Going global? Here are 9 common international SEO questions, answered.

One cannot deny that SEO is a tricky process, with many intricacies that can affect a campaign’s output. But an even more daunting task is optimizing your website for a foreign audience, targeting a language you don’t speak and a culture you don’t understand.

So we decided to shed light on international SEO and answer the questions we hear most frequently from brands that strive to become international. They usually face the same challenge: going global for them means going local in many countries at the same time. For getting popular worldwide, you need to know marketing specifics of the countries your business is targeting.

And if you don’t know how to start optimizing your site for a new country or you’re wondering what international SEO techniques will make the biggest impact, keep on reading.

1. What is the biggest challenge when it comes to international SEO?

The biggest trick with international SEO is that you actually need to position your brand for completely new cultures that have their own specifics and complexities.

Here’s what you can do before launching your international SEO campaign:

• Conduct thorough market research to understand your new customers. Use keyword research tools and discussion platforms like Quora or Reddit to find out how these people search for what they need, what their key interests and pains are, and how you can help them.
• Research your local competitors.  Define your main local competitors. Analyze what strategies have been working for them so far and identify potential gaps you could close to propel your growth in the new market.
• Study the search infrastructure of your targeted countries. Even though Google may be the preferred search engine where you live, it might not be in other markets.

For example, in China, the most popular search engine is Baidu; in the Czech Republic, Seznam. In Russia most people use Yandex to conduct online searches.  And needless to say, all these engines have their own ranking factors and elements that affect search listings’ CTRs. So, if you’re marketing to Russia and China at the same time, you’ll have to optimize for different search engines.

2. What’s better to target, a language or a country?

I guess the confusion over what to choose stems from the fact that there’s very little difference between the two. Having said that, each of these options allows you to achieve different results:

Targeting a language allows you to optimize your site for people who live in different countries but speak the same language.

3. Which URL structure should you choose for your domain?

4. How should marketers localize content on a new site?

5. How can you avoid duplicate content issues?

6. What is the best international link-building strategy?

7. What off-site activities can impact your online visibility?

8. How does a global brand’s social media presence impact its search results?

9. What are the best tools for optimizing international SEO?

Over to you