SEO for international startups: the definitive guide
Posted: Sun Dec 22, 2024 7:03 am
What is international SEO for a startup?
We can define international SEO as the process of optimizing a website so that search engines can easily identify the target languages and/or countries you want to reach.
Good international SEO management is very important for any company, but it is key for startups, as they need to grow very quickly and achieve good positioning on Google in several countries at once.
This can become one of your biggest levers for growth, in the way that any startup yearns for: cheaply, quickly and scalably.
The first piece of advice for any startup that wants to go international would be to ask themselves: will you really be able to offer your products/services in certain countries?
It is not the same if a startup offers purely online services or code phone number philippines if it is an e-commerce that sells fresh food products.
What matters here is not so much what the company is selling now or where its current traffic comes from, but rather its expansion plans, acting with common sense since the presence of real barriers (legal, cultural or logistical) can be an obstacle to accessing certain markets, no matter how interesting they may be.
In this sense, the first decision to be made regarding international SEO configuration will have a clear impact on the future growth of the startup, since any subsequent correction will cost time and money and will be a burden on the growth of the startup.
Country targeting vs language targeting: how to choose
The most important moment prior to any SEO implementation is to choose whether we want a Country Targeting approach or a Language Targeting approach.
Among the many questions that a startup has to ask itself and that can help define which solution to use, we can highlight these:
Do I have to physically deliver my products?
Are there (or could there be) legal restrictions on my operations in certain countries?
Will I be able to provide customer support in different languages?
Can I take the currency risk when the countries where I want to sell my products have different currencies?
Do I have resources on my team capable of localizing my website content to the needs of each country?
We can define international SEO as the process of optimizing a website so that search engines can easily identify the target languages and/or countries you want to reach.
Good international SEO management is very important for any company, but it is key for startups, as they need to grow very quickly and achieve good positioning on Google in several countries at once.
This can become one of your biggest levers for growth, in the way that any startup yearns for: cheaply, quickly and scalably.
The first piece of advice for any startup that wants to go international would be to ask themselves: will you really be able to offer your products/services in certain countries?
It is not the same if a startup offers purely online services or code phone number philippines if it is an e-commerce that sells fresh food products.
What matters here is not so much what the company is selling now or where its current traffic comes from, but rather its expansion plans, acting with common sense since the presence of real barriers (legal, cultural or logistical) can be an obstacle to accessing certain markets, no matter how interesting they may be.
In this sense, the first decision to be made regarding international SEO configuration will have a clear impact on the future growth of the startup, since any subsequent correction will cost time and money and will be a burden on the growth of the startup.
Country targeting vs language targeting: how to choose
The most important moment prior to any SEO implementation is to choose whether we want a Country Targeting approach or a Language Targeting approach.
Among the many questions that a startup has to ask itself and that can help define which solution to use, we can highlight these:
Do I have to physically deliver my products?
Are there (or could there be) legal restrictions on my operations in certain countries?
Will I be able to provide customer support in different languages?
Can I take the currency risk when the countries where I want to sell my products have different currencies?
Do I have resources on my team capable of localizing my website content to the needs of each country?