Getting Started In International SEO: A Quick Reference Guide via @sejournal, @motokohunt

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In today’s interconnected digital world, international SEO is no longer optional for businesses with global ambitions – it is essential.

The potential to reach diverse markets and accelerate growth through optimized online presence in different countries is significant.

But simply having a global website isn’t enough. To succeed internationally, your website must be competitive in each local market.

This guide provides an updated overview of the key considerations when embarking on an international SEO strategy.

The Difference Between International And Standard SEO

Fundamentally, SEO for a new market is the same as SEO for your home market, but unique complexities arise when expanding into global markets. These include:

Language Variations: Each market speaks its own language – sometimes quite literally. Proper localization and cultural nuances are critical to engaging the local consumer.
Multiple Websites: Due to legal, cultural, or engagement requirements, you may need distinct websites or sections for different countries.
Local Search Engines: Google dominates globally, but regional search engines like Baidu (China), Yandex (Russia), and Naver (South Korea) also play critical roles in certain markets.
Local Competitors & Audience: Your local competition is just as fierce as your global competition. Understanding user preferences in each market is key to gaining traction.
Cross-Market Competition: While you pay attention to each site, you must keep an eye on the overall performance when you have global websites. Otherwise, your local market websites may be competing against each other or, in the worst case, may not be indexed at all.

Failing to account for these differences can result in costly mistakes.

For example, your Mexico-targeted site outranks your Spain-focused site, or worse, your site does not appear in local searches at all due to technical missteps with hreflang or canonical tags.

Selecting linguistically correct phrases over a more popular phrase may result in significant missed opportunities.

Should You Go Global? Evaluating Market Opportunity

Before committing to international SEO, it’s essential to identify the right markets from not only a search demand perspective but also for ease of doing business, tariffs, and internet adoption. Key resources to guide this decision include:

Government and Trade Data: Websites like Trade.gov or WTO.org provide critical market and trade information.
Global Internet Usage Reports: Leverage data from McKinsey, eMarketer, or Internet World Stats to assess online penetration and growth trends in various regions.
Your Existing Website Analytics: Pay attention to organic traffic from foreign markets. If certain countries are already driving traffic and conversions, these should be prioritized.
Google Search Console: It is a rich source of opportunity identification using the performance report to identify target countries especially those where Google has translated your SERP snippet and page into the local language.

By leveraging both external reports and your internal data, you can make informed decisions on where your global SEO investments will drive the most growth.

Global Strategy: One Website Or Multiple Websites?

When the market potential, business structure, or cultural nuance justifies it, separate websites for each country offer clear advantages.

These include the ability to tailor design, content, merchandising, and SEO specifically for each market.

However, building and maintaining multiple sites is resource-intensive, and not always feasible initially.

For companies testing new markets, a multilingual site using a language-only approach and hreflang tags to specify the target languages and countries is often a good starting point.

As market presence grows, the transition to country-specific websites becomes more beneficial for both SEO and user experience.

What Domain Should You Have: ccTLD Or gTLD?

A decade ago, local domains (ccTLDs) were essential for international SEO success.

Today, while they remain important, especially in markets like China or Russia, global top-level domains (gTLDs) can also be effectively optimized, reducing your management costs.

Using hreflang enables effective geotargeting, making the domain choice more flexible.

However, consider user behavior. Local ccTLDs are still often preferred in certain regions, so understanding local consumer preferences is crucial.

Note that some of the search engines, such as Baidu, still favor websites with local ccTLD.

Also, people outside the U.S. tend to click websites with local TLD over sites with .com or other generic TLDs especially of the ccTLD is used in offline advertising.

Note that if you have a multilingual or multinational site, just having a ccTLD will not make the entire site target the country to which the ccTLD is assigned.

Does Hosting Location Matter?

Historically, hosting was an additional geotargeting signal to search engines, especially when using a dot-com domain.

But even though hosting location has become less critical for geotargeting, it still impacts site performance, particularly page load times in international markets.

Implementing a Content Delivery Network (CDN) can help ensure fast access in and across geographies.

It is recommended that you periodically test your website simulating both mobile and location connection speeds to ensure you are providing a fast and positive experience for your visitors.

Beyond hosting, proper geotargeting techniques, such as using hreflang tags for Google and language meta tags for Bing, are essential.

In addition, tools like Google Search Console allow you to assign each website a specific geographic target, which is a key factor in search engine optimization.

How Should I Go About Alternative Geotargeting?

As site owners moved away from ccTLDs to gTLDs and local hosts to CDNs, and Google sunset its GSC geotargeting feature, strong geotargeting signals were lost, making it critical to leverage other techniques, such as using hreflang tags for Google and language meta tags for Bing.

