Do you want to begin internationalizing your business but don't know where to start your digital positioning strategy? One of the most important aspects, and one of the first to take into account, is SEO.

In this post, I tell you what aspects you should not forget in the international SEO of your brand to start your journey in other countries on the right foot and thus grow the inbound marketing funnel in different countries in which you operate.

What is international SEO?

As you probably already know, SEO or search engine optimization is a set of techniques that improve a website's visibility in the organic results of Internet search engines. This is key, as the results closest to the top of the results index receive many more visits.

SEO Types

There are different types of SEO. I present them to you below:

Local SEO

I would refer to optimizing your website to position it locally, that is, in your city. A good example would be a restaurant, let's say, in New York. It makes sense that it ranks high in local search results for New York and its surroundings but not for California, Texas, or any other city or state.

National SEO

In this case, we would discuss optimizing your website to be well-positioned in your country. This could be the case of a franchise spread throughout Spain or an online store that only makes national shipments.

International SEO

International SEO expert positioning, which we will focus on today, aims to optimize your website to attract traffic not only from your city, state or country but from different countries and languages.

Creating an international SEO strategy is key to internationalizing your company. This process will help you increase your competitiveness, consolidate your product or brand, grow and achieve economies of scale and lower costs.

Develop an international SEO strategy step by step

Before starting to work on an international SEO strategy, you should consider whether you need it and consider several factors.

First, consider if your business is targeting customers in different countries and if you need to increase your visibility in these with a website in another language or targeting another geographic location.

Another important point to review is if your competitors offer similar products or services to your business in other countries. If so, starting an international SEO strategy is a good idea. Also, remember to review how good of a competition you can be for them before deciding.

But be careful; all this entails a creation cost that you must be willing to pay.

There are certain key aspects that you must take into account if you want to implement an SEO strategy internationally:

  1. Competition study.
  2. Selection of the content you will use through a search of keywords or keywords.
  3. Content adaptation.
  4. Website architecture.
  5. Hosting.
  6. Google Search Console.
  7. Hreflang tag.
  8. Link building.
  9. Social networks.
  10. Analyze the results.

This step is very important: You must understand what the users are like in the countries that interest you. Some points that you must define very well are:

  • Which search engines do they use: although Google is indeed the search engine par excellence, there are countries in which other search engines have more weight.
  • What is their level of internet access: it is convenient to know if they have any network access limitations.
  • What devices do they use to access the internet: mobile, computer, tablets…
  • Language: how they speak, what terms they use…

Study of the competition

It may seem obvious, but it is very important to know your organic competition in the countries where you want to position yourself. Analyze what contents work and how they do it to help you in the previous point of knowing the audience of the country in question. This will help you evaluate how to improve that content for better international web positioning.

Selection of the content that you are going to use through a search of keywords or keywords

To determine what content you are going to create, you must do a keyword search. In local or national SEO, searching for keywords for your region or country was enough. But now, for your global SEO strategy, you must do it for the countries that interest you.

Remember that a highly searched word in Spain does not have to be so in France, or perhaps it will be translated differently. We recommend this article to know how to do a keyword search properly.

Adaptation of the content

As we have commented, the population of the different countries lives in different realities, which means that they also have different needs or interests, which is reflected in the topics they consult in the search engines. That is why keywords will be highly sought after in one country but little in another.

However, keywords will be popular in more than one country. In these cases, it is very important not to automatically translate the content, a mistake that many businesses make that causes the content's quality to decrease enormously and worsen the user experience.

For example, although Spanish is spoken in Spain and Latin America, the same words or expressions are not used. That is why it is recommended to localize the content, that is, adapt it to the audience in each country.

Web architecture

Entering more into the technical part, the web structure or architecture is a very important point. You are probably wondering: "Do I have to create a new website for each country?" or "Is it better to do it on a subdomain? ". Well, I'll tell you the possibilities you have:

Different domains

When I talk about different domains, I mean creating domain.es, domain. Uk, domain. Cl, etc. In this case, we want separate sites; each domain is indexed independently.

