How to Start With International SEO and in What Language
As a business, having a website is crucial these days, however, your online marketing efforts may be useless if you don’t keep track of your results. If you go through the analytics of your website and notice that you are having regular visitors from countries that do not speak the language your website is published in, you should start thinking about geo-targeting (International SEO).
International SEO – what is it and how to do it
This implies that the content of your website should be localized to the target area including their time zone and correct currency. For countries like the UK and US that both speak English, you will have to use their own currencies, as well as their timing. Shipping to other continents or countries could be costly. When your site is localized to the specific market, it will be easier for those customers to understand all your terms and conditions and prices before making a purchase.
You can start your multilingual SEO in order to target different groups of people by using sub-directories for the different areas and languages. This will make it easier for search engines and visitors to locate the correct version of your website.
Best Practices for SEO
To aid search engines and visitors to know what language and country you are covering, these hints will be helpful.
Content Localization
Ensure you give information that suit the audience you are targeting. When you use their time zone, currency and language alongside phone numbers and addresses for the different areas, search engines and visitors will understand that you have a local establishment in the area and will trust they can do business with you.
Use their language
You should design the navigation of your website so that you use your targeted region’s primary language.
Do not use translation software and don’t use the location of the individual to automatically redirect them to the translated version of your site. Instead, use flags on your main version of your website to indicate that your visitors can read it in their language if they want to.
Use language meta tags or hreflang to indicate to search engines that your website is available in other languages.
Research
You should begin your process for international SEO by first validating the international market’s potential.
You should first know the conversion rates, traffic conversions and visibility for international organic search. Answering the following questions will be a good start.
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- What languages and countries are offering traffic and visibility for organic search?
- What is the trend and volume over time for traffic and visibility coming from organic search for every language and country?
- What pages and keywords attracted the search traffic and visibility for the main international markets that were identified?
- What is the conversion rate and CTR from organic search for every of the main international markets?
- What is the trend and volume of conversion for every of the international markets?
Target Languages or Countries?
Should your aim be by language or by group? Countries seem to be more favorable with Google.
If you visit Google Webmaster Tools, Site Configuration and then Settings, it is possible to assign a target geographically. It is possible to have sub-folders under the Google Webmaster Tools, so that different sub-folders have different targets geographically. Different sub-domains will however be required in order to achieve that. If sub-domains are not available for you, just make sure you don’t set a target country for your website, but let Google find your language tags and show specific content to specific visitors.
The benefits
There are numerous ways international SEO may profit your business. Visibility and leads are obvious effects, but below is a list of other benefits as well. We suggest the following benefits for your business as a result of international SEO.
- Boost your website’s global profile.
- Increase your website’s visibility by expanding the number of visitors.
- Increase sales of your products or services.
- Track and maintain your website’s decisions by using analytics to define how successful you are in getting search engine users.
- Determine your return on investment (ROI) from the SEO way.
- Improve your website’s speed and download time.
- Increase website traffic with targeted visitors that can grow your site’s conversion rates.
- Optimize your site for all browsers, so your site will be observed by the number of visitors.
- Connect you with target viewers around the globe.
- Measure the effectiveness of your content in drawing and growing the users through your sales funnel.
Just translating your website and localizing it to a specific market is not enough. Getting international SEO done will ensure the search engines will give you the traffic that you deserve, for free.
