The web definition of International SEO explains that it is a specialized SEO strategy to capture traffic in foreign markets. Businessmen who want to indulge in online marketing internationally through multiple country-specific search engines resort to International SEO. It all begins with choosing a domain name that suits such digital marketing. For multi-lingual sites, it is recommended to get a generic top-level domain name (GTLD).
What are the issues that need to be taken into consideration for International SEO?
- Target Markets: The strategies and target market of the business depends upon the set goals. For instance, if the goal is to increase sales online, businessmen may have to consider the competition, supply and demand of the products or services in the market. These are very important economic considerations to study the target market.
- Localizing content: For International SEO, one needs to localize the content of the website and divide it according to language, country or region. If your business changes in different countries with different official languages and you do not intend on offering site content in all official languages, then you should only geo-target content. In geo-targeting content, the site in each country must be different somehow. If you intend to present the site in all official languages, use geo-target, translate your content and put your HREFLANG in XML sitemaps. ‘hreflang’ is an attribute used in the link element. ‘href’ stands for hypertext reference and ‘lang’ stands for language. Hence, ‘hreflang’ means linked reference to a language. If you do not have the resources to differentiate content for international visitors, then only translate content and present it through Twitter influencers.
- Translation: Some sites use English for all of their geographical domains. However, the primary challenge for International SEO lies in the translation of the content. Without proper translation, International SEO screams failure. The two-options available are Google Translate or a Professional Human translator.
- Professional Translator: Various freelancers are always available on the Internet to provide well-written precise translations; however, this is not a cost effective method. General rates on the internet are close to 1 cent per word, which adds up to $1 for 100 words. However, when numerous pages are translated, a professional translator may leave a hole in your pocket.
- Google Translate: Firstly, Google Translate is FREE of cost. It gives you the option to translate your content in 65 languages of the World. It is not considered ideal though as without a human monitoring the translation; it could shoot up various problems with comprehensibility of the content.
- Markup: Language mark-up is written in HTML. It informs the search engines of the language in which the page is written. It also displays where other languages of the same page may be found. Most times Google interprets the translated contents of the websites correctly. Markup only ensures that the search engines are properly informed of the exact URLS of the language variation.
- Keyword Research: The entire castle of digital and influencer social media marketing stands upon the bricks of keywords. Best results are guaranteed with the cost-effective free resource provided by Google known as Google’s Keyword tool.
All these considerations together with link-building should leave your attempt at International SEO bearing fruits immediately.