my own terms, decide where my time went, what I worked on, and with whom. Freelancing, at first, was the experiment. Then the maths worked. Then it became the only structure that made sense.

I registered a business in March 2016 to invoice €150 for two CV rewrites. Not exactly a founding myth. But it was the beginning of something I've been building, quietly and without apology, ever since.

What followed was two years of evenings and weekends, a growing conviction that this could work, and then, in 2018, the leap. Full-time, independent, and soon after: itinerant. Bologna. Gdańsk. Vilnius. Budapest. The Canary Islands. Strasbourg, eventually, where I've stayed.

Ten years in, I'm still here. Still independent. Still finding this work genuinely interesting.

That last sentence is not a throwaway. It's the whole thing.

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What I've accumulated over a decade isn't a methodology you can download or a framework that fits on a slide. It's a set of convictions — about how this work should be done, what it actually requires, and what to ignore. These are the ones I'd stake my reputation on.

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There are no shortcuts. There have never been any shortcuts.

I've watched people sell SEO hacks for as long as I've worked in this industry. The same promises, the same dashboards dressed up as strategy. Some disappear quickly. Others flip their bad reputation into a badge — if everyone hates me, I must be onto something — which is, honestly, one of the least convincing arguments in professional life.

If any of those shortcuts produced real, durable results, we would know by now. We'd have the case studies. We'd see the clients renewing, year after year, because the work held.

Instead, I get the people who come to me after. The ones who spent two years paying four figures a month for a reporting dashboard and five keywords sprinkled across their homepage. The ones who tell me SEO is a scam… and they mean it, because for them, so far, it has been.

Real search strategy means understanding how a market actually searches, how competitors have built their presence, what signals matter in that context, and then doing the unglamorous work of making those things true about your site, consistently, over time. The decisions that shape whether any of that compounds happen long before the first brief lands: platform architecture, content model, how the organisation thinks about search as a function. Get those wrong and no amount of tactical execution rescues it. Get them right and the work builds on itself in ways that are genuinely hard to undo.

That's what a decade of this looks like, from the inside. Slow, deliberate, and durable, or not at all.

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Knowing a market is not the same as speaking its language.

My English is genuinely good. I grew up partly in the UK, lived there. And none of that prepared me for the day I found myself deep in research for a project on toilet-unclogging products in Florida, trying to figure out, with full professional seriousness, whether a chemical solution would cause unnecessary suffering to a snake that had lost its way in someone's pipes. 🐍

My Western European background had not covered this.

The point isn't vocabulary. Every market has a logic: the way its searchers phrase their problems, the competitors who've spent years earning their positions, the cultural register that determines whether your content sounds authoritative or slightly off. The French don't search the way the Belgians do. German-speaking Switzerland operates differently from Germany. Translation is the beginning of a localisation strategy. It is not the strategy.

I've spent a decade doing this work while living in those markets, not just reading about them, living in them. That changes what you notice. It changes what you ask. And it changes what you're willing to sign off on.

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The independent structure produces better work — for the right clients.

Not because agencies are incapable. Because the incentives are different.

As an independent, I don't apply the same recipe to everything. My deliverables are shaped by the actual situation, not by what fits the service catalogue. I have no employees to bill through, no office to justify, no pressure to make a project look more complex than it is. What the client pays for is the thinking, and the relationship.

That relationship is part of the deliverable. I work on long projects with people I need to get along with, which means I have every reason to be honest, specific, and useful rather than impressive. In an agency, when a project becomes "routine," the senior person moves to a more exciting account and the client gets someone newer. It's nobody's fault. It's just how the model works. As an independent, there's no version of that. The continuity is the point.

This also extends to the partner agencies I work alongside (white-label, advisory, or otherwise). Synergies exist outside the office. Expertise isn't tied to a postcode in central Paris. What it's tied to is the quality of the thinking, and the willingness to stand behind it.

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What clients actually need is someone who will tell them when they're wrong.

Not rudely. Not with drama. Early, clearly, and with a reason.

The most useful thing I do isn't the work I produce, it's what I say before I produce it. When the brief is wrong. When the timeline makes the outcome impossible. When the thing being asked for will produce nothing, and here's why, and here's what to do instead. That's not a confrontation. It's the job.

I got this wrong in the early years. I said yes to things I should have pushed back on, delivered work I knew was compromised, and learned that clarity upfront is a service. Clients who understand that: we work well together. Clients who want someone more accommodating find them easily enough, and we both end up better off.

Ten years earns you the right to say that plainly.

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Year eleven.

I know what I'm building. I know where this goes. And for the first time in a decade, I'm not hedging about it.

