It’s time to improve your website with international SEO if you’re about to expand your business internationally. Here is all you require to get going.
You might be pleasantly surprised to hear that 40% of buyers worldwide won’t purchase a product in a language other than their mother tongue. Having your website optimised for international visitors in the markets you wish to sell to is an excellent argument in and of itself.
Do you want your business to have an international search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy? Then you’re in good hands. This post will cover the technical facets of website localisation and topics like site structure and international keyword research.
Let’s get going.
What is International SEO?
International SEO aims to make it simple for search engines to recognise the nations and languages you wish to target with your website. There are two varieties of international SEO. The first is multilingual SEO, which makes it easier for users from different countries and languages to find your website and content. The second technique is multi country SEO, which aids people in one nation to locate information that has been authored in a foreign language.
You should use international SEO strategies if you conduct business internationally or want to draw clients from other nations so that you may connect with potential clients anywhere in the world. International SEO is crucial because search engines like Google display results to people in various countries based on the searcher’s IP address and their Search Settings. For instance, if someone in Singapore searches for “pizza” online, they will be shown pizza shops in the area.
International SEO sometimes entails producing pertinent material for the target market in many languages. This is because speaking various languages inside a single nation is quite common (for example, Malaysia). This isn’t always the case, however. In Canada, for instance, most of the population speaks either French or English, not both.
Read more: Five Types of SEO Services
How does International SEO Work?
Similar to conventional SEO, international SEO targets a variety of locales and languages. You could want your website to appear among the top results for a search for a product in Chinese, for instance. The same holds for whatever other language your website provides content in, including Japanese, Malay, French and Korean.
However, changing the language on your website isn’t the only thing you can do to increase global visibility. Making your website more relevant and accessible to audiences worldwide sometimes entails making some technological changes.
International SEO involves more than just translation and localisation when trying to reach users in foreign areas. International SEO entails working with local search engines and meeting the needs of people in that region, optimising your website and creating a digital presence for each country you wish to target.
The objective of international SEO is to increase the visibility of your website in search results for queries performed by language-specific searchers.
Why is International SEO Important?
Your product or service will be more visible in foreign markets if you use international SEO to promote your website and its contents. In other words, you can increase your consumer base and eventually increase your conversion rate.
Benefits of International SEO
Here are six good reasons to spend money on international SEO.
Customers frequently conduct product and service searches in their native tongue.
The majority of people in a nation are typically accustomed to looking for goods, services, or information in their native tongue. According to a study of the European Commission, 42% of EU respondents never use other languages when looking for goods and services online. This makes sense, given that ordering goods or services from foreign websites may result in high shipping charges, lengthy delivery periods, or the inability to access services in the user’s home country. You will find it easier to communicate with your customers in their language when you target a particular language.
International SEO enhances the reputation of brands.
Being a well-known brand is essential for a company to make money. Even if your goods or services are the greatest, people will still choose your rivals if they don’t feel confident in your brand. A positive user experience can be identified by localising your online content and ensuring it is ideally suited to give pertinent information to users in their native language automatically. Making your material accessible to your audience improves their perception of your brand and increases their propensity to purchase your goods or services.
More excellent conversion rates are produced by SEO than by conventional marketing techniques.
You might want to read this if you believed that SEO was a poor tool that only brought a small number of extra leads to your website. According to statistics, online content optimised for SEO has a conversion rate of 14.6% as opposed to traditional marketing channels’ 1.7%. This indicates that SEO generates more than eight times as many leads to a website that convert to sales as conventional methods.
This is how it works: SEO generates leads that are already interested in knowing more and may already be interested in purchasing a particular good or service because it is a pull strategy instead of a push strategy. As a result, optimising translated content for SEO is possible to take advantage of global competition with an expanding client base, which results in faster revenue growth.
Expand your audience globally
By extending your company’s reach across several nations at once, international SEO enables your company to attract customers worldwide. International SEO must be part of your marketing plan if your company is ready to be known as a global brand.
Obtain a tonne of organic traffic
Most websites frequently exclusively cater to audiences in their nation, which is the equivalent of settling for traffic from a single country. You can target as many nations as possible to increase organic traffic to your brand, depending on your company’s reach.
For instance, even if the US market is quite competitive, attracting visitors from other nations is relatively simple. Therefore, one of the most excellent strategies to boost the organic traffic your website may provide is to implement a thoroughly thought-out worldwide SEO strategy.
