Understanding international SEO: is it a suitable strategy for your business?

In an increasingly interconnected world where businesses are no longer confined by borders, the importance of international SEO has grown significantly. This digital marketing strategy is aimed at optimizing your website to rank better in search engine results pages (SERPs) for international audiences, making it a key consideration for businesses in search of new opportunities beyond their homeland. In this article, we will attempt to understand international SEO and the doors of opportunity it opens for businesses. We will also discuss whether international SEO is a suitable strategy for your business.

What exactly is international SEO?

If your question is what international SEO is, it is pretty much what the name implies: a strategy that will help your business reach an international market. International SEO focuses on improving search engine rankings for various countries and languages through website and content optimization. This involves various techniques, including optimizing meta tags, creating geo-targeted content, and building relevant backlinks from international websites.

Local SEO optimizes a website or brand for search results in a specific area, which is a crucial strategy for businesses that need to attract local customers, for example, a restaurant. International SEO, on the other hand, opts for global localization strategies, including language targeting across multiple regions. The target audience, keywords, content, and backlinks are common factors that distinguish these two types of SEO strategies.

Benefits of an International SEO Strategy

It is an established fact that international SEO strategies are an effective way for you to set foot in a new market and discover the full potential of your brand. Now let’s discuss the benefits of the international SEO strategy in detail.

Access to the global market: The most obvious benefit of international SEO is that it provides your business or brand with an access pass to the global market. The digital market is an incredibly vast space. So if you think your business has a market on faraway shores, international SEO allows you to easily reach those markets and find your target audience. International SEO is the simplest strategy you can adapt to if you want your brand to go truly global.

Website traffic: Through an optimised website for global audiences, you can reach additional consumers from other nations and regions. This will automatically increase your website traffic, which will organically transform into new leads and sales.

Brand awareness: Ranking well in international SERPs can improve your brand’s visibility and awareness in new markets. When your website performs well for relevant keywords on a global scale, your brand’s reputation improves. As your credibility increases, the chances of people doing business with you also increase.

Conversion rates: If you are trying to reach a global audience with general content, the chance of it working in different markets is rather low. So targeting international audiences with localised content can increase conversion rates since customers are more likely to interact with information that speaks to them in their own language and culture.

Marketing cost: While international SEO is reputed to be rather expensive, in the long run, you can benefit from the initial costs of this strategy and save more from general marketing costs. After all, patience and consistency always pay the best.

New markets: The early bird catches the worm. International SEO allows your business to expand and reach new audiences globally, giving you a competitive advantage in new markets. If you are the first to attempt international SEO in your specific domain, that too can give a competitive edge to your business. By entering a competitor’s domain into Keyword Overview and setting the database to your new target market, you can also quickly identify if they are targeting the same market.

International SEO and your business: a match?

International SEO, or geotargeting, is a strategy that focuses on optimizing a website for different countries and languages. It involves creating and maintaining content in the target user’s language or languages to improve the user experience. But do you think your business needs international SEO? Well, if you want to reach customers all around the world, international SEO is an excellent way to introduce your brand to the world. But if you just want to target customers in a specific area, local SEO might suffice.

International SEO can boost brand awareness and generate leads from different regions around the world, but local SEO might be more effective for you if you are looking to attract customers to a physical location. In general, if the product or service offered by your business can be transported anywhere in the world, international SEO is a perfect strategy for you. If a remarkable portion of your website traffic comes from outside of your home country, international SEO and content writing services can help you convert these outside visitors into paying customers. Anyhow, you obviously need to adapt this strategy to stay competitive in your domain if your competitors are already optimizing their websites for international SEO.

To improve your website’s localization and search engine ranking, create separate websites or subdomains for each language. Use local currency and date formats to provide a more user-friendly experience for your users. Optimize your website for mobile devices, as a large number of people use their phones for web searches these days. Use the ‘hreflang’ tag to indicate the language and geographic version of a webpage to search engines; this will ensure your content is easily accessible and relevant to users.

Conclusion

All in all, international SEO might not be ideal for all kinds of businesses, but it is extremely profitable for those who can take advantage of it. International SEO is an effective strategy, but brands would truly benefit from partnering with SEO marketing service specialists that ensure these positive outcomes, and the best SEO company in Kerala is here to take your business global!

Viral Mafia has taken the digital marketing landscape of Kerala by storm and grown into the best digital marketing agency in Kochi within a brief timeframe. Entering a new market can definitely improve your business and boost your sales, but first, you need your brand to be visible in these markets. International SEO practices can help you achieve this, along with a consistent review of your progress. We can help you create a result-driven international SEO strategy for your brand, and we offer comprehensive digital marketing solutions for all your marketing headaches. So if you are ready to go global, connect with us!