International SEO: How to create Global SEO Strategy to Rank your website in other Countries

Posted on 23 Feb 2022

An international SEO strategy aims to boost your website’s organic search rankings in many languages or regions. Instead of merely rating your material in English, you may now score your content in Spanish and German. Even if your site is in the same language as your target audience, it may still be tailored to their specific geographic location. Your site may have two English-language versions—one for English speakers in the United States and one for English speakers in the United Kingdom.

You may reach a broader audience by focusing on different languages and/or regions. In addition to increasing the number of terms, you may rank for, you’ll be able to connect with more people by increasing your search exposure. People that arrive on your site will have a better experience since they will be able to browse in their favourite language and have a more localized experience overall. A multilingual website and translation/localization of your content are necessary to reach a global audience.

International SEO Strategy

Global SEO strategy is made up of two parts: a solid local SEO strategy and an international SEO plan.

Research – Before diving into the technical aspects of global SEO, there are a few crucial research tasks to do.
On-page SEO — while translating and optimizing your site for local search queries, there are crucial considerations and best practices to adopt.

There are several crucial tactics that we’ll cover here, beginning with research and progressing to more technical measures.

Step 1 – Potential and Locations go hand in hand

Providing your website in languages where you see the most financial benefit can help you get the most out of your time and money invested (ROI). So, how do you determine which languages and countries to target in your global SEO strategy? You must check who is already visiting your site. Having a large number of visitors from a certain location may indicate that you should establish a local site just for that region to increase your traffic even more.

Step 2 – International keyword Research

In the native language of your site, you may already be aware of the significance of keyword research. Using keyword research, you may find out what people are looking for so that you can target your content to those keywords.

What about your international SEO strategy? Each language/region you want to target should be researched for relevant keywords if you want the highest return on your marketing investments (ROI). Fortunately, most high-quality keyword research tools make it simple to limit term recommendations and volume depending on searchers’ languages and locations.

Step 3 – Competitor Analysis

In addition to researching which keywords are worth focusing on, you should also look at your competition’s strengths and weaknesses in other regions. Whether you’ll be competing against other websites that use a multilingual SEO approach or just local websites, you need to answer this question: Is the landscape as competitive as one may expect?

Competitor analysis is critical for the following reasons:

It may assist you in determining whether or not it is even worthwhile to attempt to target that location.
You’ll know how much work you’ll have to put into optimizing for that region.

Step 4 – URL structure optimization

International SEO requires that your site be completely indexable by Google and other search engines in all of its many languages. Each translation thus requires a corresponding individual web address (URL). For international SEO, three URL formats are often used:

For each language, you may establish a separate subdomain. es.yoursite.com/example-post and yoursite.com/example-post, respectively, would be the Spanish-language versions of the original post.

Separate domains – each language has its unique domain name. Your site.com/example-post, for example, and your site.es/example-post, for example, might both host the same original content.
It’s a matter of personal taste, according to Google, as to which of the three methods is best for international search engine optimization.
It’s best to start with the subfolder technique since it’s the simplest to implement and doesn’t need complex domain mappings.

Step 5 – Content Localization

The most time-consuming part of creating new content for multiple languages and regions is translating your current content. However, translating material isn’t the sole component of developing a local site. Rather than translating your content, you should concentrate on localizing your website if you want to improve your international SEO approach. An extra localization stage beyond just translating your content into other languages includes the following instances.

Displaying different images depending on the user’s language, so that you can make sure that each image is optimized for that language;
Incorporating the local currency and using local units of measurement (such as Metric instead of Imperial) are all examples of cultural references that should be adjusted to reflect the language and location in question.

For example, adjusting the layout of your website to ensure that it is compatible with the size/layout of each language.

Step 6 – hreflang Attribute

The hreflang property notifies search engines of the language or locale each piece of your site’s content is targeting. As a bonus feature, it may also link your material to identical stuff in other languages. Google is informed that this is the English version of “Page A” and the other page is the German version.

It’s possible to give more than simply the language, such as the destination location. Spanish speakers in Spain and Mexican speakers in Mexico have different translations of “Page a” based on their dialects.

These are the kinds of information that Google is capable of deducing all by itself. With the explicit addition of hreflang, Google and other search engines can be sure to get correct information about the language and locality of each page and where that page is accessible in other languages.

Even while you can inject some code into your site’s header and manually add the hreflang property, a better solution is to use a multilingual website tool that will do this for you.

Step 7 – Translate SEO metadata

Search engine optimization relies heavily on your website’s SEO title and meta description, as you surely well know. SEO for worldwide markets necessitates translating and optimizing your SEO metadata in each language and region in the same manner as you would for the original language. To increase your click-through rate (CTR) and include keywords from your foreign keyword research, you should localize the title and description. However, don’t limit yourself to simply the SEO metadata. Translating your social media graph data is also a good idea so that your site has localized material when it is shared on Facebook and Twitter.

Here’s your International SEO Checklist

Examine your potential in several areas and choose the most suitable ones for you.
Conduct keyword research in other countries to learn more about the possibilities of other regions.
Find out what the competition is like in other countries by doing international competitor research.
To evaluate whether you need to optimize for search engines other than Google, research local search engine preferences.

To make your multilingual site the best it can be, here is your checklist:

v For localized content, use a static URL structure with an optimized URL structure. You may use a subfolder for each language, but subdomains or separate domains for each language can also be used. Try to steer clear of query parameters, if possible.

v Translation and localization of material may include, but are not limited to, modifying images, adjusting pricing in local currencies, and making other changes as necessary.

v Your text should have the hreflang attribute. Automated translation programs like TranslatePress can achieve this.

v The best way to optimize your URL slugs is to translate them into the target language and include your focus keyword.

v SEO metadata and social media information should be translated to improve click-through rates (CTR) and the relevancy of your target keywords.

v Local SEO signals might include things like utilizing a CDN or a local web server, connecting to local content, and other similar things.

v Make use of inbound links from inside your geographic area to demonstrate to Google that you are an expert in that area.

New Vision Digital can help launch an International SEO strategy today!

An international SEO plan is a terrific approach to get your website in front of new people and increase your traffic since we live in a globalized society. It is, nonetheless, essential that you prepare ahead of time if you are hoping to succeed in international SEO strategy. New Vision Digital can help launch a fail-proof international SEO strategy. Connect with us today to discuss further!