International SEO to acquire new Clients: 9 things to know

Illustration with Google search field and 30 flags of nations

If your goal is to attract new customers from abroad and increase sales of your products or services through digital channels, you may consider setting up an international SEO.

To create a successful website or e-commerce that can compete globally, an effective multilingual SEO strategy is essential.

This not only allows you to reach a wider audience, but also improves the user experience and increases conversions.

In this article you will find a:

Definition of the concept of international SEO;
Distinction between translation and localization of a website;
Mini-guide with the 4 steps you need to follow to get started with international SEO.

International SEO what is it?

To give a definition of international SEO, let us start with that of SEO tout court.

As we have already told many times in our articles, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.

It consists of optimizing a site and its content to be found by users among the top search results and thus bring qualified traffic to the website.

This is a very important asset in any web marketing strategy.

We have talked about this extensively in several articles on the Factory blog, where you can find a number of useful tips to better optimize your website.

International SEO focuses on optimizing websites to improve their visibility in search engines in different countries and languages.

It is critical for companies aiming to expand their presence beyond national borders.

So it will have to intercept user searches in the regions of the world where your company has market, choosing the most suitable trends and keywords.

Effectively managing a global online presence requires a thorough understanding of cultural differences, language preferences and local regulations.

Basic principles of international SEO

Keyword research: Understanding language and cultural differences is essential. Keywords that work in one country may not have the same effect in another. It is essential to tailor keywords to local audiences.
Localized content: Adaptation of content for local audiences is crucial. This includes not only translation, but also cultural adaptation of content.
Technical SEO: Optimizing the site for local search engines is critical. This includes URL management, optimization for local search engines, and implementation of hreflang for languages.

Choosing the Structure of the Site

Site structure plays a crucial role in SEO. The choice between a top-level domain, subdomains, or subdirectories can affect search engine rankings and user experience.

It is important to carefully consider the structure of the site to optimize SEO.

Considerations for site structure:

Top-level domains: They offer a strong brand identity, but can be expensive.
Subdomains: Can be very useful for multilingual sites, but can have indexing problems.
URLS: They should be short and descriptive to enhance the user experience.

Multilingual SEO: Translating site content is not enough

It is not enough to just translate your website content to get keywords that can bring traffic and thus attract new customers.

The concept of translation is different from that of content localization.

Translation is a simple transposition of a text from language A to language B. Localization, on the other hand, takes into account much more complex factors such as:

regional idioms and grammars (e.g., British English vs. U.S. English);
cultural elements such as religious taboos or questions of political history;
research trends in different areas of the world, etc.

Localization requires extra work but is much more effective and goes hand in hand with international SEO strategy.

International SEO positioning in 9 points

To optimize a multilingual e-commerce site for international SEO, it is critical to adopt a set of practices that take into account the linguistic and cultural diversity of the target markets.

Here are some of the best practices to follow:

1. Analyze your company

If you have decided to attract foreign customers to increase your sales, you are probably in the export business or have decided to internationalize your business.

The first thing to do for your international SEO, then, is to analyze whether there are foreign markets already potentially interested in you.

You can retrieve indicative information by analyzing the geographical origin of users visiting your website, coming from organic search.

Are there any countries or regions of the world that are prominent over others? Which pages do foreign users visit most often and which ones do they stay on the longest?

These are all useful elements to understand where you are at and where to start in internationalizing your SEO.

2. Identify international markets

When we talked about localization, we mentioned the cultural elements of different countries.

Along with political, business and climatic elements, a people’s culture is a natural filter for including or excluding that market from your targets.

For example, it makes no sense to try to sell an air conditioner in Alaska, or canned beef in Indian markets.

The first thing to do, then, is to know the target market and respect its customs and traditions.

The second thing to do is to figure out what is trending in your industry and in what area of the world. You can use free tools like Google Trends, which allows you to see trending topics in real time in every area of the world.

It is based on the volume of searches made by users on a given topic in a country.

For example: how much interest is there in Japan for handcrafted leather goods made in Italy? How about in China?

3. The keywords

Now that you know where to go with this, the how remains to be defined. International SEO to attract new customers needs localized keywords for the target market you have identified.

