What is international SEO?
In today’s competitive market, SEO optimization is critical for all websites. SEO is the most practical and valuable method of understanding and reaching customers at important stages in the purchase process.
Many companies and organizations are aware of the importance of SEO for their digital domains, as well as the advantages of having an international SEO strategy implemented on their behalf by SEO experts.
Businesses that serve customers around the globe typically have separate websites for each country they are targeting. International SEO improves search visibility for target customers who live in different countries or speak different languages. With international SEO, companies can target content to viewers worldwide using geo-targeting, hreflang tags, and other localization signals. International SEO is a little different from domestic SEO. Search engines like Google and Yahoo make an effort to match search results to the searcher’s language and location.
International SEO is a fantastic approach to expanding a business’s reach in multiple countries around the world. Suppose competitors don’t optimize their content for certain nations or multiple languages. In that case, you can take advantage of this by adapting your content to target countries to get even more visitors establishing yourself above the competition in every aspect.
If businesses wish to produce international content or goods and services, they must take cultural differences into account. Rather than translating the information on your website with international SEO, it’s crucial to localize it for the target country. You must ensure that the target audience can make purchases in their currency to boost SEO campaigns. You must also respond to their queries in their native language and within their cultural context at any time during the buyer journey. Your website visitors who are interested in your items desire these optimizations.
Long keywords are an ideal example, as they have strong intent despite their low search volume. As a result, focusing on long-tail keywords is essential to international SEO as it can lead to a higher conversion rate. The importance of SEO is very critical whether it is optimized for local or international websites. Both international and local SEO are inbound marketing strategies that make use of strategies critical for business websites that are looking to increase organic traffic on their website.
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How to implement international SEO?
Before implementing an SEO plan, businesses and individuals need to understand how international SEO works. With SEO, search engines make an effort to match search results to the searcher’s location and language.
International SEO refers to the process of optimizing a site for search engines in other countries. More specifically, it refers to optimizing your site for Google, Bing, and Yandex.
SEO is very important if your company has customers in various countries. It can help you get more traffic from those countries and help you rank higher on SERP for keywords that are relevant to your company. In addition, it’s important if your business sells products or services internationally.
There are several ways to optimize a website for international SEO, including:
1) Using the correct language tags on each page of your site;
2) Making sure that all URLs contain only one country code;
3) Creating multiple versions of the same page for various languages;
4) Including hreflang tags on pages with duplicate content (or similar content);
5) Creating separate subdirectories for each land where you sell products or services.
What is the hreflang tag?
The hreflang attributes were introduced as part of the HTML5 specification and specify language preferences for visitors from other countries or regions. It is used by Google, Bing, Yandex, and other search engines as an indicator that there are different versions of the same relevant content available in different languages or locations.
Special indicators you put on your website tell search engines whether your site offers information that would be appropriate for someone looking in a given country or language. Here’s how businesses can implement international SEO:
- Determination of The International Content – for businesses looking to implement an SEO plan, it is very important to determine the relevant content they are going for. Businesses must consider which customers they will target and in which language. Some web pages focus on language, including the main page that allows visitors to choose their preferred language. Some webpages feature pop-ups that allow visitors to choose their local language and land and then send them to a specific URL structure based on their choices.
- Setting up URLs friendly for SEO – the URL structure of your site aids search engines in determining which of your pages to display to users in different regions across the world. This is a type of geo-targeting that focuses on a specific place. Some of the URL structures which can improve international SEO are:
- Subdirectory – it’s simple to set up and administer a subdirectory structure. Subdirectories are simple and inexpensive to add to your site. It just takes one website domain, and the authority you earn for that domain is applied.
- Separate Website – companies can also set up a completely separate website for each region or land. For international SEO, dedicating a distinct domain with a specific country code provides the strongest country signal to search engines. It also shows visitors to your website that your organization is committed to its presence in that particular region, increasing its reputation.
- Make Use Of Hreflang Tags – websites that contain multilingual content use these tags. Hreflang tag helps search engines such as Google and Yahoo match the right language to the right searcher. Content will be displayed in Italian instead of English for Italian speakers, for example. Hreflang tags are useful when translating content in subdirectories or subdomains. Despite search engines’ capability to discern a website’s language without a hreflang tag, the tag allows your distinct page versions to compete on SERP and work towards increasing your SEO rankings.
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International SEO best practices
International SEO is the process of optimizing various aspects of your website and localizing them to suit the needs of a foreign audience. This may include using a root domain, same keyword and language targeting, country targeting, and specific language. If done correctly, it can be highly cost-effective when compared to local SEO.
International SEO for websites requires proper knowledge and ways to gain the most for SEO. Some of the SEO best practices are:
- Tracking and Keeping Knowledge of Search Engines – for international SEO, it is important to track down and learn about popular search engines in the particular country or region you are trying to target. The most popular engine for searching the web in the world is Google, and optimizing for Google alone can help you reach your potential clients in many different countries around the globe.
- Work with Native Speakers – when targeting the same region, work with native speakers. When expanding into non-English speaking areas, cooperate with native speakers. As you always do when conducting SEO, it is important to consider the User Experience when expanding into these regions – no one wants to read translated information. A lot of meaning can be lost in translation, resulting in clumsy language at best and misleading and erroneous information at worst, resulting in a whole new set of problems.