  • It is easier to implement, but the website will start with zero authority in a new country since the main domain's link juice and authority will not be divided. Therefore, this strategy implies multiplying your efforts for each domain you have at the SEO level. 

Same domain

You can also use one site for all languages. It is very important to include the "hreflang" tag (to tell search engines what language is used on each page and avoid being detected as duplicate content. This tag also helps to display the right content to users depending on their country.

Subdomains

In this case, you would choose subdomains such as es.domain.com, en.domain.com, cl.domain.com, etc. In this strategy, there would be a main domain and a subdomain for each country. However, at the SEO level, it also means multiplying efforts for each subdomain (it would be an intermediate option between domains and subdirectories). 

Subdirectories

The subdirectory strategy is based on domain.com/es/, domain.com/uk/, domain.com/cl/. In this case, the link juice and the authority of the main domain will be distributed, so when entering a new country, it would not start from 0, and we would not have to multiply our efforts at the SEO level. However, we also have to comment that this strategy is more difficult to manage, and the loading time is slower if you do not do a good job.

Hosting

One of the SEO factors to position is the loading speed, so it is very important that your website loads quickly in all countries:

  • If you have opted for a different domain strategy, I recommend hiring a hosting with servers located in the countries you are going to.
  • If you have chosen subdomains or subdirectories, the hosting has to be the same for all countries, but you can use the Content Delivery Network or CDN. These are servers located worldwide where there is a copy of your website. In this way, depending on the country in which the user is located, they will be offered a different copy of the web, so the loading speed will be higher, which will benefit you at the SEO level.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a very useful tool with information about your website in terms of language and country. You can get this data in Legacy tools and reports - International segmentation:

Hreflang Tag

This tag indicates to Google that we have different URLs with the same content but translated or segmented for users from different countries. We will use it whether the content is fully translated, if there are only variations, or if only the template, menu, and footer change.

Here's how to implement it:

  • If you have a website translated into different languages, you will need to add the following tag in each of the versions:
    • In the Spanish version, you will have to put the following:
      •  
      •  
      • Etc
    • You will have to do the same for the other versions, for example, in the French version:
      •  
      •  
  • If your website is in the same language but is addressed to different countries (such as Spanish in Peru, Chile and the general version): in each of the versions, you will have to include the following label:
    •  
    •  
    •  

To generate this code, I recommend the Sistrix tool, and to check if you have the tag well implemented, the Technical SEO tool can also be useful.

Link building

In order to be relevant in the countries we are targeting, it is very important to carry out a link-building strategy: obtain quality links from the countries or languages ​​in which we want to position. If you want to know more about link building, we recommend you read this post.

Social networks

The last aspect to consider is that we must also adapt the strategy of our social networks: use the networks used in the country in question, adapt the language, and offer what interests the public in each country...

Analyze the results

Finally, I recommend reviewing your international SEO goals and objectives periodically to ensure you are moving in the right direction.

You can use Google Analytics to measure website traffic by country and see how it evolves.

Some other tools, like Ahrefs, Moz, SE Ranking or Semrush, can help you track your keywords to see if they are ranking and which ones are driving the most traffic to your website.

Additionally, you can track conversions (such as sales or leads) generated from website traffic to see if your strategy is succeeding in terms of business results.

In conclusion, I will tell you that implementing an international SEO strategy is very beneficial and will allow you to position your brand organically in those countries that interest you, which translates into more potential customers.

If you want digital marketing, seo, content marketing, or PPC-like services, don't waste your time finding an agency. At Maven SEO Agency, we will give you the best services, audit your site and take it to the top of keyword pages. In any case, you should keep in mind that implementing it well is very necessary, so my advice is to follow the steps that I have told you and, if you have any questions, you can leave a comment, I'll be happy to help you!