Improving SEO When Entering the International Market

It’s only natural for businesses that have succeeded at the corporate level to expand internationally and eventually hire SEO marketing consultants for a more successful venture. Although expanding one’s business in another country is an exciting and intimidating prospect for any company owner, they should know how international SEO marketing works to effectively introduce their brand and products to international customers.

It’s all about duplicating past success in the company’s original target country. However, marketing in one’s own country, say the United States, won’t use the same strategies as marketing in Australia, Germany, or France, for instance.

Websites will play an important part in serving foreign consumers, which is why international SEO is a must. On a basic level, international SEO entails targeting particular languages and countries on a website.

It’s not enough, however, to just have those pages accessible to people all over the world. One should think of the measures that they plan to take in order for their sites to rank higher on Google.

Below are some international SEO marketing tips that site owners and companies should consider following to thrive in a foreign market.

1. Use the Appropriate URL Structure

The number of pages on an enterprise or big-scale website will most likely be in the hundreds or thousands. When it comes to ecommerce, category and product pages could add up quickly.

The first thing site owners should do is construct international pages for the appropriate audiences using the right country-coded URL structure. Doing so will help visitors in another country to find what they’re looking for on the website.

For instance, if a US-based company wants to expand their business in the UK market, they must make and optimise web pages for British people. This involves creating web pages centred on a British audience with URL structures showing that the content is meant to be read by UK users.

There are so many ways to do this. For instance, international websites can country-code their international URLs using a ccTLD, making it a .uk website. They can create a subfolder on the original website (websitename.com/uk), a country-coded subdomain (uk.websitename.com), or another domain entirely, but is optimised for British users. It is up to the site owner what approach is best for their business.

They may believe that having a different domain for each new country they target is a waste of time and money. It may also break down organic traffic statistics among websites, so they won’t be able to view everything at once.

The subfolder and subdomain methods would allow site owners to see the international versions of their sites separately while also letting them gather traffic data in one place.

2. Improve Page Experience for Users in Different Countries

Country-specific URL structures are helpful for targeting international audiences. However, if these visitors go to the website and find content written in American English instead of British English, it could be a little off-putting.

Going to the product pages, British customers may find that the prices are written in American dollars, putting the burden on their shoulders to convert them to British pounds.

It’s unwise to allow potential customers to do all those things.

International SEO requires a user-centric approach, much like traditional SEO. Whether it’s delivering web pages to British audiences who speak British English or Japanese users who use a different language, make certain that all the content is translated for its intended audience.

Translation tools can help accomplish this, but site owners will still need to decide whether or not Google displays that page version to the right audience by adding hreflang tags.

Hreflang tags tell Google that the language spoken on the page is different from the one in which it was written. As a result, visitors coming from IP addresses with the same languages will see an appropriate version of the page. Of course, languages do not always operate within national boundaries.

For instance, German is spoken in Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Switzerland, so site owners should not have Google exclude the latter three countries from search results by only showing German-language pages to those in Germany. This problem can easily be solved by adding hreflang tags for certain countries.

When it comes to currencies, site owners should determine the various currency options that they want to accept. They should also translate content regarding customs, shipping, and taxes, especially for country-specific resources.

3. Learn the Differences in International Keywords

A huge company that expands worldwide must be aware of the varied keyword trends among different countries. Another issue to consider is that terms in different languages might be used for similar things (for example, “lift” in the United Kingdom and “elevator” in the United States).

SEO marketing tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush are best for keyword research in different countries. However, things might become a little more difficult if the clients have their own unique terminologies for items depending on local elements, such as weather, culture, history, and language.

Site owners and businesses who want to rank for the most relevant terms in their target countries must invest time into researching the phrases used there and appropriately translating them.

It may take a significant amount of time researching more information about international countries for corporate and other large-scale websites, but it’s helpful to know what to do before deciding to expand overseas.

International SEO Needs All Your Attention

It takes a significant amount of time and work to improve international SEO; an enterprise business with operations in multiple countries should be sure their website is working for them and not against them. Website owners must put in the effort to provide international clients with fantastic experiences, and this transition could pay off handsomely for years to come.

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