If you sell products or give services internationally, it’s more likely that you must be having a website. Obviously, you want your website to work well in all of your target markets. Unfortunately, that one thing where most of the companies fall short of is international SEO.
What is international SEO?
It is a very effective process of optimizing your website as per global standards and factors keeping in consideration the countries and languages that you want to target to spread your business.
This helpful methodology of international SEO is also known as geotargeting or geotagging. In this process, companies optimize their website to reach more customers which are from your city or state, as well as from different countries and languages. International SEO breaks the boundaries and limitations and take the success of your business at global levels.
Here, you will get some super effective and beneficial tips which you can implement in your business and reach global audience easily.
Keyword Research
This is just like you do in regular SEO. Research helps to get relevant keywords for your global campaign and help to generate more and more leads.
There are multiple keyword tools available which help you find the right keywords. You can use short keywords as well as long-tail keywords. In comparison to short tail keywords, long tail keywords give better results as they are less generic.
After getting all the relevant keywords, they need to be translated in languages of those countries which you want to target. Remember not to completely rely on translation tools for the translation as there will be no human touch in it. A machine is a machine at the end of the day no matter how technically advanced it is.
Integrate these keywords in your international SEO plan and you are good to go!
Language Targeting
Focus on languages rather than focusing on countries as one language can be spoken in many countries like French is not only spoken in France but also very common in Canada, Belgium, and Luxembourg. You must consider expanding your business beyond country boundaries. There is a tag called ‘hreflang’ which informs Google those languages which you want to use on any specific page of your website.
Make sure that each page on your website is in correct language so that people who land on French page must not see an English title. Everything from navigation to content must be in a particular language.
There can be a possibility that a person from France might not know French so do not direct users automatically. Let them decide and direct themselves as per their comfort and preferences.
Prefer Human Translators
Machines can translate word to word but to understand the context, emotions, and experiences of the users, you must have native human translators. Improper translation may lead to bad SEO tagging resulting in drop in Google ranking. You must hire someone who is a fluent speaker of the language. Proper translations result in more organic traffic as the audience will be able to understand your message completely without any confusion.
International URLs
ccTLD, Subdomain, and Subdirectors – these are the three main ways with the help of which you can create international URLs for your website. ccTLD is country code top-level domain and indicates the registered country of the website like sample.us.
Subdomain is for international pages and looks like us.sample.com.
Subdirectory showcases that a page of your website is designed in a specific language like sample.com/us.
These will help your audience guide to right website of their own native language.
Reflecting Culture
Make your website culturally appropriate for your international audience. Focus on proper formatting, use local language, currency, and time zones. Make sure that visitors on your website will have a seamless experience. Your website must be engaging and interesting for them so that they stick to it for a longer duration.
Get your logistics ready
Selling products and services globally in international markets require a perfect trading process which can handle enquiries, plenty of calls, business prospects, complaints and all. Make sure you have appropriate local distributors and native speakers to handle all this whether online of offline.
International SEO is like a long-term bespoke strategy whose success depends on your dedication, hard work, vision, and conviction. Make sure not to just copy what your competitors are doing or have done before. Research instead and build your own marketing strategy. Generate engaging and interesting content and design for your global audience. SEO is one of the most important elements of any online business and international SEO takes it to newer heights. If you also want to attract more global leads, then start focusing on investing in international SEO to break all the boundaries.
