A Quick Reference Guide to International SEO

For many businesses, having a global website is one of the most effective ways to reach a larger audience and grow their business.

As more quick and simple website design services become available, anyone can start a business by targeting foreign countries through a global website.

The problem is that having a global website does not guarantee success in other countries.

Furthermore, adhering to standard SEO best practices will not make your global website competitive in all target countries. While there appears to be an abundance of information about international SEO available, many of it is either outdated or incorrect.

In this post, I’ll go over some of the most important aspects of international SEO.

What Is the Distinction Between International and Regular SEO?

Because search engine algorithms are very similar, if not identical, from country to country, standard SEO best practices are unquestionably the foundation of international SEO.

International SEO, in my opinion, is based on standard SEO knowledge and skills.

So, what distinguishes international SEO? The primary reasons are as follows:

Languages.
Multiple websites.
Popular search engines.
Local audience.
Local competitors.

When you have global websites, you must keep an eye on overall performance while paying attention to each site. Otherwise, your local market websites may compete with one another or, in the worst-case scenario, may not be indexed at all.

For example, if you have a separate site designed for Spain, your website designed for Mexico should not outrank or appear in the search results in Spain.

Certain sites may not be indexed by search engines if the hreflang or canonical tags are misused, resulting in duplicate indexing.

Should I Expand My Horizons? And where is my target market?

Before diving into international SEO, it’s always a good idea to look over some market reports, stats, and even your own website data to help you make a decision.

This is especially important if you are unsure about the opportunities in different countries or need to persuade your bosses.

Here are some information sources to help you decide or prioritize which countries/markets to pursue:

Websites run by governments and trade organizations, such as Trade.gov and WTO.org, provide the most recent international business and trade news and statistics.
Many companies, including Internet World Stats, Econsultancy, and McKinsey & Company, provide Internet-related reports and statistics. There are also numerous websites that provide information about specific countries.
Data from your own analytics. Do you notice any visitors from other countries to your website? Is there a country that sends more traffic to your website than others? It’s worthwhile to keep an eye on these markets, especially if any of them are already converting.

Is it better to have a single global site or multiple websites?

If the market is large enough for you to invest in, you should definitely set up a separate website for each target country.

It’s always better to have a dedicated site for each of your target countries, not just for SEO reasons, but also to provide a better user experience to local visitors. It also lets you use different designs and content on each site if necessary.

However, this may not be a viable option for you, at least at first. In that case, you’ll have a site for each language spoken in the countries you’re targeting.

It is acceptable to do so because you may want to test the waters first before diving in too deep.

Fortunately, we can tell Google which language and country each site is designed for by using hreflang tags.

Which Do You Want: a ccTLD or a gTLD?

If you asked me this question in 2008, I would always recommend a ccTLD. The reality is that not everyone has this option for a variety of reasons.

Fortunately, it has less of an impact on your SEO because search engines have come a long way. We now have more options for geotargeting the sites, particularly with Google.

It should be noted that some search engines, such as Baidu, continue to favor websites with local ccTLDs.

Furthermore, people outside the United States prefer to visit websites with local TLDs over those with.com or other generic TLDs.

Is the hosting location important?

One of the important signals for international SEO related to geotargeting was the location of the website host.

However, it is no longer as important because we now have other ways to correctly indicate your website’s target market to search engines and regionally managed CDNs.

Nonetheless, the host location has a significant impact on page speed. Make certain that your website can be quickly accessed in the target countries.

How Should I Approach Alternate Geotargeting?

As site owners transitioned away from ccTLDs and local market hosting, geotargeting may be one of the most basic practices where many websites make mistakes.

Geotargeting your websites and pages can be accomplished in a variety of ways. Here are a few examples of popular methods:

Google Search Console geolocation assignment
Google’s hreflang tag.
Bing language meta tag information.

Note: Regardless of which local version of Google a searcher is using, Google now generates search results based on the searcher’s location.

Even when searching for the same keyword, Google.com used to return different results than Google U.K. (google.co.uk) or Google Australia (google.com.au).

However, unless you conduct the search in three different countries, you will now get the same results in all three Google searches.

Google or No Google?

While Google is by far the most popular search engine in the world, in some countries, locally developed search engines are far more popular than Google.

If your target country is one of the ones listed below, you’ll need to pay close attention to these local sites and perform additional optimization work.

China (Mainland, Simplified Chinese language).
Russia and the countries of Eastern Europe
Korea, South.

Is it Necessary to Be Concerned About Other Search Engines?

While Google is by far the most popular search engine in the world, there are some countries where locally developed search engines are very popular.

By ignoring these search engines, you are passing up enormous business opportunities in those countries.

If your target country is one of the ones listed below, you’ll need to pay close attention to these local sites and perform additional optimization work.

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

Of course, even in countries where Google is the most popular search engine, ignoring other popular search engines such as Bing limits your business’s potential.

Localization and Translation

Your global sites should not be a copy-and-paste version of your home country website in different languages, despite the fact that I see this happen with many websites.

Yes, one of the first steps is to translate and localize website content. Then, from messaging and offerings to the overall user experience of the site, you must optimize the sites for each country’s local audience.

A site with popular and high-performing content in the United States may not perform as well in Asia or South America, necessitating additional content edits and optimization work.

For these reasons, it is critical to conduct keyword research in each target country in order to understand local interests and the words they use.

Remember that, even if the translators or translation agencies provide a correctly translated document, they may not use the same words that people use to search for information.

Is it necessary to create links for each website?

It’s a firm “Yes.”

Even if you have one global site with all country or language sites under the same domain, you should still build links to each site, even if your domain already has a lot of links pointing to it.

It’s because your home country’s website is likely to have links from other websites in the same country.

Links from country-specific to the website are required for your global websites to be competitive in each country.

For example, you might want to gain links from websites in India or from websites that are targeting India to your Indian website. Having links from local websites indicates to search engines that your website is designed for and appropriate for that country.

What Else Should I Think About Before Going Global?

Local resources are one of the most difficult challenges that most companies with global websites, including multinational Fortune 100 corporations, face.

Nobody has the luxury of having unlimited resources in each target country, which can be a major bottleneck, especially since SEO is not a one-time project but requires ongoing efforts.

The key is to plan task and responsibility distribution between headquarters and local offices, such as:

IT and web operations are examples of technical resources.
Language resources: localization and optimization of content
Reporting and identifying SEO opportunities based on website data analysis.

You may not have any offices or representatives in other countries, or you may not have any resources in local offices.

In those cases, you must decide whether to hire single or multiple outside resources.

Conclusion and Key Points

International SEO is built on the foundation of traditional SEO best practices.

Even after translation, an optimized website does not always produce an optimized global website, and there are several key points in both technical and content optimization efforts that must be considered.

Indeed, adding more languages and content increases the amount of work required due to duplicate content and geotargeting issues, as well as link building.

A global website is an excellent way to broaden your market reach, but it also necessitates additional resources and budget to do international SEO properly.

You do not need to target a large number of languages and countries.

Investigate your business opportunities using your own data as well as market reports from reputable sources to determine where you want to appear in search results.