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How much more do SEO tools cost when you target several countries?

Published · Editor: Kaz (pen name)

Summary

The extra cost lands on rank tracking. Ahrefs, Semrush and SE Ranking all count a keyword again for every location you track it in, so 250 keywords across four countries use 1,000 tracking slots. The things Google looks at, such as separate URLs for each language and hreflang tags, are decided on your site, and no subscription changes them.

The math for 250 keywords in four markets

Ahrefs defines one tracked keyword as one keyword, in one location, in one project. Tracking 250 keywords in four countries takes 1,000, which is more than the 750 on Lite. The next plan, Standard, costs $249 a month on monthly billing, holds 2,000 keywords and updates them weekly, like every Ahrefs plan.

Semrush says every keyword you add to a target counts toward your limit, even if you already track it for another target. The SEO and Starter plans track 500 keywords daily. Pro+ tracks 1,500 for $299 a month, and it is the first plan whose pricing card lists multi-location and device tracking.

SE Ranking counts each keyword once per "search engine," which it defines as a search site such as Google or Bing combined with a country, region and interface language. A project can hold up to five search engines or locations. Core, at $129 a month, tracks 2,000 keywords daily, so the four-market list fits without an upgrade. Google Mobile appears as a separate search engine from Google, which means adding mobile tracking to the same list fills Core's 2,000 exactly.

What Google expects from a multi-country site

Google recommends a different URL for each language version, and warns that if you switch content with cookies or browser settings, it may not find and crawl every variant. Googlebot usually crawls from the US and sends no Accept-Language header, so Google tells site owners not to adapt content by IP address. It compares four URL setups:

  • Country-code domain (example.de): the clearest signal of the target country, but more expensive, more infrastructure, and only one country per domain.
  • Subdomain (de.example.com): easy to set up and can sit on different servers, though users may not know whether "de" means a language or a country.
  • Subdirectory (example.com/de/): easy to set up and low maintenance on one host, but harder to separate the sites.
  • URL parameters (site.com?loc=de): Google doesn't recommend them.

Where hreflang and Search Console fit

Each language version has to list itself and every other version in its hreflang tags, and if two pages don't point to each other, Google ignores the tags. An x-default value covers visitors whose language isn't listed. Search Console's International Targeting report has been deprecated, and country targeting through Search Console is no longer supported, but Google still uses hreflang. An audit crawler can catch missing return links. Choosing between a ccTLD, a subdomain and a subdirectory is still a decision for the site owner.

Search Console will filter your own performance data by country and device at no cost. To see several countries side by side you have to use a comparison, which is limited to two items, and that is the point where a paid tracker's daily, fixed-location log starts to earn its fee.

Work out your own number: the SEO Tools Cost Calculator finds the cheapest published plan for your sites, tracked keywords and users.

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Sources

Figures come from each vendor's own pricing pages and documentation. We have not tested these tools hands-on, and no ranking here is paid for.