Become recognised globally
It isn’t easy to establish a solid reputation as a worldwide brand. However, your company can develop to dominate the market like Amazon with effective worldwide SEO methods. A multinational brand must adjust to various cultural norms because it sells in numerous nations.
International SEO makes your website more user-friendly, concentrates content marketing in native languages, and uses CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) techniques to attract and convert quality clients. Additionally, SEO assists in managing your company’s reputation abroad when used in conjunction with reputation management.
Do I need International SEO
There’s a good chance that a portion of your audience will be international. If you give it some thought, you can see why. The majority of people who use the internet don’t speak English.
Are you willing to translate your complete site into several languages and optimise these versions for different SERPs, traffic, and conversions? iMarketing can help you compete on the worldwide market and reach out to nations that are driving eCommerce sales growth.
You should take into account global SEO if:
You wish to expand your company and are no longer content with its current local operations.
You operate in various nations, or your company has a sizable international clientele.
More traffic & improved conversion rates will result from creating a new web presence for particular nations & languages.
You have the time and resources to create a global SEO strategy.
It is too soon to consider international SEO if your company model doesn’t fit these criteria.
For the time being, securing country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) for high-potential nations and setting up notifications in your Google Analytics dashboard for foreign visitors should be sufficient. On the other hand, if the factors mentioned earlier make building international SEO look like the most excellent option for your online presence, it’s time to locate and evaluate chances.
International SEO Checklist
To expand your business into international markets, international SEO is crucial. Your search visibility will increase, your brand image will be strengthened, you’ll get more leads, and your international sales will increase if you optimise your content for different nations. For your upcoming international SEO project, we’ve created a checklist to make sure you don’t miss anything:
Work out what international content you provide and for what markets/languages.
Conduct keyword research to create a keyword strategy using relevant keywords for specific markets/languages
Set up an international SEO-friendly URL structure
Create a sitemap
Determine Language vs Country Targeting
Allow users to switch the webpage language
Use Hreflang tags for language targeting
Adjust pricing to national currencies
Ensure all image alt tags are in the correct languages
Identify bad redirects and fix them
Use Google Search Console to identify and fix broken links, errors, and crawl issues
Create a link-building strategy for each market
Keep up to date on international and local search trends
Check the SEO potential of each topic you want to address
Hire native content creators and industry experts to keep your content relevant
International SEO Services in iMarketing.
International Technical SEO
We will assess and provide recommendations to ensure your site(s) adhere to local and international SEO best practices. Success depends on using the appropriate hreflang, meta language tags, geolocation settings, etc.
Local Audience Intent Research
You must comprehend the market you intend to appeal to. You must understand what people discuss, what matters to them, and how they act online. Simply translating keyword research done for the UK market is insufficient.
International Site Structure
Distinct ccTLD? Subfolders? Subdomains? Do you plan to use the same language in several places as well as different languages? What role does your global content play on your present website? Depending on your business and target customers, we determine the optimal options.
Competitor Analysis
Any SEO strategy must include a thorough understanding of the competition, which can help you better understand the local market you wish to target. They, who? How and what do they offer? What search terms do they aim for? What kind of content is effective for them?
Content Transcreation
Your material must seem regional and locally created. Its tone of voice and visuals must be relatable to each audience and place where your company is attempting to do business. Speaking to your audience with a natural agent that is informal, culturally acceptable, and on-brand will boost your effectiveness.
On page Optimisation
Based on our local research, we provide recommendations on the keywords you should target and use in your metadata, the types of content you should write, and the formats that are most effective for your target audience in your area.
Link Acquisition
Due to linguistic challenges, cultural disparities, and disparate business practices, creating links for many nations is challenging. The success of any international SEO campaign, however, depends on this. Thus we leverage our local knowledge to offer a tailored approach for each of your target areas.
Monitoring your Performance
Localising your website, product, and content is the first step in developing an international SEO strategy. International SEO is a crucial component of your localisation plan if you want to increase website traffic, lead generation, and sales from overseas markets.
It requires investment in your technical infrastructure and a high-quality translation that considers cultural nuances and global keyword research to optimise your local language content for search engines in different languages.
Are you eager to implement international SEO efforts to localise your content for your target country? To try iMarketing’s SEO Malaysia campaign, contact us to schedule a free consultation now.