When a company has grown large enough, it’s time to think about expanding, especially out into international waters. But if you want to gain traction in another country, then you have to tailor your site to that country’s market, which is where most companies trip up.
This means investing more time into SEO – otherwise known as Search Engine Optimisation, to make sure that your website can still be found online. Otherwise, that would defeat the purpose of expanding your business.
The first question you need to ask yourself is whether you need to go international. If the majority of your customers are locally based, or you serve a product or service specifically to your local community, then expanding internationally might not be fit for you. In this case, you would be better off focusing on fine-tuning your website’s local SEO to make sure people around your area know of your brand.
What is International/Worldwide SEO
So you feel expanding internationally is the next step in your business. Well, worldwide SEO, otherwise known as international SEO, can help you with that. But what exactly is it and how does it work?
To put it simply, international SEO is the process of optimizing your website for an international market, so that search engines, namely Google, can better understand what countries and languages your company is targeting. For example, say that your English website has suddenly started to receive visitors from France. So you get the idea to make a French version of your site, to cater to French customers. But to make sure French customers are specifically herded to your French site while your other consumers remain on your English site, you need to implement international SEO.
Why is it Important to Businesses:
International SEO, and SEO in general, is important to businesses because it ultimately lets your brand be found on search engines like Google. Since most people usually turn to Google before finding a business and making a purchase, not having your site turn up in the search rankings is basically rendering it invisible. That would mean losing potential customers and opportunities.
However, a big thing to consider is that search results turn up differently in different countries! This is because people are looking for different things – if you search ‘football’ in the UK, you’ll most likely get what Americans call ‘soccer’, whereas in the US you’ll get American football instead. This means that your content has to be localised to your targeted country, or else your website will most likely not pop up in people’s search results!
A common misconception is that you only need to release a website in the target country’s language to rank well. This could not be further from the truth. You also need to ensure a unique user experience for each country, to make it easier for Google to understand what country, language, and keywords you are targeting. In a way, you pretty much need to go local in another country in order to go global!
International SEO Best Practices
To make sure you optimise your website for international SEO, there are some best practices to keep in mind. We’ve listed a few of them below for your perusal, to let you check whether or not you have done this.
Consider different search engines in other countries
Although Google is one of the most popular search engines out there, you would be missing out if you didn’t research other search engines. This is because Google might not be dominant in some countries. For example, if you wanted to target mainland Chinese customers, then you would most likely need to rank for keywords on Baidu instead. For Russia, you might want to target Yandex, whilst for South Korea, Naver would be a good choice.
Conduct local keyword research
A well-thought-out SEO strategy always starts with keyword research, and international SEO is no different. However, you can’t just translate your keywords word by word, because keywords that work in your home country may not work in the same way abroad. This is usually because customers in your target country are searching for different things, or maybe your industry and business is referred to differently. The local culture and slang also play a huge factor in what kind of keywords to rank for. As mentioned above, even in English, sometimes the same word can have multiple meanings in multiple countries, so it is important to target what people there are searching for.
Ensure content is localised
The last thing you want to do is put your website through an automated translator such as Google Translate. Because the translation is done through AI, this will most likely result in clunky translations that might end up confusing your potential customers and create an awful user experience for your site. This is why content creation has to be done through a native speaker, to make sure the copy appeals to your targeted audience. Additionally, take into account the country’s local culture, as this can help you better understand your customer’s way of thinking.
You also want to make it easier for search engines to understand exactly what language and country you are targeting. So make sure to include the local currency, as well as local contact information like an address or phone number. On the other hand, don’t include multiple languages on the same page or site, as this will just end up confusing search engines.
Use ccTLD
ccTLDs, otherwise known as Country Code Top Level Domains, are also important in establishing your website’s applicability in another country. Essentially, they are two-letter domains attached at the end of a domain name. These letter codes help search engines identify which country or state a website is registered in. For example, a British website would have the ccTLD .uk, whereas a European website would have .eu. This makes it easy for search engines to geotarget your website, and it can gain more trust from local users.
Use Hreflang tags
One main issue with international SEO, especially if it is multilingual, is duplicate content. If you have similar content on multiple pages, search engines like Google will get confused about which ones to show in their search results. Duplicate pages also end up competing with each other, which ensures the overall ranking of your website will go down. A way to get around this problem is through using hreflang tags. These HTML attributes help to identify a webpage’s geographic area and language, as well as notify Google that different languages and versions of a webpage are related. For example, if you have a .uk website for UK customers and a .au website for Australian customers, your site content will most likely be similar to one another. Thus, using hreflang tells Google to not count them as duplicate content.
Conclusion
It’s a wide world out there, and expanding abroad might be beneficial to your business in the long run. While using international SEO seems complicated, it can help boost your website traffic and bring in customers from other regions. You can get started by using keyword research tools like Google Analytics and Ahrefs. So remember to keep these tips in mind while deciding on your international SEO strategy, and good luck!
