International SEO is not entirely about launching sites with altered content, executing hreflang etc. International SEO is mainly about geotargeting. This includes organizing and optimizing your website as per the region. Enabling search engines to identify the countries, languages of each user your business is targeting in a particular location.
International SEO best practices:
The URL structure for international websites
The principal concept is that you need to have an accurate domain for your international SEO requirements. There are a few things to consider while choosing a domain name for international SEO. Domains like Country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) are applicable for a specific location.
Eg – www.example.fr & www.example.co.uk
Top-level domains (TLD) are used for geo-targeting specific countries. The subdomains and subfolders of ccTLD domains can be utilized for geo-targeting diverse countries as well.
Eg of sub-domain – https://fr.example.com. It uses a generic TLD with a country-specific subdomain.
Eg of sub-directories – https://www.example.com/fr & https://www.example.com/fr-ch
If you are targeting territories where more than one language is spoken, then a structure that includes both the country and language subdirectories is needed.
HrefLang Tags
HrefLang was invented for business owners having multilingual sites and requiring search engines to send people relevant content in their language. This benefits sites that have similar content in multiple languages. HrefLang Tags allows cross-reference pages with similar content for different audiences and is added to the <head> of a website.
Eg – <link rel=”alternate” href=”https://www.example.com/” hreflang=”en-US” /> (I am the American version, please index me in the US)
Eg – <link rel=”alternate” href=”https://www.example.com/ae-ar/” hreflang=”ar-AE” /> (I am the Arabic version and would like to be indexed and served in the UAE).
There are three ways to implement the hreflang attribute:
HTML tags
HTTP headers
Sitemaps
The X Default Tag
The default tag is a default version of the site you can choose to serve people when the language or location tag does not match any of the available ones and no page is better appropriate. You have a UK and US version of the site. So, when someone from Australia searches for related terms, you would X Default them to a preferred version.
Meta Content Language Tags
This tag indicates the language in which the HTML content is written and can include the country too. This information signals to search engines that target the audience for the page.
Eg – <meta http-equiv=”content-language” content=”en-us”>
International Keyword Research
Remember not to use literal translations as they are accurate or relevant. Analyze your competitor’s keywords used in those countries. You can use the SEMRush tool which is great as it helps you to find approximate keyword search volume, competitors rankings, or advertising in AdWords for the target country.
Geotargeting
To measure your SEO successes, you need to install Google Analytics and Google Search Console for each property. Both tools can help identify potential technical or indexing issues.
International Link Building
Link building cannot be ignored particularly for websites with ccTLDs and sub-domains as you need to get links for
Local citation
Find websites relevant to your market and where your competitors are listed. Analyze what type of content people are writing for outreach which can help you find potential placements. This will help you to understand the cultural factors within your target market.
Build your content based on the target user’s language and culture. Create attractive and optimized content for your audience about your products and services, long-tail search queries, industry-related topics that may be of interest to them, etc which will earn you links.
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