What is International SEO and How to Improve the Position of your Web?
Do you need to obtain greater Online visibility with your Brand in countries other than yours? Then you need to work on International SEO!
I will talk to you about this interesting topic today, since there are times when we grow so much within our country that expanding into new horizons is necessary to scale our business to the next level.
It is then when, in addition to understanding what SEO is and how to apply it in your current project, we must know other aspects, many in common with the techniques that you already apply and others additional and/or extrapolated to the desired expansion, let’s see them!
What is International SEO?
International SEO is the process of optimizing the organic positioning of a website or a blog, so that search engines identify which countries you want to reach (in which ones you should rank) or which languages are used in the business.
These types of techniques rely heavily on geolocation, where instead of optimizing the site to attract Web traffic from the city of origin, state, or country, it is optimizing for different countries and different languages.
There are two fundamental parts to consider when doing International SEO:
» Content Marketing with International SEO
When creating a content strategy adapted to your objectives and the needs of your client, you must first define who the potential client is, and more specifically your Buyer Persona, which we already talked about earlier in this Blog.
After having a clear initial X-ray of who the person who will ideally buy you is, we have to scan the market. That is, analyze the competition and carefully analyze what other companies that do the same thing as you are doing.
From there, in terms of content marketing, you must carry out an international search for keywords or Keywords and create content based on everything that meets the needs of that Buyer Person that you detected before.
And, if you want to go further, I recommend that, more than keywords, you target all your content to their search intentions, which is the concept that the search engine is tending to satisfy, by becoming more and more “intelligent”. » with the passage of time and the improvement of its algorithm.
» Make decisions on the main technical aspects
Choosing the correct structure for the site based on the location of the server and the correct implementation of Hreflang.
If you want to focus your force on a group of countries that share the same language, you have to opt for an approach based on language selection.
However, if you want your content to target a specific audience or country, it is better to choose country targeting.
What Objectives should I Contemplate when Working on my International SEO?
If we are going to promote this type of positioning strategies, it is clear that we must be clear about our goals.
Therefore, you should focus on these objectives to start:
1) By language
We are dealing with the case in which a company offers a product and wants to give it visibility in another country whose language is different from that of origin (or mother tongue).
If the product or service is sold, International SEO will not care about the country you want to reach.
It cares more about the language spoken in the business or company, and even more so about the language spoken by the people who are searching Google for products that align with the ones that business sells.
2) By country
A company wants to reach another country with another type of product.
In this type of case, the products can be differentiated, but you have to focus on the country to which you want to expand, since the inhabitants of one area do not have to be looking for the same ones as those of another.
3) Hybrid
This case occurs when the need to speak another language in another country is mixed.
Countries are often directly associated with their official language. For example, when you think of Argentina, it’s obviously Spanish.
However, there are many countries that, despite having an official language, have part of their communities that prefer to use another type of language on the Internet, as is the case of Catalonia and English(Catalan/Castilian).
Another example could be Belgium, with French and “Flemish”.
Therefore, as a company, the first thing to determine for the expansion process is whether to associate a language with a country or both.
When this is clear, you will know what the business needs to do.
What are the main International SEO Factors to Apply to your Website?
If you have an online business, you are a freelance consultant or you work in an SEO agency, these are the elements to take into account when establishing international positioning in a digital strategy:
» Ahreflang directive
In order to help the robots to know the language and country for which a certain page wants to position, the link tag with the hreflang attribute will be used.
This label must be placed in the header of each page and must be made one for each alternative to the corresponding page.
» IP geolocation
It is important to know that search engines and their robots are capable of knowing to which country the servers belong by IP and this is one of the factors that affect the positioning of a business for a certain country.
» Root domain extension
The domain extension indicates the search engines where you want to position or, at least, where we “prefer” to position our project.
If the domain is.es, it will indicate that you want to position yourself.
The domain will have to be.com,.net,,info,.org, if you want to be global. The truth is that this, despite not being 100% certain, is what is said to have the greatest effect in terms of international positioning.
» Links or backlinks
Search engines use backlinks or external links, among other indicators, to know in which country and language to position the Web.
It is important that, when it comes to improving your SEO internationally, you have a good plan to get links on pages that are positioned in the countries where you want to rank.
» Page language
The main search engines crawling a page are able to know the language of the same.
Therefore, do not make the mistake of having your content written, for example, every week in a different language…
Conclusion
If you had thought that it is the best time to expand your online business and scale it to horizons beyond your country, working on International SEO should be one of the actions to be implemented with your team.
As you have seen, it is not entirely complicated. All you have to do is follow these steps and train your team properly for it.