Posted on July 30, 2022 / by Webmaster / in IT knowledge base

Winning International SEO Strategy and Best Practices

We have talked about Local SEO best practices and how to optimize your Google Business Profile to boost your local ranking. What if your business is selling products or services globally? Your website must be able to reach them. What do you need to do to steer and strengthen your SEO strategy to drive organic traffic in overseas markets? As opposed to Local SEO, whereas it is an extended section of regular SEO that targets searches nearby your physical store. International SEO, on the other hand, aims to improve your website’s visibility and ranking in multiple countries (multi-regional SEO) and/ or languages (multi-lingual SEO).

How is International SEO different?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing a website and its content to get ranked in search engines. International SEO differs not much from regular SEO. It is also about making a stronger search presence. What sets it apart is its goal. The goal of International SEO is to reach audiences in the international markets. So that overseas users can find and see your website when they’re searching for your products or services in their home country.

Generally speaking websites have no boundaries. Anyone can access your website in any part of the world. However, it will be a different story if you launch an English website and try to rank it across multiple English speaking markets. In such case you will need to access whether there is a need to target your customers at a location or country level. Then when your target audiences in those regions are using a different language, you will need to localize content in the language they speak. Followed by optimizing the content for search terms they will use to find your products or services online.

In summary, International SEO is the SEO practices of optimizing your website and content to ensure search engines can easily identify which counties your website is targeting. Your website will be ranked in foreign regions despite the difference in location.

Winning International SEO Strategy

Attaining a top ranking in foreign searches isn’t something anyone can achieve just by translating their website into a foreign language. Here’s how you plan and implement your International SEO strategy to win over your global customers.

1. Decide which countries or languages are on the top of your list

Unless you have already had a prolific international brand to start with, it is not a wise choice to do SEO for too many countries right from the start. Even though they might be using the same language, the resources and efforts you need to put into the project could be overwhelming.

To minimize the risk of running into chaos, you need to decide which country or language you want to target first. You need to set your priority. The target country should have the biggest potential for your business. More or less people there have been showing interests in your products or services. Or your pricing is more competitive, while the quality is notably better.

Another compelling indicator is web traffic and conversion rate. When you dig into your Google Analytics, you’ll see where in other countries your traffic is coming from and how well they are engaged.

Doing your homework can give you a good dividend in return. This is literally the first step we need to take for every SEO project. Research where your products or services are most wanted and competitive. After all SEO is not just about increasing the traffic of your website. The ultimate goal is to bring in more customers and sales.

2. Analyze your target audience

One key to a successful international SEO strategy is to get to know your audience in the target region. First you need to find out their demographics information including gender and age. Secondly you need to understand their culture, interest and anticipate their needs. It is such information you build your campaign around. Without this analysis, you can’t determine your topic, plan your editorial calendar and at the same time, know what best terminologies are to be used to connect to these groups.

During this process identifying common user questions is equally important. There is an up trend that Google is providing answers directly on its Search Engine Results Page (SERP). By predicting the potential long-tail queries of your target audience, you can get in front of them promptly.

3. Study your SEO competitors

Check out the websites of your competitors. Google the search terms you are trying to rank for your website. Beware you may need a VPN to change your search location.

Get an idea of what keywords and content your competitors’ websites are ranking for. In general fresh and more relevant contents rank higher. Find the missing pieces and solve the puzzle. You will have a chance to outrank them and drive more traffic.

4. Figure out the best URL structure for your international sites

Before starting to roll out contents for other countries, you’ll need to figure out how to set up the URL for your multi-region/ multi-lingual website. The URL structure is used to distinguish between the languages and the regions that you are targeting.

Basically you have 5 options for structuring multi-region/ multi-lingual website URLs for international SEO.

4.1 Use completely different domains

Example: https://example.com/ vs. http://www.examplehk.com/

The only advantage of using different domains is each website has a high degree of autonomy. However, it is the least economical option. Each website and its domain is separate, and hence setup, maintenance and acquisition cost. Cookies among these sites are not shared. Since we are talking about SEO, the worst is if you have a successful SEO implementation with links and good rankings for a location, there is literally no way to replicate that into success in another location. You have to do SEO for each website separately, much of the efforts are duplicated.

It only makes sense if your products are distributed under a different brand in another country. Or in some cases you have no choice. That your domain name is difficult to understand or it has some embarrassing meaning in the target market or in that language.

4.2 Use ccTLDs (cc Top Level Domains)

http://www.example.cn/ vs. http://www.example.hk/

This option is quite similar to using different domains. Except that it would normally give a strong indication to search engines with geotargeting. It has distinctive advantages in some markets. A good example is China. In China businesses must apply for a license to own and host a .cn website. It is a major known ranking factor in Baidu’s algorithm.

Apart from the technical SEO, it may also have a positive psychological factor in influencing buying decision. Customers see the ccLTD may have a feeling that your company is more established in their country. And so they are more likely to do business with you.