It is also essential to ensure, where possible, to add local market nuances with language, location, and currency into the pages.

Leveraging schema markup with the business location details contributes to pages appearing more local.

Optimizing For Non-Google Search Engines

While Google is by far the most used search engine worldwide, locally grown search engines are very popular in some countries.

These search engines hold the majority of market share in key markets:

China (Mainland, Simplified Chinese language) – Baidu.
Russia and Eastern European Countries – Yandex.
South Korea – Naver.

Failing to optimize for these search engines means missing out on significant opportunities in those markets.

Local search engines often require additional technical SEO work, such as governmental site verification, adherence to specific algorithms, or minimizing JavaScript to rank effectively.

Of course, even in the countries where Google is most popular, ignoring other popular search engines, including Bing, limits your business potential.

Translation And Localization: More Than Just Words

Merely translating content from your home market won’t resonate with international audiences.

Beyond accurate translation, effective localization for each country’s local audience considers cultural nuances, local consumer behavior, and regional search trends to ensure optimal user experience of the site.

Keyword research in each target country is vital. Even professionally translated content can fail to capture the actual terms that local users search for.

Keep in mind that although the translators or the translation agencies provide a correctly translated document, they may not use the same words that people use to search for the information.

Collaborating with native speakers or regionally knowledgeable agencies ensures your messaging resonates locally.

Cultural Sensitivity And Seasonal Variations

When creating multinational websites, understanding and respecting cultural sensitivities is critical to building trust and engagement with your target audience.

Each market has its own values, customs, and expectations, which must be reflected in the website’s design, content, and messaging.

For instance, colors, symbols, and images that are acceptable in one market may carry negative connotations in another.

Beyond language, elements like navigation structure, user interface preferences, mobile friendliness, and the tone of communication (formal vs. informal) should be tailored to align with local cultural expectations.

Seasonal nuances also play a significant role in multinational website content and campaigns. Countries celebrate different holidays, and even those that share similar holidays may observe them in different ways or on different dates.

Ecommerce websites, for example, need to adjust promotions, product offerings, and delivery timelines to match local holiday seasons.

Additionally, awareness of regional weather patterns, festivals, and events can help align marketing campaigns with local buying behaviors and seasonal demands, enhancing relevance and effectiveness across different markets.

Do I Need To Build Links For Each Website?

It’s a hard “Yes.” Even when you have one global site with all country or language sites under the same domain, you still want to build links to each site even when you already have lots of links pointing to your domain.

Links are critical for SEO, and each website you operate in a foreign market will need links from that market to build its own local authority.

This means building links from local and regional sites, rather than relying solely on global links to your main domain.

For example, you want to gain links from websites in India or targeting India to your Indian website. These local links help search engines recognize your website’s suitability and relevance in the target market, and will boost its competitive positioning.

What Else Should I Consider Before I Go Global?

International SEO is an ongoing investment that requires not just budget but dedicated resources.

Even multinational Fortune 100 companies frequently underestimate the need for local expertise in SEO, content creation, and technical maintenance.

No one has the luxury of having unlimited resources in each target country. This can become a major bottleneck, especially since SEO is not a “one-off” project but requires continued efforts and collaboration across multiple teams and stakeholders.

Successful international SEO strategies allocate responsibilities between headquarters and local offices, ensuring that global goals are aligned with local execution.

If you lack in-country resources, you may need to partner with external agencies specializing in SEO and localization for international markets.

How Can AI Help Global Site SEO?

While not a replacement for your SEO or localization teams, many companies are looking at AI to efficiently scale their SEO strategies, reducing manual effort while streamlining and enhancing the accuracy and relevance of their content for international markets.

AI tools can complement your team and enhance localization and translation workflows by offering initial drafts of localized content to be refined by human editors who can adjust for nuance and tone.

AI’s ability to analyze large amounts of data quickly and provide actionable insights across markets helps businesses fine-tune their SEO efforts to improve rankings and visibility in local search engines.

This can be very helpful in markets with limited resources, freeing up team members to focus on actions that require human interaction.

Conclusion: Strategic Expansion Requires Focus

A global website and international SEO are great ways to expand your market reach, but they also require extra resources and budget to ensure success.

International SEO can open significant growth opportunities, but it requires a thoughtful, precise approach.

Research markets carefully, start small if necessary, and ensure you have the resources in place to scale effectively.

By focusing on local user experience, maintaining technical SEO best practices, and building local authority, your company can achieve a strong, sustainable global presence.

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