Improving Caterpillar’s Regional Targeting and Search Visibility

SEO ·

North America ·

Manufacturing

Testimonial

It looks like the hreflang is starting to help Website 1 rank over Website 2 for some of the part numbers that are relevant. If only they had implemented this 3-4 years ago, when your team first suggested it!

SEO Program Manager

Challenge

Ensure that Google served the correct US website version—only available within the United States—over the international or local equivalents for specific product ranges.

However, hreflang implementation had been neglected, causing issues with regional targeting.

As a result, the US site wasn’t consistently prioritized in search results when appropriate.

Solution

We developed a custom application to process and analyze hreflang data across 17 locales, deployed within 1,500+ XML sitemaps containing over 42 million hreflang links.

We also collaborated closely with the client’s IT team to audit the implementation, identify errors, and ensure proper deployment.

Organic CTR increased consistently from the moment the hreflang started to be considered, showing the strategy was working.