Optimizing your site for global consumers is essential, especially if you have an emerging international consumer base.
Research shows that 65% of consumers prefer content in their own language. That means they may also use keywords or phrases in their language to make search queries.
In other words, internationalizing the content on your website is key to content visibility in search engines and consumption.
Let’s dive in and learn what international SEO is and the five best practices for internationalizing your content.
In this article:
What is international SEO?
International SEO is simply optimizing your website for other countries, cities, and languages besides your own. It allows users from across the world to access your site and content regardless of their language or location. It also allows the search engine to identify which languages you use for business and the countries you are targeting.
International SEO aims to boost organic web traffic from multiple geolocations and language groups. Considering that every country has a unique audience, having a unique SEO strategy for each will help you boost your site’s organic traffic.
Let’s say you run a food recipe site that caters to a Mexican audience. But you recently noticed that it’s getting new visitors from Argentina, Colombia, and Spain.
You might think you wouldn’t need to tweak your content to cater better to your new audiences since they all speak Spanish anyway. That would be a big mistake, though. Because even if Mexicans and Spaniards, for instance, speak the same Spanish language (more or less), their cultures and preferences, including gastronomic preferences, are different.
So, if you want your new audience based in Spain to remain your audience, you’ll need to include content they can relate to. For instance, a blog post on how to cook paella valenciana, a dish specific to the southern part of Spain, would keep them interested.
You can use the data you gather from your website optimized for international SEO to improve your other marketing strategies.
So, if you find, based on your website analytics, that some of your email subscribers are interested in that paella blog post, you can send them similar email content.
You can even create online courses for each of your international audience segments. With this specific strategy, you not only ensure effective relationship-building but also have the opportunity to earn money on the side. Of course, for this to work, you must create valuable content your members will be willing to pay for. Additionally, be sure to name your courses in a way that matches the interests and aspirations of your diverse global learners.
5 best practices for internationalizing your website content
Now that you’ve understood the concept of international SEO, let’s look into five best practices for internationalizing your website content.
1. Use Country-Specific Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs)
Country Code Top-Level Domains are unique URL structures that show search engines and users the sovereign state, dependent territory, or country a website is registered in. They use two-letter codes as a signal, as shown below.
Search engines tend to generate search results for certain queries based on the searcher’s location. For instance, the search results shown to a person using Google.com, Google.uk (UK), and Google.au (Australia) may be slightly different. ccTLDs, therefore, give you a higher SEO value for searches done in a specific country.
ccTLDs are clear geolocation signals that do not require the server to be in the targeted location for it to work effectively. In other words, ccTLDs override server location. They also increase click-through rates from users who prefer local domains to international ones.
Keep in mind that you’ll need an IT budget and resources to set up and maintain your ccTLDs. ccTLDs also split domain authority among several sites rather than concentrating the traffic and authority to a single domain. Finally, get to know the ccTLD requirements for your target country. Some countries have strict laws and requirements that you’ll have to follow.
Overall, ccTLDs are an effective international SEO strategy that you can apply to optimize the anatomy of your website for international audiences.
2. Implement Hreflang tags
Hreflang tags are HTML attributes that specify the language you are using on a specific page and the geographical location of your site. The search engine picks those pages and shows them to users who speak that target language.
Therefore, if you’ve used multiple language versions for the same webpage, use hreflang tags to tell search engines like Bing, Yahoo, and Google about the variations. This ensures the correct version of the page is served to the right audiences. Here’s an example.
So when you search for Apple products in Spain, the above will be the first result on Google. However, when you search for Apple products from Kenya in East Africa, this is what you’ll find.
Remember that Hreflang tags are a signal and not a directive. Meaning that when you have two very similar pages, you’ll need to do a bit more to increase the effectiveness of the hreflang tags.
For instance, let’s say you have a version of your page in the U.K. English and another in American English. These are similar, and search engines may see them as duplicate content. The engine will then choose one version to index.
Localizing the content of pages that use similar languages within a Hreflang cluster is an excellent way to address this issue. Do this by:
- Localizing pricing – For instance, use GBP for UK audiences and USD for American audiences.
- Localizing language variants – For instance, use “bin” in UK English and “trashcan” in US English. We’ll talk more about this later.
This localization, however, does not apply to translated pages. This is because they are not considered duplicates of each other by search engines.
