To get started to expand your business internationally is a milestone for any business. However, it doesn’t mean that if your business is booming in your home country, it will do the same in the international market. For that, you need to pay attention to the International SEO strategy.
To achieve online visibility across countries is challenging, as many factors play a crucial role in determining your business success. The factors include search habits, language, and culture of different countries.
With International SEO, you can reach your target audience and see how your business flourishes incredibly internationally.
What Do You Understand by International SEO?
International SEO is the process of optimizing and organizing your websites to increase organic traffic from multiple regions and languages. This way, the search engine can identify the country, the particular language, and content for each user in the specific location you are targeting.
If you find many users from other countries are visiting your website, then it’s a good choice to expand your business with International SEO. You need to make the necessary change to your website to provide a better experience to users from other countries.
Best Strategies to Use International SEO For Your Business Success
Let us find out how you can use International SEO to your advantage.
1. Location and Keyword Research
The start of any business includes extensive research. You should know where most of the traffic is coming to your website.
The keywords you used in your home country might not work well for other countries. You need to put the search for keywords that are extensively used in other countries as well.
Advanced SERP API is your tool to conduct organic research for your keyword. With this tool, you can analyze search volume of the keywords in the Google search results on-demand.
2. URL Structure
A great URL structure can inspire trust and confidence in the users. You need to research each country’s domains to make your URL more SEO-friendly and easy to find by the search engines.
For each country that you target, you have country-specific domains. They are country code top-level domain (ccTLD), subdirectory, a gTLD with language parameters, and a subdomain.
ccTLD
ccTLD is a 2-letter code that indicates the search engines and users in which sovereign state or country a website is registered. With ccTLD, you can easily rank in your target country. Also, you can control the anchor text profile from country to country.
One drawback is that the domain name is not always available, and you have to purchase it. It can be expensive and lengthy process.
Subdirectories
The subdirectory is the content you have created on your international website is placed in a particular subfolder of a root domain. It is easy to set up & maintain your content. It is a great option for a business that serves users across countries but communicates via one website.
One disadvantage is that the international SEO signal is weak to reach the search engine in order to rank in the target country.
gTLD with language parameters
A generic top-level domain (gTLD) such as .com, .org, or .net targets the specific group of language speakers by adding to the URL parameter.
The search engines identify different URLs in many different ways. You need to be careful while structuring your URL to achieve the desired success of your international website.
Subdomains
A subdomain is similar to a ccTLD; however, it is used before the domain. You can create unique subdomains to target specific countries. The best thing is that you do not have to register for the new domain, and the sites can set up independently on individual subdomains.
3. Implementing Hreflang On Your Website
Hreflang is the small excerpt of code that includes content with a different language on the website. They allow the search engine to match the language of the searcher. For example, German speakers will see the German content on your website instead of English.
Hreflang tag helps in translating the content in your subdomains and subdirectories. It will also prevent the different versions of your page to compete with each other in the search engine. However, they are not required when using separate ccTLD as you are already signaling a particular country.
Implementation
Each hreflang tag is specific to the language and country of the users. If “en-US” is placed after the URL, it is specific to English speakers, and “en-AE” refers to English speakers in the United States and so on.
You can use the hreflang tags in three ways:
- In your sitemap
- In the source code of the header on each page
- In the HTTP header on each page
4. Create Content as Per Your Target User’s Culture and Language
Your international website must be different from your native country’s website in terms of language, culture, and user requirements. Your site must be optimized as per the requirements of the country’s local audience.
Always be careful about the culture of a particular culture as it can increase or decrease the traffic on your website. Different countries like the style of language, layout, and color in different ways.
It is always better to have someone to translate the content for you. As they have good knowledge about the country, they can provide your website with enough information as per the target user.
5. Invest Time in Link Building
Your website needs to drive traffic from other websites. Links are important to provide authority to your website. Visitors coming to your page from another language website can access the content written in their native language. That will increase the number of visitors landing on your page.
Final Thoughts
Going international would mean more users are visiting your website across the world. By using the strategies, you can use International SEO to your advantage to establish your business as a global brand.
So, the results of implementing International SEO should be visible to you. The relevant content should reach the target users in their language. You can take your business to reach a global audience.
