In a world in which globalization is increasingly present, the internationalization of companies is, in some cases, more than a necessity. In addition, in recent years, due to the Covid 19 pandemic, we have been forced to use alternative marketing channels that bring us closer to our customers without leaving home.

There are several resources that bring us closer to the consumer digitally: online stores, sales through marketplaces, virtual fairs,…

Today, we are going to focus on the importance of web positioning in third countries. We will explain how to increase the organic growth of our company and, therefore, our sales abroad thanks to a good International SEO strategy.

Digital diagnosis for the analysis of your international SEO strategy

In this post we will examine some fundamental points that must be taken into account to know if a web page is indeed prepared to face an international market. This analysis process will help us increase competitiveness, consolidate the product or brand, grow and achieve economies of scale and, therefore, lower costs. In addition, you can also apply it to the web pages of your competitors, which will give you an image of the state of health of your company with respect to the competition and the sector in general.

Next we will see the main aspects to take into account.

Does your brand name qualify?

First of all it is important that your domain corresponds to your brand name and that it has “global” characteristics, which is known as DM (brand domain). For example, if your company is dedicated to the sale of textiles, and your brand name is “ropademoda.com”, it is clear that you will not be able to internationalize your website with this name in a market outside of Spain. Therefore, the most important aspect is the choice of your brand name, which can retain customers and, over time, gain authority and recognition within the main search engines.

In fact, the ideal is to create a subdomain for each country and thus be able to give an international image to the project. In addition, positioning will be much easier. Google will recognize your content adapted to each country and you will be able to preserve the authority of your domain of origin, a very important aspect when it comes to climbing positions in other markets.

Is your website ready for internationalization?

Another important aspect is the state of health of our website. We have to know if our page meets the basic positioning requirements both from the SEO point of view and from the point of view of design, usability and speed.

It is important to take into account several aspects such as: web architecture, user experience, content and authority. In order to know our situation well before embarking on the internationalization process, a prior audit is recommended in order to solve possible problems.

Another very important factor is the geolocation of the content. Most hosting providers allow you to choose where you want to locate each accommodation, since they have servers in different countries. In addition, we have to configure the geolocation in Google Search Console based on the web structure that we have, segmenting each of our subdomains or subdirectories.

Analysis of the target audience in other countries.

Before being able to sell in another country we have to know our potential client, know our target and find out where they are and what they are looking for. This analysis usually includes the creation of a Buyer Persona that helps us to create a profile of our potential client. Normally, the characteristics that are used to define a Buyer are the following:

Name
Demographics
Sex
Age
Position/Occupation
Activity segment
educational level
Communication channels used
Goals/hobbies
Wishes/Challenges

Defining an archetype gives us many advantages, since it allows us to find out the needs of our clients and in this way know what type of content to create, with what style and to be able to optimize it to the maximum.

Important: the buyer persona is a dynamic tool, it changes over time and we have to complete the description, adjusting details as our knowledge of the client grows.

The content for your International SEO strategy

“Content is king.” We all know the famous phrase by Bill Gates, and indeed it is so, therefore, if at any time you have thought of machine translation as an alternative, we warn you that it is not a recommended option. Although from an indexing point of view it does not cause any problems, the same cannot be said regarding SEO.

The best option is to have an SEO consultant who speaks the language and knows the culture of the area of our interest. In this way, a higher quality of content is achieved and, most importantly, the terms actually used in the corresponding country are identified. This is why hiring a professional is always the most profitable solution for our business. This type of expert is in charge of carrying out a keyword study for our sector in a specific country, and with this they can shape an SEO content strategy with the aim of attracting our final client thanks to correct sales arguments.

SEO on page, a basic guide for your international positioning.
Tags:

In an International SEO positioning strategy, the use of tags that indicate to Google that our website is a multi-language page is essential. We are talking about the hreflang markup.

Depending on the type of project we have a different marking that serves to segment the web by language, by region or by both categories.

The advantages of using hreflang tags are:

Prevent Google from detecting our content as duplicate, since many times the content between two versions of the web is identical.
They prevent the client from reaching a web page that is not in their original language, therefore we are improving their browsing experience and reducing the bounce rate.
A lower bounce rate leads to an improvement in SEO positioning.
SEO Title:

This is the title that appears in the search results. This must contain the keyword and the search intent. It also has to be written in an attractive way to attract the attention of users and encourage them to click on our URL.

“Be careful not to have the title of our page “HOME” or “START”,

we must think about the search for our users.”

H1 Titles:

It is one of the most important points when it comes to positioning. It should be very clear who you are. You have to know that you can only have one H1 in each post, since having more than one would make no sense for Google and it would not be clear what the main theme that identifies you is.

Now, this H1 is very important that it contains the main keyword of your article, since it will correspond to the searches that users do. In turn, the set of all the H1 of your web page will form a perfect summary of the theme and the contents of the web before Google.

Description:

The description tag must be within the HTML code of your web page. The description will briefly explain what we do and what we offer. Users do not want to waste time, if what we do is not clear on the first screen, they leave the web and all the work we have done will not be of much use.

Keywords:

Keywords that reflect our business. In the keyword cloud you must make it clear what we sell (product or service).

Here you can observe your keyword cloud, which will allow you to see if your web page is really communicating what you are looking for

https://seositecheckup.com/analysis

H2 headings:

The H2 are also known as subtitles since it is the function that they perform according to the hierarchy represented by the headings. If before we said that the H1 is the title, the H2 would be the subtitles into which the content of the post is divided. Its main function is to divide the content by topic, thus offering more information about it both to the user and to Google.

You can place the main keyword in some H2 but it is actually more interesting to place synonyms for it and words that are semantically related to it and that, in turn, serve to introduce the content of that specific section.

Linkbuilding as a starting point in International SEO

In our International SEO strategy, a good link building cannot be missing. We have to think that it is not only important to position ourselves as the first in the search engines, but that we must bring awareness to our brand by creating quality links in the countries where we want to position our brand. To achieve this goal, the figure of the SEO professional comes to our aid again. In this phase of the project, a search is carried out for the main local media and websites in our sector that have a good reputation in order to increase our visibility and, therefore, also improve positioning.

Conclusion

It is important to note that prior market research and an analysis of all possible competitors are essential to design a correct SEO positioning strategy and achieve progressive growth in other countries.

If you want to boost your business towards digitization and internationalization, do not hesitate to contact our team of experts.