The frameworks I've developed across ten years of real projects — the way I think about market entry, content architecture, the decisions that happen before any tactical work begins — are taking shape as something beyond consulting hours. Not a pivot. An expansion, on my own terms.

For now: the business held. Ten years, without compromise on quality, on structure, on the right to say what I actually think. That's what independence looks like when you mean it.

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If this resonates with how you think about international search, the best place to start is a conversation.

Digital Expatriation: A Framework for International SEO

A few years ago, I packed my whole life into two suitcases. I left my home country behind for a few years of nomadic living, a phase that taught me more about adaptation than I ever imagined. Each new place came with its quirks: figuring out why German recycling was so precise, or learning the art of not tipping too much—or too little—in Italy.

This experience of adapting to different cultures shaped the way I approach SEO. Like an expat settling into a new city, succeeding in international SEO requires more than a quick glance at the map. It’s about immersing yourself in your audience’s world and understanding their unspoken expectations.

I call this approach Digital Expatriation. It’s a framework I’ve developed over years of working on SEO projects for diverse markets, blending cultural immersion, data-driven decisions, and the right tools to create strategies that connect. Here’s how you can use this mindset to make your own international SEO efforts thrive.

The Birth of Digital Expatriation

Digital Expatriation wasn’t born in a single moment of inspiration. Instead, it evolved through experience. Early in my career, I found that international SEO couldn’t simply rely on translating content or applying generic keyword research. Over time, I borrowed ideas from everywhere—a digital PR conference here, a workshop there—until it became a cohesive approach.

For instance, the idea of using statistical datasets to understand market behaviour came from a digital PR talk I attended years ago. My love for NotebookLM, an AI-powered research assistant, developed during a busy summer of creating my SEO Advent Calendar and a related email series. The tools and strategies I used to keep myself organised during those projects proved just as useful when tackling complex SEO challenges for clients.

I’ve tested and refined this framework through projects with clients in the fintech, food and beverages and the automotive industry.

If you're wondering what this looks like in practice for your own business, the SEO Strategy Sprint is where this framework comes to life.

What It Means to Be a Digital Expat

Imagine moving to a new country. You wouldn’t just unpack your bags and carry on as if nothing had changed. You’d adapt—learning the language, understanding local customs, figuring out how people shop, work, and communicate.

Digital expatriation is the same idea, applied online. It’s about treating your brand like a local in the target market. When you “move” into a new country digitally, you need to understand your audience’s culture, values, and online behaviour, then adapt your SEO strategy accordingly.

Take, for example, the time I worked on a campaign targeting elderly users in Montreal. One product we focused on was mini-skis for walkers, designed to make navigating icy sidewalks safer. As someone who grew up in a mild climate, this seemed strange—even risky—to me. But for Montrealers, who spend half the year navigating snow-covered streets, it was a practical innovation that made their lives easier.

Similarly, when working with a beverage brand like Lipton in the U.S., I learned how workplace culture is a far bigger factor in users’ behaviour there compared to France. Americans place a huge emphasis on benefits and company values, while French buyers may take those for granted due to differences in our labour systems.

These insights weren’t just interesting—they shaped how I approached messaging, keyword selection, and even page design for these markets.

Step 1: Immerse Yourself in Cultural Intelligence

Cultural intelligence (CQ) is the foundation of Digital Expatriation. To truly connect with your audience, you need to learn their cultural habits, preferences, and even the quirks of their online behaviour.

When working on a project for Dutch consumers, I discovered how smaller homes in the Netherlands shaped their buying behaviour. People there value practicality and space-saving designs more than in France. That insight changed everything—from how product descriptions were written to the images used on the site.

This kind of cultural and market intelligence is also at the heart of how I approach content strategy for international businesses.

If you’re just starting to research a market, dive into local content. For example, you can:

• Watch YouTube creators and see how they talk about your industry.

• Browse TikTok trends in your niche.

• Explore local SERPs to understand what’s already working.

The goal isn’t just to learn—it’s to put yourself in the user’s shoes.

Step 2: Back Up Your Insights with Data

Once you’ve immersed yourself in the culture, it’s time to validate your assumptions with data. Here’s where tools like Google Trends, Statista, and EU reports become indispensable.

When I researched Dutch real estate trends, I found that my gut feeling about smaller homes was spot on. That confirmation allowed me to craft a strategy focused on space-saving furniture, rather than making broad, unfocused claims.

It’s not just about numbers—it’s about combining those insights with cultural understanding. Data tells you what people are searching for, but culture tells you why.

Step 3: Equip Yourself with the Right Tools

Digital expatriation requires a solid toolkit. My favourites include:

• NotebookLM: Perfect for structuring research insights, especially when handling multiple markets.

