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Optimizing Website for International Traffic

By Team #ARM Worldwide
November 13, 2021

International SEO can be an excellent way to expand and grow your business because it could very well be in your competitors' blind spot. By optimizing your website for International traffic, you can quickly grow market share by converging on markets on which the existing players in the SEO tool space aren't focusing. In addition, building and expanding your digital presence requires you to reach audiences within all the regions you do business in, particularly through search. As a result, SEO has become more indispensable, with 68% of all online experiences initiated via a search engine. Read on to see how international SEO practices introduce a highly targeted and scalable way to build and reach your desired international target markets:

Beginning with Research

An international SEO for your website shall start with some initial research to validate the offset point and the potential for every international market to set and prioritize your target. First, identify your current international organic search visibility, conversions, traffic, and conversion rate by analyzing your current website on tools like Google Analytics or via Google Webmaster data. Next, do keyword research to evaluate the potential of the top countries and language markets you're thinking of targeting. Collect relevant keywords, phrases, their organic search volume and level of competition per country. After selecting keywords that target the different searches of your international audience and identifying their organic search volume, it's time to identify the competitive level based on the popularity and relevance of the competitors.

Defining URL Structures

Geotargeting or International targeting is essential for companies that do digital marketing in various regions around the globe. One fundamental step is optimizing your website's URL structure for an international audience. Below are a few URL structures that developers can deploy to target a particular country or language:

The ccTLD (country code top-level domain) uses two-letter codes to let users and search engines know what region, country, or territory your website is registered in {example.uk}.
The Subdomain is a separate 'third-level domain' where internationalized content is hosted {uk.example.com}.
Subdirectory or Subfolder is a separate folder of the root domain where the internationalized content is hosted {example.com/us/}.
Different domain is an entirely different root domain where internationalized content is placed on a non-internationalized website {exampleussite.com}.

How to Optimize your Website?

When executed correctly, international SEO should be nearly undetectable to users. They should simply obtain relevant content in their language and within their region. You must always keep your target group in the back of your mind.

Using HrefLang Tags allows you to cross-reference pages with similar content for different audiences. Use tools available online to generate these tags, then use Google Search Console to find errors.
The XDefault Tag is a default version of the site that you can use to show users when the language or location tag doesn't match any of the available ones, and no other page is better suited.
The Meta Content Language Tag signals what language the HTML is written in and indicates search engines to the target audience for the page. The Schema Markup is another effective method to tell search engines what your website is about and what your company does.

Vital Elements to Adjust

Once you have selected your desired international targeting and type of structure to use, it's time to optimize it to make sure it is crawlable and indexable. It should present the coveted targeting signals to evade search results misalignment concerns. In addition, every single one of your international website versions should be indexable and crawlable without using scripts or cookies that don't allow search engines to index the webpage content correctly. It's imperative to translate or localize the different elements like the title, meta description, URL, alt descriptions, currency, address, etc., of the pages of your international versions to add relevancy. You can also include links to your beloved social media handles and location data like the address and phone number of your local offices to intensify the user experience.

Best International SEO Practices

You can increase the chances of users having a positive experience by making it unambiguously clear that the page is built for them. Ensuring that your content is relevant from a cultural and design perspective is just as important. Also, never automatically redirect your visitors and search engines based on their IP addresses or browser settings. It can be very upsetting for users and confusing search engines. Use a pop-up banner message instead. Because your international SEO efforts aim to serve customers well, ensure that everything from site navigation to content to help desk is in the primary language of the targeted region. Remember to steer clear of using scripts or cookies to show users different-language versions of the page as search engines cannot crawl through such dynamic content, and users may not be able to see it.

Final Words

Search engine optimization has an immediate impact on regions where your website appears in search engine results pages (SERPs), so the better optimized your site is, the more visibility it's likely to gain. By taking full advantage of the above tips, you can improve your E-commerce SEO campaign and adjust your promotional efforts to reach different markets. After evaluating your SEO potential in your target countries, analyzing your competitive landscape, pulling together a list of most profitable keywords for your international SEO and thinking through the technical aspects of developing an internationally targeted website, you are now armoured to market your business to the world. Good luck!