3. Conduct localized keyword research
For search engine optimization, using relevant keywords in your content marketing plan is key to success. International SEO is no different. It’s not enough to translate your list of keywords into another language. You’ll also need to transcreate them for the best results.
Transcreating goes beyond translation. Professional translators do this in situations where a strict translation of words won’t convey the right tone or meaning. In transcreation, the translator must get creative and use different words or phrases that present the same tone and emotions.
Here’s an excellent example of transcreation:
The original slogan of Procter & Gamble’s cleaning product Swiffer was “When Swiffer’s the one, consider it done.” The slogan was effective because of its rhyming couplets that made it easy for English speakers to remember. When Procter & Gamble expanded its market to include Italy, the initial plan was to just translate that English slogan into Italian. However, a direct translation of the phrase would have resulted in the rhyming couplets being removed.
In other words, the slogan, when directly translated into Italian, would have lost its appeal.
So, what did Marco Leali, the translator, do? He transcreated the English slogan into “La polvere non dura, perché Swiffer la cattura” instead. This sentence’s literal English translation is “Powder doesn’t last long because Swiffer captures it.” The transcreated copy doesn’t use the same words used in the English slogan, but it embodies the same tone and emotions. More importantly, for Procter & Gamble, the rhyming couplets were retained. Genius, right?
If you’re a law firm, be aware of keyword distinctions per region in your industry. Know that a “barrister” in the UK and a “trial lawyer” in the US are the same person. Here are a few other words that differ between these two regions.
A Trio of Techniques: Simplifying Keyword Research Basics
- Which words are being searched? Find out exactly what the users who reside in your target markets are typing into search engines. You should then modify your valuable keywords to capture what your target audience is looking for.
- How often are the words searched? The second thing you need to do is to research the keywords with the greatest search volumes per location. Tools like Google Keyword Planner can help you research how many times a keyword is searched for every month in each target area.
- What words do your competitors use? Another way to identify relevant keywords for international SEO is to do competitor research. Find the company in your industry ranked highest in the search engine results pages (SERPs) and look into how they use each term on their site. You can then incorporate those keywords appropriately into your own site.
4. Tweak content to suit cultural nuances
For good international reach, you’ll need to generate way more web content for international SEO than you would for standard SEO. This is because your content has to be relatable to a specific country’s audience for it to perform well for international SEO.
So, don’t just depend upon producing quality content. Consider cultural nuances, too. Culture will influence your website’s color choice, layout, design, fonts, and more. It will also influence how you treat your content.
Here’s an example. Go to Coca-Cola Korea’s website, and you’ll see copy and images that revolve around the country’s popular K-pop bands:
Go to Coca-Cola US, and you’ll see the focus is on US artists like Jon Batiste.
To properly optimize your website content for international audiences, you might want to hire a native familiar with the culture, too.
5. Monitor and analyze performance
After putting all this effort into making international SEO work for you, it’s important to measure and analyze your performance across the countries you’re targeting. This helps you ascertain which methods are working and which aren’t.
Tools like Google Analytics 4 and SEMrush will help you get an in-depth report about the changes your international SEO strategy has brought to your business site. Look into parameters like organic web traffic, bounce rate, keyword rankings, session duration, conversion rates, and more for your target countries.
Then make the necessary adjustments to your international SEO strategy if needed. For instance, if you see your Indian audience goes to your blog post on how to cook paella, but leaves after a few seconds, then you might want to tweak your content.
You might recognize that spices are primary ingredients in Indian cuisine, so your written recipe may also need to incorporate their use.
In closing
To wrap up, this article has given you a better understanding of international SEO. By definition, international SEO is optimizing your website for other countries, cities, and foreign languages besides your own.
Five best practices can help you internationalize your content.
- Using ccTLDs will help show users and search engines the sovereign state, dependent territory, or country a website is registered.
- Hreflang tags will help specify the language you are using on a specific page and the geographical location of your site. The search engine then picks those pages and shows them to users who speak that specific language.
- Localized target keyword research helps you determine what specific content to focus on for each audience location.
- Tweaking your unique, quality content for specific localized audiences brings internationalized optimization to its peak.
- Finally, don’t forget to monitor and analyze the performance of your content so you can adjust and further refine it as needed.
You’re now set to create and implement a killer international SEO strategy.
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