There is no doubt that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) will help your brand to reach the top page of the search engine result page for your primary keywords. And am sure you must be taking advantage of being on the first page.
There are nearly 10 billion people in the world. And 5.03 billion of them use the Internet.
You can say it is an opportunity or an exposure to showcase your brand around the globe. It’s your chance to boost your reach and grab business from the international market.
That’s great If you have already planned it.
Don’t mind, a few questions for you.
How do you plan to manage if you want to run your business in the international market?
How do you think to make money from international audiences?
Maybe you are thinking: SEO is already there for your business, and you are ranking well for your keywords. Why can’t you bring foreign customers?
Well, for more clarity, I would say SEO never end. And, what works for you doesn’t mean work for your friend.
Similarly, the SEO techniques that work in your region or country will not necessarily work well for you abroad.
No worries nor No more questions, Our Experts have already found a way for this.
International SEO will help you to expand your business out of your country.
There are several websites indexed on search engines, but not every website can make money from international markets; if your website has the prospect, international SEO can immensely boost your reach.
Now it’s time to clear your every confusion.
In this Blog, we will discuss international SEO in-depth and the strategy you need to follow to conquer foreign markets.
What is International SEO?
International SEO is the sum of all activities aimed at improving a website’s organic search presence in more than one country or language.
It includes all factors that contribute to the expansion of your brand into different territories, such as linguistics, translation and content localization.
In other words, It can be said as the core component of global marketing involves all aspects of your website and its content, such as the design, accessibility, analytics and links.
Let’s understand in depth.
Suppose your business is running excellent in India, both offline and online.
You produce solid content, and your web presence is too good that you start receiving visitors from US countries.
You may be surprised by the number of visitors you received from those countries, and you may think of expanding your business to their markets with the same content.
Sorry to say, but in reality, your idea may fail.
The first step that you need to do is to configure your website or blog to reach everyone at the same time.
Here International SEO comes into effect. It not only indicates to search engines about your languages and region but also configures your website in such a way that it sends an indication to search engines in the right way and reaches the countries you want through the internet.
Local SEO vs International SEO:
You must be having confusion regarding Local SEO and International SEO.
Let’s understand the basic difference between these two.
The primary difference between local and International SEO is scope. Local SEO is mainly focused on keywords and targeted audiences within a narrow geographic area, while International SEO targets audiences across multiple geographic regions.
Apart from that, You can see differences in
Content: To capture the international market, you need to focus on content. You need to invest in more quality content as compared to local SEO.
In-depth Research: International SEO needs thorough research about a place and its audiences’ demands before taking your brand to a new region.
Competition: Keyword and customer competition is much higher for international SEO campaigns. In local business, you compete with brands in your local spear, whereas in the foreign market, you have to struggle with multinational corporations.
Cost: Looking at the Scope and exposure, you need to spend more amount and effort on international SEO strategies.
How to start with International SEO Strategy?
#1: Build Your International SEO Strategy:
Around 70% of businesses don’t follow any strategy for their SEO. Which means they are unaware of it.
It’s not only about International SEO. For any SEO tactics, you need to do proper research and strategy.
Getting certain traffic from one country doesn’t mean your website has the potential to withstand their market. Ultimately, You need to know more.
For sure, you must have a marketing budget, and wasting it on an irrelevant strategy will of course reduce your ROI.
Ensure that you are focusing on countries where you have the potential and your brand is efficient enough to tackle their local brands.
After research, you need to plan on goals, keywords, web structure, and others. Additionally, stay focused on the resources of international SEO because it’s a long race, and as compared to local SEO, it will take more time. For better results, you need to set feasible KPIs like international search traffics, revenue, customer acquisition cost, etc.
Don’t forget to track your performance regularly. It’s necessary to measure the potential search volumes with the help of the google analytics tool.
#2: Select Your URL Structure:
Choosing the right URL structure for your business is crucial if you’re going to rank in international search results.
Whether you choose country-specific URLs, domain names or subdirectories, some SEOs claim that pages with subdomains can help your company rank better when compared to other countries.
Let’s say a French wants to learn about digital Marketing, for sure he will prefer to learn from a french website or any website that’s been translated into French.
There are four main options when it comes to where your website comes from. Suppose you have a website called www.learndigitalm.com. Check what your options would be:
- Different ccTLDs (similar to area codes) www.learndigitalm.fr
- Your domain’s subdomain:www.fr.learndigitalm.com
- Your domain’s subdirectory: www.learndigitalm.com/fr
- The following is content on your existing domain that’s targeted at a certain language using a gTLD:
www.learndigitalm.com/?lang=fr
By the way, each of the options has its advantages.
There is no doubt that a separate domain is the strongest indicator that content is targeted at a particular country, but you have to run a completely new website to use it.
Even you can use gTLD with language parameters. This might be the most convenient way, but it gives a weak signal to search engines.
Your strategic planning will depend upon the option you are going with and the priority you are giving to the following country.
#3: Target Your Site to Specific Language:
There are more than 7,100 languages spoken in the world. It doesn’t make any sense of saying to reach out to all of them. Instead, you can show up your site in your users’ primary language.
Additionally, Google wants to show results in people’s native language, so it will evaluate your website accordingly.
(Note: Don’t rely on machine translations.)
Every aspect of your website must be in the correct language, whether it is the navigation bar or the content. For better implementation, you can take the help of Google language tags.
It’s also important to keep in mind that people may not always want to browse in the language you expect them to. It would be frustrating if you are redirecting users automatically to different languages based on their location.
There is a possibility that the people who might be working in foreign countries want to view your content in English or any other language. So it’s a good practice to include a button, and let them an option to decide the language they want to read.
#4: Make your content more relevant
This is the basic principle of SEO that will never change. No matter whether we are in International or Local SEO. The relevant and quality content will always dominate.
Serving the right content in the right language isn’t enough for international SEO. Users usually go for information that is relevant to them, and they search for it differently. Having a keyword that works well in English does not mean it will translate well to a foreign language.
You can take the help of tools like Google Trends, to find out which topics are important at a particular point in time.
Keep in mind that you should always compare your actions with those of your competitors, identifying their strengths and weaknesses.
(Note: The more countries you target, the more analysis and comparison you need to do and more quality content you need to create.)
#5: Target countries based on priority
You need to address countries or regions individually in International SEO. The content, strategies, and creatives they need must be tailored to their needs.
Find out which countries offer the best value for your business. You need to check out the audience from which country mostly visits your site and the languages they speak, and keywords of the industry that capture more volume from their country.
Top of that, you need to understand the resources available to you. In SEO, it’s better to rank at the top for a set of keywords than in the backyard of a search engine for thousands of keywords. The same logic applies to International SEO as well.
So it becomes important for you to have resources to create content for targeting audiences from different countries.
#6: Track and Measure Your Results:
As with any Digital Marketing Strategy, tracking and measuring the results plays a crucial role in the success of a marketing campaign.
In international SEO, you need to be more careful regarding every step.
You need to track how the audiences from that particular country are responding to your content.
Meanwhile based on the response you need to change or improve your content.
Conclusion:
The rise of the internet has brought with it a sea of infinite possibilities for business owners, and no region is riper for business than the international marketplace.
International SEO should be an integral part of any marketing strategy for small businesses that wish to establish a global presence.
If you have an online business and you’re having trouble expanding into new markets, it’s time to look deeper at your online presence. You could be making mistakes without even knowing it.
Understanding and addressing the unique factors involved in this form of SEO is quite significant, As a business owner if you are planning to do international SEO and seeking help from a marketing agency, then don’t forget to include Gloify at the top. Our marketing experts will help you to achieve your goal.