Many standard SEO best practices are usually associated with English websites because most Google users search in English. However, let’s not forget that the rest of the world also browses the internet, in various languages. And they may not necessarily use Google.
Whether you are a global company operating in many countries or just a blogger interested in creating content in multiple languages, there is certainly a lot to gain from going international with your SEO.
In addition to that, your target country can have more than one official language, which means people from the same geographical area usually perform online searches in different languages.
What is international SEO?
International SEO means adapting your website’s structure and language to improve its visibility for multiple languages and countries. This usually includes additional changes made to the website to help search engines better understand which pages are built for a specific country or language.
How does international SEO work?
International SEO is primarily focused on providing search engines with information about the target language or country of a page. This is usually achieved through Technical (hreflang tags & URL structure) and On-Page SEO (accurate translation of content & conducting local keyword research).
Essentially, international SEO just requires you to have pages targeting different countries and/or languages coexist on your website, thus bringing in processes you would normally ignore on a single-language website.
Why is international SEO important?
As mentioned above, the search industry is also huge beyond the English language. If your business doesn’t solely depend on one country or language, chances are that there is a lot of untapped demand that you could be benefiting from. Moreover, if you are regularly producing content in English and getting traffic, why not multiply your visitors by translating and optimizing that content for different audiences?
In addition to that, some of your competitors may already successfully be doing international SEO. In that case, you could be at a significant disadvantage both in terms of your website’s reach and its authority.
In short, if your website is expandable to target audiences from other countries and languages, you should definitely consider implementing international SEO.
The difference between international SEO and local SEO
Local SEO is directed towards increasing the visibility of a site for searchers in a certain city or country. On the other hand, the purpose of international SEO is to optimize your website to target multiple countries and languages in one site. You absolutely can practice both of them, like Ibra Media does in English and Azerbaijani markets since international SEO can include local optimization of multiple pages.
Also, as mentioned above, some countries have the majority of people speaking more than one language, which may necessitate the optimization of a local SEO campaign for multiple languages.
International SEO best practices
So, let’s get into the best tips to implement international SEO. Note that your general SEO strategy should not consist of only these processes. We will only cover what you would have to be doing differently than the normal SEO in case you went international.
-
Know the difference between countries and languages
It is important to determine whether you are going to target a new audience based on language or country. This would primarily depend on the type of your business. If your business is an info product or a blog, you should target based on language.
However, if you sell physical products or have physical locations people would need to visit, country targeting is the right choice. The reason is that, for example, the French-speaking searchers might be in France or Canada – which wouldn’t matter much if they were buying or consuming a digital product.
-
Know the search industry in your target countries
While Google still holds the biggest share of the global search engine market, the competition is different in some countries. For instance, in Russia, Yandex is more popular than Google, while in China, Baidu dominates the search engine market.
Luckily, your website absolutely can appear in multiple search engines. You just have to ensure that your website is crawlable, indexable, and understandable by them.
-
Conduct keyword research for international SEO
The search demand, that is, the search volume of online queries usually significantly varies across different languages and countries. Some foreign equivalents of popular English keywords might have no search volume at all. It is important to correctly plan the pages and content that you are going to create in order to properly allocate resources and SEO budget. This way you can also avoid producing lots of articles that nobody would read anyways.
-
Localize the content
Make sure that the content is translated correctly into the target language, sounds natural, and fits the culture. Online translators or ChatGPT often make mistakes in translating text, where important details can be misinterpreted by the readers. It is a good idea to hire translators whose native language is your target one for SEO.
-
Set up the right URL structure
Publishing multiple versions of almost every page on your website can soon turn into a mess. Therefore, it is important to organize your content to make it easier to understand for search engines, as well as provide a good user experience for users.
To start with, you should come up with a URL structure for your website. Most people doing international or multilingual SEO prefer structures like [example.com/es/post-name/] or [example.com/us/post-name]. The ‘es’ part of the first URL indicates a subfolder with all the Spanish content, while ‘us’ in the second URL means the United States. The English version of the same page, for example, would be [example.com/en/post-name/]. You can also specify the country and the language in the URL at the same time (example.com/en-uk/post-name).
-
Set up hreflang tags
Hreflang is an HTML meta tag that connects two or more pages that have the same content but are in different languages. Contrary to the popular belief, hreflang doesn’t pass authority between pages. It simply makes it easier for search engines to be aware of different versions of your content and provide the correct version to searchers.
Conclusion
International SEO is about properly organizing the website to include content in multiple languages and producing content that is correctly translated to the target language. To achieve this, you first have to choose between targeting a new language, country, or both. Then try to understand the online search market in the new target group and the search demand in your industry. This will allow you to properly conduct keyword research and plan content writing.
