You might have heard about the local search engine optimization of websites, it helps you gain a strong online presence and increase foot traffic to your shop. But, if you ever had planned to expand globally, you need to do a little more than that, and it's international SEO which is a special type of SEO that majorly focuses on targeting the audience in the multiple geographic regions.
If you are not aware of international SEO, this blog post is just for you. Here we will learn what's international SEO and how it will help you expand your brand globally.
What is international SEO?
As we discussed, the goal of international SEO is to increase website's organic traffic from a various geographical region. It allows Google to easily identity your site relevant to the search queries/intent made around the world. You can effectively signal to the search engine that you're targeting the internal audience.
How to expand your brand globally, leveraging International SEO?
No matter if you are approaching the audience from various geographic regions or languages, these practices can help you greatly:
1. Define your market approach
You cannot apply the same SEO strategies for multiple countries. For example, suppose you are selling the same products in multiple countries, you should know that you are going to target a diverse audience. So, here, you should employ language based segmentation strategy to ensure that your website's content is optimally translated in the regions where your audience lies.
Also, if your product varies across different countries or markets or uses distinct brand names, make sure you have individual country specific websites. Each optimized for their specific markets.
2. Do your market research
Focus on curating the buyer persona of the audience that may be interested in your products/services. This will help you learn your customer's preferences before implementing any strategy.
To go ahead with creating the buyers' persona, you should start with conducting keyword research, investigate all channels through which you are reaching your target audience and analyze their analytics.
3. Do your competitor's research
You can refer to your competition to see what they are doing and how well are their strategies working. You can also use competitive analysis to find your audience. This also helps you frame your content marketing, paid advertising and search engine optimization strategy.
4. Create Localized Content
To create localized content for international SEO, you can research keywords. Use linguistic knowledge and cultural understanding to find the terms and phrases that potential customers use in different regions and languages. Or you can also translate content into the local language. Most businesses hire human translators instead of using automated translation.
Apart from this, you can also use local elements: Include local currencies, time zones, phone numbers, and addresses. Tailor your content to the needs of your target audience. For example, if you sell meal kits, you might emphasize their time-saving benefits in countries where people work long hours.
Don’t forget to use hreflang tags. These tags help crawlers understand your multiple web pages and promote them.
Write articles for local blogs, get sponsored mentions on local websites, connect with local social media influencers, and sponsor local events.
Tailor your website to use the local search engine.
5. Create dedicated URLs
You can create dedicated URLs by using a standard structure. So, make sure to follow a standard URL structure, and keep it short and simple. Also don’t forget to use hyphens as they separate words instead of underscores or other characters. Hyphens are easier for search engines to identify.
Use lowercase letters to standardize your URLs and prevent linking errors.
Make sure to include target keywords. You should put at least one researched keyword in every page's URL, and put the most important keyword at the start.
Also, make sure to choose a domain that represents your niche market and is short and easy to remember.
Use hreflang annotations to help Google determine the language of the page and which region you are writing for.
At last, find the terms and phrases your target market is likely to use while looking for products or services that are comparable to yours.
6. Build Local Backlinks
For this you will need to create local content that's relevant to your local area to attract local customers. Alongside, you will also need to build relationships with related websites. Reaching out to local websites and asking them to link to your website can also turn out to be helpful.
Select a URL structure that will attract users in international markets. Have a native speaker translate and localize your keywords for your target audience. Analyze your competitors' international link profile.
Social media can also greatly help you build backlinks so don’t take it lightly.
7. Don't redirect your users
Redirects can negatively impact SEO in a number of ways. For example, when multiple redirects are set up between the intended URL and the actual URL, it can increase loading time and decrease the frequency with which a site is crawled. This can lead to some pages not being indexed by Google.
Google's crawlers are located in the United States, so they might have trouble indexing or ranking sites that use geo-location redirects.
Google advises against redirecting based on a user's IP address because it can confuse the crawler and cause indexing problems. Instead, Google recommends using ccTLD and Google Search Console settings to target international users. You can also serve the right content dynamically.
Summing Up
International SEO can help you grow your business significantly by increasing your reach and brand awareness in various markets. All you need is a right strategy. By optimizing your content for the local search engines, you can rank higher in the search results and get qualified leads. All this can help you take advantage over your competition. Just make sure to prioritize your markets before starting off with the international SEO. It's always better to start with one market, as it can be cost-effective to deal with one market at a time.