If you are going to expand your business worldwide, it is time to optimize your site using international SEO. Here’s everything you need to know to get started.
Did you know that 40% of the world’s consumers do not buy a product in a language other than their mother tongue? This is an excellent reason to optimize your site for international visitors in the markets where you want to sell. Follow this guide to create an international SEO strategy to reach your global audience.
What is International SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the optimization of a website and its content to ensure visibility in search engines such as Google. Global SEO is also about ensuring a strong presence in search, but it aims to increase organic traffic from multiple countries (multiregional SEO) and languages ​​(multilingual SEO).
International SEO ensures that search engines can easily identify which countries your business wants to target. It also shows search engines what languages ​​you use to attract customers from different countries or speak different languages.
How does international SEO work?
Google and other search engines are designed to match the search results to the user’s language and location. International SEO works by letting search engines know that your site’s content is relevant to searchers in a particular country – or users looking for products or services like yours in a particular language. International SEO involves using language targeting, hreflang tags, embedded URL structures, and other localization tools to target your users’ content worldwide.
Why is international SEO important?
Promoting your site and its content in international SEO can improve the visibility of your product or service in global markets. In other words, you can build a stronger customer base and eventually get more conversations.
What are the benefits of international SEO?
An International SEO company is a great way to grow a business and give you more than your competitors. If they cannot optimize your content for specific countries or languages, you can utilize this by tailoring the content to those countries to increase traffic. International SEO allows you to build your business in other countries. An improved global user experience can help turn your business into a global brand. This will result in more customers returning to your site and, last but not least, increasing your sales.
What makes a solid international SEO strategy?
An international SEO approach that is successful in one market may not necessarily work well in another market due to cultural and linguistic differences. Strong global SEO strategies can adapt to different regions or countries.
To be successful in Global SEO, you need to consider the cultural differences in each language or country you want to target. Another way, instead of translating, it’s essential to find the content.
For example, you need to ensure that your target audience can shop in their national currency. You are also expected to provide answers in their native language – and within their cultural context – to questions, they may have on the buyer’s journey.
Finding one or more websites to meet these expectations may seem like a mountain of a task. However, you can easily integrate localization into your global growth strategy through proper planning and technology support.
Start thinking about using a translation management system (TMS). Designed to support translation management with smart automation, it streamlines your localization workflow and seamlessly integrates it into your existing technology package.
Best practices for international SEO
The key to building a strong international SEO strategy is identifying your audience and anticipating their needs.
Determine your approach to the market
No two international SEO methods are the same, and the method depends on your company and target customers.
If you offer the same products or services to different language groups worldwide, you must choose a language distribution method. This includes optimizing your site’s content consistent with each language relevant to your business.
If your company offers different products or services in different national markets or operates under different brands in different countries/languages, you must approach each country differently. You must have a specialized website with Global SEO techniques in the country.
Do market research.
Before launching your international SEO strategy, explain what audiences might be interested in your product or service and determine what’s important to them. You can do this by researching how this audience typically searches for products or services and conducting keyword research. Once you do, you will know which audience to give to and how.
Competition research
Look at your future competitors and measure their SEO, content marketing, and paid advertising performance. International SEO services can help you find new opportunities, especially if your competitors are not currently optimizing their content for specific brands or languages.
Plan your strategy
Create an international SEO strategy with your market research and competitors. Take a look at Google Analytics and find out where your current traffic is coming from. You can have a large audience in a particular national market, and if so, you should first start optimizing your site for that country. If not, it’s best to use your company’s global strategy and find out which international brand or language to start with.
Choose the right domains.
If you need to create specialized websites for different countries, you must choose your domains wisely. Before choosing a domain for your brand, work with an agency with local market experience and mother tongue experts. You need to ensure that your chosen brand and domain get the right brand associations and responses from local consumers. If you want to use more than one word in your chosen domain name, make sure they work well together and don’t read incorrectly to form new words. This is important because an incorrect domain name can be misunderstood and lead to embarrassment or mistrust.
Choose which audience you want to serve first.
When it comes to international SEO, you don’t have to optimize your content for all countries and languages ​​at once. This may be a multi-stage deployment. Start by engaging a new audience to gain insight into how you can implement international SEO and take it from there. It will also help you and your team become familiar with Global SEO optimization services and gain momentum for future projects.