Keyword Analysis: Don’t just translate existing keywords. It is essential to conduct thorough research to identify the most relevant keywords for each target market, taking into account cultural and linguistic differences.
Research Tools: Use tools such as Google Market Finder to identify the most relevant keywords and search trends in target markets.

What you need to do, then, is a search for keywords on which to base your strategy. What will change is not only the language, but also the way the query is executed by users in that market. For this reason, we suggest that you also work on long tail keywords.

Keyword planning tools such as SEMRush allow you to filter your search by country and world region and give you data on traffic volume, opportunities and competition for each keyword.

Not only that, you’ll also get useful pointers on the length of your content to get the most out of it in terms of SEO.

4. Site Structure and URL

Domains and Subdomains
Choose from top-level domains (ccTLDs), subdomains or subfolders according to your business needs. Each option has its pros and cons in terms of SEO and management.

Talking URLs
Ensure that URLs are clear and easily understood, reflecting the target language and region.

5. Localization of Content

Translation and Adaptation
Do not rely on machine translations. It is important that content be translated and culturally adapted by professional native speakers to ensure that it is relevant and culturally appropriate.

Multimedia Content
Images and videos must also be localized to reflect the cultural preferences of the target market.

6. Technical Implementation.

Site Speed
Optimizes site loading speed for different regions, using CDN (Content Delivery Network) if necessary.

Hreflang tags
Use hreflang tags to indicate to search engines each language and target region of each page, avoiding duplicate content problems and improving user experience.

The proper use of hreflang tags is critical to improving the SEO optimization of a multilingual site. Here’s how you can use hreflangs to optimize your site.

The hreflang tag is an HTML attribute used to specify the target language and region of a web page. This helps search engines such as Google show the correct version of a page to users based on their language and geographic location.

Hreflang Why is it Important?

Avoid Duplicate Content: Helps prevent duplicate content problems by indicating to Google that pages in different languages are not copies, but translated and localized versions.
Improve User Experience: Show users the version of the page in their preferred language, improving the browsing experience.
Optimization for Local Search: Helps improve ranking in local search results by making pages more relevant to users in specific regions.

Hreflang Best Practices

Bidirectionality: Make sure that each page linked with hreflang also points to the current page. This means that if page A points to page B, page B must point back to the page.
Consistency: All versions of the page must include hreflang tags for themselves and other versions.
Verification and Monitoring: Use tools such as Google Search Console to monitor and verify the implementation of hreflang tags and resolve any problems.

By properly implementing hreflang tags, you can significantly improve the visibility of your multilingual site in search engines, ensuring that users see the most relevant version of your pages.

7. Off-page SEO.

International Link Building: Build a network of backlinks from authoritative sites in target markets to improve your site’s authority and visibility in search results.
Social Media and PR: Use social media and public relations to increase your brand’s visibility in foreign markets.

8. Monitoring and Analysis

Implementing an international SEO strategy requires a holistic approach that combines technical, cultural, and market knowledge.

By following these practices, you can significantly improve the visibility and effectiveness of your multilingual e-commerce site in global markets.

Google Analytics and Search Console: Use these tools to monitor your site’s performance in different markets, analyze traffic and identify any indexing problems.
Continuous Adaptation: Based on the data you collect, continue to adapt your SEO strategy to meet the needs and behaviors of consumers in your target markets.

9. Data analysis.

The last step in any strategy is measuring the data. For it to be effective, upstream you must have set SMART goals.

Example: increase e-commerce sales to users from Germany, Benelux and France by 15% within 4 months.

How? By attracting users with an international SEO strategy, through publishing localized blog articles in German and French languages.

Having such a specific, measurable, attainable goal with a sustainable timeline, assessing whether or not you have achieved the goal will be immediate.

The KPIs you choose to monitor this outcome are clearly identifiable:

Increased online sales to users in those European regions;
Volume of traffic generated by localized and SEO-optimized content;
Tracking Tdel target user behavior on the website (most visited pages, path to e-commerce, conversion rate, etc.);
Google ranking for each localized keywords.

Do you want to boost your multilingual site’s SEO ranking internationally? Request a free consultation from our international SEO agency.

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