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As the world becomes increasingly digitised, the demand for a comprehensive, global SEO strategy grows. More and more companies are launching international sites and vying for a spot on the first page of search engines. This is only made more complicated by ever-changing search engine guidelines that seem to get updated every couple of months.
In this competitive landscape, creating a suitable, international link building strategy is crucial to the visibility of your website. But first, you must understand what global SEO is.
What is global SEO?
Global Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of optimising a website so that search engines can recognise the regions and countries you want to reach and the languages that should be used to reach your target audience. In other words, it is the process of optimising a website for international users.
Global SEO is considerably more complex than local SEO, because different users from different regions will have their own set of expectations and needs to be met when they visit your website. When you optimise locally, you only have to take care of one or two languages and the cultural specifications of one group of people.
Who needs Global SEO?
That said, one method being more complex is not a good reason on its own to implement it. However, if you are a global brand with an international presence and a significant portion of your sales come from international leads, then you should have a global SEO strategy.
Creating a strategy for global SEO
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Conduct market research
The first step to creating a strategy is to do sufficient market research. This is the step in which you lay the groundwork, and you should make sure to be as thorough as you can, so you will have enough information to go on when you plan out your strategy.
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Understand your target markets
A strategy for global SEO should begin with identifying your target markets and your priorities within these markets. These regions will be your primary focus.
After identifying your target regions, you should gather information on the type of keywords that perform well there, the search volumes of keywords, particular regions where your niche is more well-received, and your audience size. You should also, of course, ensure that you have native speaker resources for each of your target market, so you can better understand cultural nuances, slang used, and more.
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Understand the search behaviour of your target users
After you have identified your target regions, you should dive deeper into the behaviour of the different target markets. For example, a Japanese user searching for ‘onsen’ may be looking for one nearby, while a Scandinavian user may be searching for what an onsen is, due to cultural and linguistic differences.
Understanding this can inform your keyword targeting at a later stage and understand the kind of results that perform well in local SERPs.
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Do competitor analysis
Finally, you should conduct competitor analysis across the markets. Take note of the kind of links your rivals have, the keywords they use, the type of websites they have optimised, the content they post, and everything in between.
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Define your business goals
Next, you should focus on identifying your business goals. You should understand your goals across markets and have market-specific goals. For example, you may wish to grow your business by increasing the overall sales and revenue across markets by 20% in half a year, with specific wishes for your Asian target markets to grow in brand visibility in Q1 and Q2.
You can also plan for short-term wins and long-term goals, which can help you more reasonably achieve your targets and allocate your resources more effectively. The few things you should always keep in mind when you are setting your goals include:
- Your KPIs and metrics to be measured
- Your target markets
- A timeframe over which you would like to accomplish your goals
- Budget allocation and resources available
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Understand the specifics of global SEO
Next, you should focus on the global SEO solutions themselves, and your options among them.
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URL structures for international markets
Regardless of whether you use the same domain, having localised versions of your website is crucial in your global SEO strategy.
There are different types of ways you can localise your website.
You can do so with different ccTLDs (top level domains), such as yourwebsite.co.uk for British users, yourwebsite.com.jp for Japanese users, etc. This is one of the most straightforward ways of setting up localised versions of your website that can signal both to Google and to users that the version of the website caters to them. However, it does necessitate creating a new domain, which can be expensive and complex when it comes to optimisation efforts.
You can also create a subdomain of your existing domain, such as jp.yourwebsite.com, or a subdirectory on your existing domain (like a subfolder), such as yourwebsite.com/jp. Both are relatively easy to create and do not require an entirely new domain. However, the use of language specifications does send weaker localisation signals to Google.
When you decide on a structure, you should consider your resources and budget. If you are working with a smaller team that will have limited time optimising your localised website, you can perhaps opt to create subdomains or adding subdirectories onto your existing domain. This way, you can easily optimise and grow your domain strength across regions in one go.
However, if you have a larger team with more resources, and brand visibility is one of your core goals, you may want to create separate domains for different markets.
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International link building strategy
Link building is a fundamental part of an SEO strategy. When building global links, you should have a diverse link source with different language domains and sites. This can create a varied link profile, which, when populated with quality websites, can help increase your domain strength.
You should also ensure that there are no cross-country connections, which means that your British website should not have French backlinks. There are tools to cross-check your link profile and the kind of backlinks your site has, including Ahrefs, Screaming Frog, and SEMRush.
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Localise your on-site content
Another important step is to optimise your on-site content. This means not only should you be providing quality content that matches user intent and search queries, but you should also develop content that fits the cultural and linguistic context for the right target market.
This is particularly important when it comes to selecting keywords. Even though a keyword may work well in English, it may not be as effective in another language for another domain. You should ensure that your content provides value to end users based on their regional needs, and you should never directly translate keywords from English to another language.
If you are running a web shop, you should also optimise products and services to be priced in local currencies, and all contact numbers and addresses should be accessible to residents. Pay attention to nuances, such as American and British spellings of English, and pay attention to the language used, including slang and unique grammatical usages.
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Optimise your local profile
Finally, if you are running a global brand with local business profiles, you should always make sure to update them on search engines. For example, your Google My Business profile should be filled with up-to-date, local information on where your offices and shops may be located. This can help regional users find your company and brand much more quickly.
Conclusion
There is a lot to gain from going global as a business, and international visibility can really take your brand to the next level. An effective SEO strategy can be quite complex, but it ultimately starts with doing sufficient market research and having a good understanding of the best SEO practices. For some, planning a global SEO strategy involves reaching out to SEO agencies for help, which is something that can be worth thinking about if you have limited resources in-house. Regardless of your business size, there is a strategy for everyone.
