You’ve probably heard of international SEO, but you might not know what it is. International SEO refers to the process of optimizing your website for people outside of your country. That means understanding how different languages are written and spoken, optimizing content for words in other languages, including replacing tags for multiple language sites, and more.
Here are some benefits that come with getting an international SEO strategy in place:
– You can rank higher on search engines like Google & Yahoo! abroad
– Visitors from around the world will be able to find you online
– It’s easier to get found by people who speak a different language than yours
– Your site will load faster because there are fewer bytes needed to display text or images
– Your site becomes more culturally relevant
The main difference between international SEO and SEO for local businesses is that you are trying to reach a global audience with international SEO, whereas, with SEO for local businesses, you are trying to reach a more specific audience in your area.
When it comes to optimizing your website for different languages, there are three key things to keep in mind:
- The language of the searcher
- The language of the content
- The location of the searcher
For example, if someone in France searches for “bicycle” in English, your website will appear in their search results if you have optimized your site for English speakers in France. However, if someone in Spain searches for “bicicleta” in Spanish, your website will not show up in their search results if the only language on your site is English.
Optimizing content for multiple languages can be complicated. It’s a lot to take on yourself, and it’s easy to get wrong, which could lead to your site getting penalized by Google or other search engines.
You need to have an expert agency to help you with international SEO to make sure your website is configured correctly and achieves the best results.
To find a good agency, you should look for someone who has worked on international websites before, preferably with clients similar to you. Make sure they understand how people search for information in other languages and understand your industry. This is not something you want to leave to chance.
A good agency should give you a detailed report of their findings and a plan of action with specific recommendations on how your website can be improved.
Another important thing to note is that if you want to expand your SEO to other countries, you might need to change where your website is hosted. For example, if you want to rank well in both the US and Canada, it’s best to have two separate websites with two different domain names (e.g., www.yourwebsite.com for the USA www.yourwebsite.ca for Canada).
It will be cheaper and quicker than getting a .com domain name for each country, but it is a trade-off because you would also lose some ranking power from having one main site instead of two separate sites.
In summary, international SEO is more complicated than local SEO because there are more elements involved, and they need to work together as a complete web marketing strategy across borders rather than within a single country or language. However, with the right help, it can be a very successful way to reach more customers worldwide and grow your business.
