A Guide to International SEO: Strategies and Guidelines

 
SEO • October 5, 2023
 
You have a business. Your business has a website. You use localized keyword research and traditional SEO tactics to help your business rank well online. You have a diversified backlink profile and high domain authority. Congratulations! But now you want to expand. And this is where it gets complicated. How do you create an international SEO strategy that works just as well as your localized efforts? How do you merge international SEO strategy with localized keyword research and optimization? Can’t you just translate your content? Don’t you just need one of those little flag icons at the top of your landing page? International SEO strategy is technical, confusing, and difficult. Partner that with localized keyword research and you’re suddenly doing SEO backwards and in heels. This article will:
  • Help you decide upon an international SEO strategy that works for you.
  • Show you how to handle content translation and localized keyword research.
  • Explain how to track keywords locally in multiple locations as a part of international SEO.

1. International SEO Strategies Can Start With Local Keyword Research

How do you decide where you will expand your business? Almost every business with international expansion on the brain will end up conducting some sort of market research. But if you’re waiting for an SEO signal, there are two factors that can help nudge you in the right direction.
  • You notice a spike in organic traffic from a foreign market that piques your interest.
  • You notice a spike in users or customers from a particular country or region.
You don’t have to be an astrophysicist to understand that a spike in users from a particular place often translates to a demand for your product or service on that market. That’s easy. Local keyword research comes into play when you get a spike in organic traffic from a foreign market. So, your first response? Conduct research to see what’s attracting new traffic from foreign markets. Ask yourself:
  • Which local keywords are driving the spike in organic traffic?
  • Are they keywords related to my lead-generating content?
  • Are they keywords with a history of high click through rates (CTRs) and conversion?
If you can answer “yes” to these questions you may have found a new market to optimize for.

2. Do You Need to Look Beyond Google to Localize Keyword Research?

The next step in preparing your international SEO strategy is to choose a search engine. Depending on which country you target, it may be time to think bigger than Google. Here’s a list of the leading search engines from around the globe:
  • Google (Global Leader)
  • Baidu (China)
  • Yandex (Russia)
  • Yahoo (Japan and Hong Kong)
  • Seznam (Czech Republic)
  • Naver (South Korea)
If you’re not planning to expand to countries where other search engines dominate, then can you limit your keyword localization to Google? The most recent data suggests that you can. To a point. Google is killing it on large markets such as Brazil and India where it has a 95.07% and a 94.53% market share respectively. On a global scale, Google takes the cake over all other search engines with a 91.66% total market share. Bing comes in second, taking a 2.51% share. And when it comes to mobile, there’s no competition. Google controls a 97.07% global share of the mobile search market. On the other hand, Google isn’t omnipresent. In the US, you may still want to do local keyword research and international SEO for Bing, as Google only has a 80.67% market share. And let’s say you do want to expand to China or Russia. In that case, Google has almost zero presence in both countries. To be more precise, Google has a 4.73% market share in China and 42.09% in Russia. That means you’ll need to optimize your websites for Baidu and Yandex respectively if you want to succeed on the local market. Let’s say you are staying within a market where Google has the monster share of search traffic. Austria is a good example. Google has a 94.16% market share of Austria’s search traffic. So, let’s tailor our international SEO strategy to reflect Google trends and local keyword research. Pro Tip: Each search engine has its own analytics tools for tracking keywords locally in multiple locations. Be sure to use the correct tools when optimizing content for Baidu, Yandex, or Naver. Ready to branch out beyond Google? Want to know how to optimize your site and content for Bing? Read our guide: A Comprehensive Guide to Bing Marketing

3. International SEO Targeting Choices – Language, Country, or Both?

What is international SEO? International SEO is the way you tell Google (or other search engines) that you’re targeting specific countries or that you’re using different languages to conduct business. That’s why international SEO strategies cover everything from deciding how to handle your URL structure to using hreflang tags. But before you get into all the fun technical stuff, you need to decide if a language or country-based international SEO strategy is best for you. How do you make that decision? And what’s the difference? The first question you need to ask yourself:
  • Does my product or service change if a person in a different country uses it? (Excluding the language differences.)
SaaS and cloud-based companies should answer “no.” A foreign customer comes to your website. They pay. They use the product or service online. Happy customer. The only change you may need to make is to have your website, blog, and other content in that happy customer’s native language. To illustrate further, let’s say that language is German. Ask yourself:
  • Will German-speaking people from different countries still use my product or service if I do nothing but provide them with German content?
If yes, you will want a language-based international SEO strategy. Let’s say that’s not the case. The product or service you sell in Germany is different than what you’ll need to sell in Austria. That will be true for:
  • Brick-and-mortar Retailers (McDonald’s)
  • E-retailers with Country-specific Offers (Amazon)
  • SaaS Companies with Regulated Offers (Netflix)
  • Mixed Retailers (Brick-and-Mortar/ E-commerce) (H&M)
In that case, you can make your international SEO strategy country-specific. What does that mean? We’ll get to that in minute.

4. Conduct Localized Keyword Research for Your New Target Market

Again, before we get into all the fun technical stuff behind international SEO strategy, you’ll need to conduct your first round of localized keyword research. Here are the two most crucial tips to follow when conducting localized keyword research for a foreign market:
  • Never machine translate keyword research. Try using online translation services like Gengo to help you or hire a native to do keyword research for you.
  • Never assume that high-volume keywords will remain the same across markets. Even if the language is the same as your original market.
You can approach localized keyword research one of two ways. First, you can start from scratch and conduct all new keyword research in the desired target language. Second, you can use the keywords you’ve amassed from your original site as a springboard. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Once you’ve done that, assess the search volume behind your new list of keywords. You may be surprised at what you’ll need to rank for in your new market. Pro Tip: If you’re entering a bigger market (e.g., US), you may want to check search volume across multiple regions to check for consistency in strength. For example, you may find that a keyword’s search volume is different in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

5. Conducting Competitor Research for Your International SEO Strategy

The next step is to conduct competitor research. Now, you’ll want to take your new localized keyword research and feed it through a rank tracking tool. But let’s say you don’t have access to one. Then you can feed each keyword one-by-one into Google to see which websites make a habit of appearing in the top 10 results. For example, we translated a list of keywords into Spanish and then ran them through Unamo’s BETA industry research tool. We selected Google Spain and the tool populated a list of domains ranking for at least 20% of the list of keywords we entered.