- Local Competition – for businesses expanding into foreign regions, it is vital to learn about the local competition, even for international SEO. It is essential to think about local businesses and their strategies for SEO. Examine the SERPs for your business to improve the content local search engines’ value for your most important keyword groupings. You should look at your local competition’s digital strategy when you identify your top competitors in the region in which you are planning to expand.
- Focus On Building Relationships – it is important to focus on building links and building relationships. It’s critical to prioritize quality above quantity. If your website receives backlinks from URLs, search engines will believe that your site is relevant to that region’s viewers and rank accordingly in those local SERPs. The influence of local links on search results will be the greatest. It’s not about attempting every possible international SEO strategy.
- Adjustment of Content & Products for Locals – in SEO, businesses collaborate with native speakers to design product names, pages, and content relevant to local consumers. You must consider what’s important to customers in that region and how your product or content may meet local needs. New customers want to feel that you are just as dedicated to serving them as you are serving your home audience.
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When to start thinking about international expansion?
Suppose you know that a significant portion of the visitors on your site are from different countries or speak other languages or both. In that case, it may be time to make some adjustments to your site to provide a better experience for all of your international website visitors. Businesses should consider going for international expansion at this point.
If you’re looking to expand your business into foreign markets, here are some tips and tricks to get you started:
International content
In addition to localizing your site for each country (or language), you need to ensure that your site content is tailored to all geographic areas. For example, if you sell widgets in the US, UK, and Germany, you need to make sure that the widget descriptions on your site are written in English (and German).
Eastern European countries
Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and other Eastern European countries are also competitive markets. Although there are not as many local sites there as in Western Europe, the competition is still significant.
Root domain
Common mistake companies make using multiple domains for their global sites. While this may seem like an effective way to drive traffic from different countries to specific versions of your site, it is actually very inefficient because it requires more local resources than a single domain would take up.
Multiple websites
If you want everything to be centralized but still include localized content for each country or language combination, you can also use multiple websites. This could include a global site with translated pages for each country or language combination and then individual sites for each country/language with untranslated pages. Over time, this can be costly to maintain because each change must be made simultaneously across all sites.
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Language-targeted SEO optimization
Your website can reach a wider international audience if it supports more languages. Businesses must understand that just translating the website into various languages will not increase visitors. Businesses must consider language-based SEO if they want to reach out to a wider audience around the world. The most important factors that you need to consider when localizing your content for international SEO include:
Target countries
Your website may be optimized for the UK, but what about users from other countries? If you have a target audience in mind, you can use Google’s Traffic Estimator tool to see which countries prefer to visit your website. If you don’t have a specific target country, the chances are that people from all over the world will visit your site.
Cultural differences
Your keyword research should take cultural differences into account — even within countries, regional differences can affect how people search online. For example, “football” might refer to American football or association football, depending on where a user is located.
Country codes
Every country has its two-letter codes (e.g., US = US; GB = UK), and there are also some regional codes, such as CA (Canada). You can find these codes on Wikipedia or in our list of specific country codes by language.
Users speak different languages
Some websites will have English content, some will have content in the languages spoken within their target market(s), and some may have content in all the languages spoken within their target markets.
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How can Google understand international sites better?
Google is the industry leader when it comes to search engines. Designing your site in ways that can help the search engine understand your website would benefit traffic and search engine rankings.
To help you target the right audience, we have created a list of the most important factors that can affect your rankings in each country.
Language targeting
Language targeting is one of the most important factors when it comes to localization. If you target the wrong language, even if your website is fully translated into that language, it will not be ranked for relevant keywords.
Third-level domain
Your website needs to be hosted on a third-level domain (i.e., example.co.uk) instead of a second-level domain (i.e., www) or subdomain (i.e., blog). This ensures that your site is treated as an independent entity from other websites with similar content.
A specific subdirectory
In some countries, such as Russia and South Korea, Google treats subdirectories differently than other websites in its index and ranks them separately from their main domains; therefore, it is important to keep all subdirectories separate from each other and from their main domains so that they do not take traffic away from each other or the main domain.
Using catalogs or different domains for multi-language sites – which is better?
The biggest decision businesses have to make when building a multilingual website is whether to have only one domain or separate domains for each language. There are many differences between single and different domains for multi-language sites.
Different Domains
When it comes to multilingual sites with different domains, you may adjust the content to regional clients’ needs and expectations. Local marketing teams can conduct their campaigns without affecting other area marketing teams in this fashion. For the market with multiple domains, you can use target country code top-level domains. These are some of the most effective methods for indicating to Google and other search engines which country or area the material is intended for. User logins will be divided by domain; thus, regional user controls for the website will be set up automatically.
Single Domain
Website content will benefit from SEO strategies performed on the domain, making it more likely to rank and attract visitors. Single domains are preferred over multiple domains if your market is well-developed and present in smaller markets that generally receive less investment. Multilingual websites with a single domain give you greater control by consistently appearing across all markets. With a single login and domain, all material can be controlled without difficulty.