• DeepL + Native Review: While AI translation tools are great for speed, always have a native speaker review your work for cultural nuances.

• Google Search Console: Use its country filters to see how your site performs in specific regions and uncover unexpected opportunities.

The right tools make the difference between guessing and knowing.

In conclusion

International SEO isn’t about translating—it’s about transforming. Digital Expatriation helps you step into your audience’s world and design strategies that truly resonate.

If this framework resonates with how you want to approach your markets, let's talk about what it would look like for your business.

The technical infrastructure that enables this, structured data in particular, shapes how AI systems read and represent your brand across markets. I covered that in detail after attending the Google Search Central Live in Zürich.

And if you'd rather follow the thinking before committing to anything: I write about international SEO strategy in my newsletter. One email, only when it's worth your time.

Let’s make your brand feel at home, wherever it goes.

How structured data is paving the way for AI-generated search

Last week I attended the Google Search Central Live Zürich 2023, or #SCLZurich for short. The conference, held over a whole afternoon at the Google HQ in—you guessed it—Zürich, Switzerland 🇨🇭, marked its grand comeback after the pandemic years. I had a really great day meeting with fellow SEOs, chatting with friends from the Women in Tech SEO group, and learning a lot from the Google Search staff. The talks were very interesting and got me thinking about many topics and ways to improve my skills.

If you want a breakdown of all that was said, head over to this recap post of #SCLZurich by Olesia Korobka or this 7 talks - 7 take-aways post by Corina Burri.

One topic that kept coming back throughout the afternoon was structured data. Although it’s, of course, a very important technical topic, I was surprised to see it mentioned, if not extensively developed in almost all talks that day. So this got me thinking: why are we hearing so much about this today? How does structured data inform the future of SEO, and how does it shape the impending era of AI-generated search?

How structured data helps improve search results

Microdata, structured data, schema markup, and semantic markup* are not new to SEO at all. We’ve been using these snippets of code in our pages for ages, especially when it comes to e-commerce. Structured data is what informs Google Shopping of your products’ features for example, as Matthias Weismann, Software Engineer at Google Shopping, explained it detail at the conference..

By the way, the Product schema markup is undergoing a hefty upgrade, with new variants that will better help the user find the product they are searching for. Think certificates, labels, sustainability or dietary specificities. These are exciting times!

By meticulously organising information about our products and services using structured data, we're essentially handing search engines a roadmap to our content. By linking or nesting items to one another, we’re saying, "Here's what we offer, and here's how everything is interlinked.”

This carefully crafted organisation doesn't just enhance the appearance of our search listings with rich snippets but significantly betters the user experience by delivering more precise search results.

Structured Data, AI and search

So what does structured data have to do with AI? Well, when Google crawls a website, it gathers all the information a page has to offer, including structured data. Then the indexing algorithms come into play and try to make sense of the page. At this stage, Google uses a bunch of machine learning, AI and NLP tools to figure out what the content is about and if it’s worthwhile for users.

Imagine a scenario where two pages have the same quality of content and relevant information. On the first page, Google has to sift through the content, analyse headings and links to understand what the page is about. In the second page, Google has to do the exact same work, but with added information, structured in the same way across all webpages for the same type of item.

On the first page, algorithms have to put in more work to categorise the content in their database, whereas on the second page, they “only” have to check if the information provided in the structured data bits of code match and correlates to the content on the page.

Of course, I'm oversimplifying here, but you get the idea. Structured data makes Google’s work easier. It takes way less computing power for Google to understand content with a roadmap than having to figure out a path on itself.

“While we have the technology to find that structure in web page text automatically, those systems are not perfect. (…) When you tell us what's on your web page in a structured way, we can more accurately interpret the contents.”
— Ryan Levering, Software Engineer in the Structured Data Team at Google (source)

If we think of it with a very down-to-earth capitalistic approach, it’s just more cost efficient for search engines. The same applies to having a technically sound and fast loading website, it requires less energy to load and crawl, which means it costs less to index. (Yes, it’s also more environmentally friendly, of course, but let’s not be blind to the societal system we operate in.)

How taking full advantage of structured data can benefit both users and website owners

The ripple effect of fully harnessing structured data can be huge. Imagine having your website not only fully present in the results of a query, but also taking space on the result page by offering rich results to users. It’s not only about the ranking position, it’s about the experience you offer.

For example, as Maria White, Global SEO Lead at Kurt Geiger, explained in her presentation at SCL Zürich, the experience you offer to your user does not start on your website’s homepage, it starts on the SERP.

