Many marketing managers will ask themselves how to perform international SEO in order to achieve the same successful results for a foreign market. Optimising a foreign website isn’t as simple as bunging in a direct translation of your original target keywords and saying a prayer.
So as experts in professional translation and language translation services, we have created a handy guide to help you master the art of international SEO.
Making changes on your business website
Perhaps you’re naturally expanding having identified that a large share of your website traffic is from a specific foreign country. Or maybe you’re actively seeking out a new market.
Either way, if you’re planning on targeting this new market seriously, it’s worth thinking about how you plan to tackle SEO from an international perspective and integrating your decisions here in to your design and development.
Everything should be orientated to offering your new audience the best experience when they visit your website. This includes an adapted user journey and relevant calls to action to improve engagement, conversions and sales.
You may even decide that building a completely separate international site for your brand could be a better approach to achieving better international SEO results.
If a new international website is an avenue that you wish to explore, there are some key steps that you will need to follow to achieve this.
Country targeting
Outline the particular country and region you wish to focus on and acquire the domain name. You may even have to change this strategy to fit what’s available or adapt your brand entirely, especially if your brand name contains your product or service.
Language targeting
Outline the language which the content of your international website will need to be written in. This often isn’t straightforward as language and country lines blur. Stay aware of the specific pages that you wish to focus on and the demographics within the country you’re targeting. Perhaps start small and focused based on the market opportunity and make sure you understand the route to market clearly. Every geography can be unexpectedly different. We’ve recently worked for construction clients in the UK and Germany and the entire specification and architectural route to market for residential housing is completely dissimilar. So you may need to create new content to factor in this new audience.
Areas of your business you wish to rank for
Once you’ve outlined the keywords and content topics that will need to be published for you to rank, you should contact a professional language translation services provider, in order to ensure that the content is effectively translated without any grammatical or cultural errors.
Learn the best practices for international SEO
This might sound obvious but it makes absolute sense that in order to achieve success with an international SEO strategy, you will need to understand the basics and best practices of making this happen. From URL structures to content, there is a lot that you will need to get your head around before you begin.
The key takeaway for international SEO is that you shouldn’t take it for granted that you can simply copy and paste the design and content from your main website to your international one.
Equally, don’t make the mistake of directly translating your keywords because this won’t work well for other languages. Keyword research should be at the top of your list for international SEO but think about it from the target language and audience’s perspective rather than a direct copy from your UK target keywords.
You will also benefit greatly from checking that your international website is hosted on a local IP address and is linking to local, relevant content. Take steps to build links from local resources and continually evaluate the SEO results every few months.
International URL structures
Good website developers will ensure that your new international website will have targeted the specific country your business is looking to market to. The key is to include the right URL structure.
We’ve found it best to use both an experienced marketer and a developer simultaneously as this is both a commercial and technical challenge. Don’t just rely on a developer to know what’s best for your business. You will also need to understand the impact of which avenue you choose to go down and any potential restrictions that could come from them.
You may decide you want a completely separate website for your international customers to use, buying a completely different domain name will be the way forward, such as .fr for France or .de for Germany.
Nailing your content – international style
One of the major things that you will need to do in order to ensure SEO success for your international website is to take the time to tailor the content that will appear on the website. Make sure it is engaging and enjoyable to read as this will lead to higher conversion rates and sales.
When you are writing content for your international customers, you will need to pay close attention to the time-zones, currency, and contact information of your international headquarters. This is crucial for SEO and for customer service and user experience.
Remember also to take care with cultural sensitivities at the website design stage. There will be cultural nuances and associations with particular colours, etymologies and sense of humour. From a technical perspective there are considerations for hosting, content delivery networks (and therefore site speed from a location,) webpage layouts (due to device usage) and much more – all of which Google takes into account.
Bubbles offers professional language translation services to businesses wishing to target an international audience. Contact us today to find out how we can help you!