4.3 Use subdomains

https://cn.example.com/ vs. https://www.example.com/

While there’s no need to purchase separate domains, cookies are shared among the subdomains. But still there is no sharing of SEO. The SEO community has repeatedly found what Google said to be false. Google stated that their search engine is treating subdomains and subfolders indifferently. However, in spite of Google’s clarification, Moz was not convinced. They moved their website content from a subdomain to a subfolder. Believe it or not, Moz claimed they saw measurable increases just as a result of that move.

Using subdomains to separate sites also implies a greater division between the sites than separating them with subdirectories. It is not a rule though. Take Disney as an example. They have cars.disney.com, videos.disney.com, disneyparks.disney.com, princess.disney.com, and so on. Each subdomain basically functions as a separate business within the overall corporation.

4.4 Use subdirectories

https://www.example.com/us/ & https://www.example.com/hk/

Using subdirectories to separate your website is fundamentally the same as with using subdomains. But unliked subdomains, one thing it is for sure about subdirectories is all backlinks that links to the webpages in your subdirectories are all pointing to the same domain. You are SEO efforts are accumulating. It is naturally the first choice for your URL structure of your website when it comes to international SEO.

4.5 Use parameters

https://example.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en vs. https://example.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=de

The only comment we have is to avoid using this option unless you have a strong reason to do so. They are humanly meaningless and confusing. Yet many users still prefer to enter the address into the URL bar manually. It is nearly impossible for them to do it with this format.

5. Configure Hreflang attributes correctly

The hreflang attribute tells search engines which language you are using on a particular web page, in effect the search engines will be able to show the correct page to users searching in that language. The use of it is to serve users with the most relevant content.

An example of hreflang attributes or tags is liked this: link rel=”alternate” href=”http://example.com” hreflang=”en-us” />

So you have to configure hreflang tags correctly in order to tell Google and other search engines which web page version to show for each country or language.

6. Find out which search engines are used most in the target market

It’s a bid counterintuitive. Rather your international SEO project must not just focus on optimizing your website for Google.

Again China is a prominent example. Literally Google has no access. Baidu is the number 1 search engine there. On the other hand internet users in other populous countries like Russia, South Korea and Japan may prefer Yandex, Naver, Yahoo or Bing over Google.

Search engines run on different algorithms. So pin down which are the most preferable search engines in your target country or region. Examine their ranking factors, adjust and optimize your localized page accordingly. For instance Google and Yandex use hreflang attributes to determine your web page locale and language. But for Bing, your will have to markup your web page correctly to do it.

7. Keyword research

Sometimes if a keyword is popular in one country does not mean it is also popular everywhere else. Especially when people in different countries are culturally different by nature. Besides, the search volume and SEO difficulty of the same keyword may vary by country too.

So it is similar to brand ambassadors, you’ll probably need more than one or a few global ambassadors. You’ll have to get some local or regional brand ambassadors onboard. Hypothetically these are the search terms that the audience in the target country familiar with. And that they will use when they google your products or services.

8. Localize your content for the target regions

Website localization is more than a simple word-by-word translation of text. According to Wiki, website localization is the process of adapting an existing website to the local language and culture in the target market. The localized version must reflect specific language and cultural preferences in its content, images and overall design – all while maintaining the integrity and requirement of the website.

Remember besides freshness and usefulness, readability is another key score attribute to rate and rank your page by Google and other search engines. So the localized website must have a focus on the targeted audience/ market in the new locale. It mustn’t look odd to the target audience despite inevitably there are behavioral and cultural differences between them and the original creators.

9. Perform Local SEO

It is very likely that you don’t have a registered business in each of the new market you’re working on. Or you’ll never have. We are not asking you to spam Google by creating fake registration and business address in your Google Business Profile. Don’t ever try to do it! You risk your account to be penalized and suspended.

But in case if you have shops or offices in different countries, you must update your NAPs (Name, Address and Phone). These shops or offices could be run by your local distributor or partner. And it is legit to set up a virtual office and put its contact information onto your website. It will help your website to rank for globally optimized keywords in those countries/ or locations.

Please read an earlier article of ours for more information about Local SEO Best Practices.

How does International SEO contribute to Local SEO?

If your website has a strong backlink profile and great rankings in many locations, then it’s going to be easier to translate that into success in the local market. As explained in 4.4 above, all backlinks of the subdirectories are ultimately pointing to the same domain. When you open a local store in a new country or city, it is easier to get ranked in local search since your .com site has already had a recognized authority. Given this point your Local SEO is not starting from scratch.

Wrapping Up

You know your products or services have the potential to accomplish global success. No matter how achievable it is, you also know that it’s not going to happen by chance. You need to do your research. Set your priority. Then allocate your resources to carry out the required changes and upgrades in your website, alongside with a set of skillful craftsmanship and informed decision making.

Bear in mind the best website plan is the SEO-Driven Website Plan. The approach is to create a website with (international) SEO in mind. It is at the very beginning before the site has even been developed. To begin with, you’ll first need to lay a concrete foundation. Set up the goal and direction of your multi-region/ multi-lingual website, then followed by the right tone and content. It will be not just affect its usability, SEO and ROI, it will affect the way the site evolves into the future. In due time you won’t find it hard to scale up your business and take the next step forward.