Positioning a website in different countries and languages requires specific actions for each market. You have to know the particularities of each client and offer them a good browsing experience. At Posicionamiento Web Salamanca we bring you the keys to applying an international SEO strategy to increase your visibility in different markets.
Are you ready to reach new markets?
Developing an international SEO positioning strategy is possible. But it differs in certain aspects from traditional SEO. If you have a website in Spain and want to expand it to other places such as Portugal, the United Kingdom or Italy, you must differentiate a strategy for each one.
Digital internationalization requires efforts and resources that not all businesses have. Therefore, the first thing to evaluate is whether your business is ready to take that step. To find out, ask yourself these questions about your website:
Do you have significant traffic volume from other countries?
From which countries does this traffic come?
Have any of your keywords ranked in other countries?
If you don't have relevant demand from other latitudes, it's best to cameroon telegram data continue working on the positioning of your current website. However, if there is an opportunity in another market, start evaluating the resources you have and what you need to internationalize a website.
There are certain aspects to take into account, such as the size of the new audience, which products or services will be prioritized, whether the website requires any design changes, the language of the new market, and which search engines they use the most. All of this information will help you shape your SEO strategy.
Focus on the language or the country?
Depending on the type of project, the objectives you have set and the characteristics of the new audience, you will have to choose between focusing on the country or the language. This will be -along with a good marketing study- one of the first steps of the international SEO campaign .
And this is a fundamental stage, because the type of domain and the architecture that the site will have will depend on the decision. In other words, it will justify the need to manage one or multiple sites.
When to focus on the country?
Let's say you have a broad target audience in the country you want to reach. Or you need to implement a different category system than in other regions. In this case, you'd want to focus on the country. The same is true if location is a key factor in achieving your goals or if you're going to have a physical location in the country.
When to focus on language?
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If you don't have to make significant adjustments to your website to adapt it to the customs and behaviors of different regions, then you can prioritize language if the location of your business is not a limitation to achieving your goals.
To illustrate the case, let's suppose that you own a sportswear store in Spain and you want to open a branch of your store in Italy. Your business analysis indicates that this market is optimal and can bring you good profits. If this is the case, localization is key, so you need a website specific to this country.
But if you own a hotel and want to attract Latin American and Asian visitors, you don't have to have a website for each of them. It will be enough to create several versions of the main site, translated and optimized for the target audience.
Don't replicate the SEO strategy
To achieve good search engine positioning in different parts of the world, you have to understand that each audience behaves differently. Therefore, what works in one country may not necessarily give the same results in another.
It is essential to study each audience separately. Know which search engines they use, which are the most popular terms in your sector in each country, etc. Do not do a literal translation of the entire website or assume that the only search engine used is Google. Doing that would be too easy and would not give good results to your business.
Keys to developing an international SEO strategy
The following checklist will help you to create an effective international SEO optimization strategy .
Define the domain and web architecture
By deciding whether you're going to focus on country or language, you'll know what type of domain you need and what the website architecture will look like. That is, if local SEO is a priority for your business, it's a good idea to have a website for each country:
www.example.es
www.example.it.
www.example.co.uk
You can also create subdirectories by country:
www.example.com/uk
www.example.com/au
However, if you decide to manage all the versions from the main website, you have other alternatives. The first is to use subdirectories by language:
www.example.com/es
www.example.com/it
www.example.com/en
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Or you can create subdomains by language:
es.example.com
it.example.com
en.example.com
Keyword analysis by language or country
One of the most common mistakes in international SEO is translating keywords literally. The way users search in different regions is not the same, so keywords also vary.
A keyword analysis should be done for each country to identify search trends. Consult with a translator who knows the language well to identify relevant terms or equivalents to your keywords.