This is exactly the kind of thinking that should inform your content strategy from the ground up, not as an afterthought, but as a foundation.

Going beyond the typical variants offered in a Schema item and actually going through the documentation to precisely optimise every relevant bit of information will help your website in the long run. Right now, there are open conversations happening on the Schema.org forums about how items should evolve through time.

For example, food product items could get an allergens variant in the near future, helping users take care of their health when researching and buying food online. And guess who is actively participating in this conversation? Yep, Google is. They are even at the origin of some of these evolutions. I don’t know about you, but to me, having an announcement at the next Google I/O that search results for purchasing food will now display allergens seems like a totally on brand thing for Google to do.

For search engines, it’s a clearer, more efficient route to quality results. For us, it’s about becoming the “cost-efficient” choice that demands less power to crawl and index, potentially earning a favourable nod from search algorithms in the long run. It's not merely about scaling the search product but elevating the quality of the user experience while reducing the digital carbon footprint of our online endeavours.

This proactive approach, as I gleaned from the conference, could be a game-changer in how we approach SEO, ensuring a win-win scenario for both search engines and website owners. Doing your research—dare I say, hiring an expert—on structured data, and not just “filling in the fields my CMS put up for me” could be one element that will tip the scale in your favour in the near future. Actively optimising your website with a collaboration mindset with search engines rather than a “quick win” approach is sure to be beneficial in the long run. If not for your rankings right now, then for your users, who crave information before making an informed purchase on your website.

If you want to keep thinking about how SEO and AI-driven search are evolving, I write about exactly this kind of thing in my newsletter. One email, only when it's worth your time.

Conclusion

The narrative around structured data is far from over. It's an unfolding chapter in the SEO playbook that holds promise for a more efficient, user-centric, and AI-compatible future. I invite you to delve deeper, explore the schema.org documentation, and start weaving structured data more intricately into your SEO strategy. It's about laying a solid foundation today for the AI-driven SEO landscape of tomorrow.

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*Structured Data is a term used to describe data that is organised in a specific manner, making it easier for search engines to understand the content on web pages.

Schema Markup is a semantic vocabulary or a set of code tags you can add to HTML to improve search engines' understanding of your pages, essentially a form of structured data.

Microdata is a specific syntax used for embedding structured data in HTML documents, and it's one of the formats you can use to implement schema markup on your website.

Semantic Markup is a broader practice that refers to the use of HTML tags and other markings to denote not just the structure, but the meaning of the content, which includes practices like schema markup and others.

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Ready to make structured data work harder for your business? Let's look at it together.

Content repurposing: recycle content you already have!

I published a class on content repurposing!

I have been working on two new projects lately, that work hand in hand. The first is a podcast about digital nomads, a topic I have been passionate about for the past five years. You can find detail about it here. The second one is teaching online. I am a firm believer that education and information are the most important things the internet has brought to the world and I wanted to participate in that.

Get access to the course on content repurposing and 2 months of Skillshare for free!

A couple of months ago, I was contacted by the Skillshare teaching team to collaborate to the platform as a teacher. I have experience in teaching IRL, but I hadn’t tried online teaching yet. I figured it was finally time for me to give it a go.

As it turned out, the launch of my podcast implied working with new methods: I learned (and I am still learning) to record audio, edit it, and publish it. I relied on Skillshare to learn these new skills and thus, already knew quite well the platform. I also got to use skills I hadn’t practised in some time like creating a brand from scratch, creating videos for social media, growing an audience on Instagram, building a community, creating a website from scratch and optimising it the way I intended, and using the content I had created to its maximum potential.

That’s where content repurposing comes in. I listened and studied hours of podcasts to understand how others were using recorded audio to their advantage. One huge inspiration was, of course, Gary Vaynerchuk, who mastered the subject long ago. I then created a complete process, that gets improved episode after episode, to create tens of pieces of content from one long podcast episode, easily shareable on social media and built for engagement.

During the process, I spoke to a few people about my content strategy and looked in depth at what other podcasters were doing. I found out most people didn’t know about content repurposing or didn’t use it. Most of the content is published once and advertised once, but not used to its maximum potential. That’s when I started working on the class.

Since I wanted to try teaching online, I decided to create a first class on content repurposing. The course is aimed at people who want to try content repurposing but don’t know where to start, marketers or business owners who have long-form content already published that wish to make the most out of it.

The class is short and concise — 15 minutes long, with many practical examples from my own experience with this method. It is focused on using long-form content to create multiple smaller ones. I plan on creating another class about creating long-form content from different small ones. More on that later :)

The class is only accessible to premium users, but by following this link, you will get 2 months for free. You can cancel at any time :)

👉 Get free access to the class

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