Do you wish to turn the tables and scale your business from a domestic powerhouse to a global player? International SEO is a skill you must master if you want to tap into the global market and expand your reach. International SEO helps to attract massive website traffic from multiple geographical regions and different linguistic groups. It optimizes your website for higher visibility in SERPs for different regions, thus allowing search engines and your target audience in other countries to discover your site conveniently. Let’s break down the strategies to optimize your website with global SEO.
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How To Optimize Your Website With International SEO?
Following local SEO strategies won’t work if you target people from different regions. To have constant growth, you need to crack the code to optimize with international SEO. Here’s the ultimate guide!
1. Thorough Market Research Of Your Target Country
To start off with optimizing your website, you need to conduct thorough market research of your target country. For instance, if you have a clothing brand, you need to research whether your target country uses such fabric. The more you craft your brands focusing on your audience, the better the result. You can use tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, and Google Ads to understand your competitors in a specific market.
2. Hire An International SEO If You Need
Hiring an international SEO will always be an optional tip for you, as whether you employ them or not, you will always benefit. First, the power you hold as an owner is that nobody knows your brand better than you. Hiring International SEO experts will be a cherry on top for your website.
3. Conduct Keyword Research for International SEO
In most cases, when someone switches their target audience, they also need to focus on the native language of the people. Translating keywords into their language and putting them into action isn’t enough. You need to transcreate them.
Even in translation, few words need to be used as it is in specific industries as they don’t require translation. However, the keywords are used differently in some industries, like law. For example, trial lawyers in the United States are barristers in the United Kingdom. Your keywords will also depend on the days of the events celebrated in different countries. For example, Mother’s Day is celebrated on different days in India and the United States.
4. Choose The Right International Domain Structure
Choosing the right international domain structure is essential for visitors and search engines to find it easily. Different domain structure options are mentioned in the examples below.
1. ccTLD: Country code top-level domains are the two-letter domains always assigned to specific countries, which are usually the acronyms of countries.
For example: myhealth.UK
2. gTLD: This domain extension has three or more characters. These are the most familiar domain authorities. Some of them are .com, .gov, and org.
For example: myhealth.com
3. ccTLD or gTLD with subdomains: You can create a site domain including ccTLD and gTLD structures.
For example: sa.myhealth.in
4. ccTLD or gTLD with subdirectories: Subdirectories determine the location of the country code.
For example: mybusiness.com/ca/
Factors That Affect International SEO
Numerous factors affect your business’s international SEO efforts. However, the most common factors are addressed below:
1. Prompt Mobile Responsiveness
A large segment of internet users browse sites on their mobile devices. Therefore, a website’s responsiveness on a mobile device matters to its overall search engine rankings. Optimize your website for mobile devices and provide a top-notch website experience regardless of your user location.
2. Link Building
International SEO demands high-quality links from international sources that point back to your site. Get in touch with various international guest blogging sites or reliable web sources that provide backlinks to your site, thus increasing its DA for best SEO results globally.
3. Google My Business Account
Registering your business on Google My Business account helps you boost your SEO efforts both locally and internationally. Google identifies your website’s geographical and language metadata from your Google My Business Account.
4. Customer Reviews
Customer reviews, whether on third-party local review sites or your website, add concrete social proof that complements your global SEO strategies. Better reviews establish a better connection with your potential audience and boost your website’s visibility for the primary keyword.
Conclusion
The right SEO strategies are the first step in making your brand stand out. This means you cannot use your local strategies or outdated tricks to optimize your website, especially in the case of audience redetermination. International SEO is what you need.
Going international requires lots of effort and time to understand the audience behavior you decided to target. From their native language to understanding the search intent and their preferences, everything is significant when you want to increase your website’s visibility to your new target audience.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. What is the difference between local and international SEO?
Local SEO is implemented by businesses that serve local customers, like restaurants, stores, or local service providers. Whereas international SEO targets users in multiple countries and in different languages. International SEO is beneficial for large-scale or medium-scale businesses with operations beyond national borders.
Q2. How can I tell if my website is optimized for international SEO?
The best way to check whether your website is optimized for international SEO is to track your analytics and see whether you are attracting visitors from your targeted international markets. Use reliable SEO tools to check if your website ranks for the intended keywords in different locations. Evaluate the engagement of international visitors and adjust your SEO strategy.
Q3. Can a website be both multi-lingual and multi-regional?
Yes. Depending on the business requirements, a website can be both multi-lingual and multi-regional.
Q4. How do you manage duplicate content issues with international SEO?
Use the robots.txt file to block automatically translated content on your website. Google considers auto-generated content duplicate content.
