International business owners want their websites to be accessible in all markets. International SEO is essential to make its presence known. International SEO can be complex and is where most companies fail.
Contrary to popular belief international SEO can be beneficial even for small businesses. This is because it opens up new markets and gives a high return on investment. Let’s now learn more about international SEO, and the best practices.
What is the international reference?
International SEO does not mean launching websites with new content or running hreflangs. International SEO is mainly concerned with geo-targeting. This includes optimizing and organizing your website according to the region. Allow search engines to identify the countries and languages of each user your business is targeting in a particular location.
International SEO Best Practices
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The URL structure for international websites
The key concept is that your domain must be accurate for international SEO purposes. When choosing a domain for international SEO, there are a few things you need to keep in mind. Domains, such as the country-code top level domain (ccTLD), can be applied to a specific area.
For example, – www.example.fr & www.example.co.uk
Top Level Domains (TLDs), are used to geo-target specific countries. Geo-targeting can also be done with subdomains and folders of ccTLD domains.
For example of subdomain – https://fr.example.com. It uses a generic TLD and a subdomain that is specific to the country.
For example of subdirectories – https://www.example.com/fr & https://www.example.com/fr-ch
If you are targeting territories where multiple languages are spoken, a structure including both country and language subdirectories is required.
HrefLang is a search engine that sends relevant content to multilingual websites. This is a benefit for sites with similar content in multiple language versions. HrefLang Tags allow you to cross pages that have similar content for different audiences.A website.
For example, – (I’m the US version. Please index me in the US.
For example, (I am an Arabic version and would love to be indexed in UAE.
There are three ways you can implement the hreflang property:
- HTML tags
- HTTP headers
- Sitemaps
The default tag is a default site version that you can use to serve people if the language or localization tag does not match any of the others. No page is better. There is a US and UK version of the site. If someone searches for similar terms in Australia, you default to the US version and change the X to a preferred.
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Meta-content language tags
This tag may include the country and indicate the language in which HTML content is written. This information indicates to search engines which audience this page is intended.
For example, –
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International Keyword Research
Do not use literal translations, even if they are accurate or pertinent. Analyze the keywords used by your competitors in these countries. The following tools can be used to help you do this: SEMRush Tool This is great because you can find the approximate keyword search volume, the competitor ranking, and AdWords advertising costs for the target country.
You will need to install Google Analytics for each property in order to measure your SEO success. Both tools can be used to identify potential indexing or technical issues.
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Establishment of international links
It is important to build links, especially for websites that have ccTLDs or subdomains.
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- Look for websites that are relevant to your market. Also, look at the websites of your competitors. Analyze the content people create for outreach to help you identify potential placements. This will help you understand your target market’s cultural factors.
- You should adapt your content to the culture and language of the target audience. Your audience will be interested in engaging and optimized content about your products, services, long-tail searches, industry-related topics, and other relevant topics. This will help you get links.
There is a difference between regular SEO services and international SEO services.
International SEO starts with localizing website content. Your global page shouldn’t be identical to your country’s. Optimizing your website for a specific country’s audience will improve the user experience. If your website performance is poor, it may not rank well or be listed at all. Each country must have its own approach to international SEO.
An example will show that a website created for India should not be ranked in Mexico SERP if it has a separate site for Mexico. Incorrect use of hreflang and canonical tags will cause sites to not be indexed or duplicate indexing.
To note – The currently available information is: Google Ranking Factors These have evolved. The search engine used to rank the search results is irrelevant. Google.com, google.co.uk and google.com.au previously showed multiple search results for the same keywords. If you search in three different countries, you may see identical results for all three Google searches.