Your business has been doing well and now it’s time for you to go international. To do so you’d definitely want your website to work in all of your target markets. Unfortunately, this is where some businesses encounter obstacles as international SEO is not straightforward. Sites like Facebook focus on language, allowing users to select their own language. Others, such as airline websites, ask users to select their country and send them to a specific URL based on their selection. And then there are the ones like eBay, which makes separate marketplaces available in the local languages of 23 different countries. Keep on reading to determine if you need help to achieve global awareness for your company. Web Design Coates MN
Literal Translations Won’t Cut It
Designing your website for different regions or countries is tricky. Although there are sites (like Facebook) that provide the same content in different languages depending on the user’s choice, they don’t simply run a literal translation algorithm such as Google Translate on their pages. This is because these translations are often inaccurate and lack context. In fact, the results may not even be what the target audience were looking for. This becomes an even bigger obstacle when it comes to keywords. Hence, it is important to get a native speaker verify the translated pages. Another pragmatic strategy is to look at what the competitors are doing. SEMRush is a great tool for this, as it can help you find approximate keyword search volumes, but also show you what terms your rivals are ranking or advertising in AdWords for in the target country
Know Your URLs
Your URL structure helps Google figure out which of your pages to show searchers in different countries. This is part of geo-targeting, which focuses on location. Most businesses either set up a whole new website for each target country or add a subdirectory structure on their existing website. The approach you choose will depend largely on the resources you can dedicate to the creation and maintenance of it. A subdirectory for each country on your main/original website is best suited for businesses or organizations that want to serve companies across multiple countries and keep their communications on one website. For instance, Apple, Nike, and Spotify. Creating separate websites for each country would be more advisable for large businesses with deep resources because maintaining multiple websites is very expensive. Some popular companies that maintain different websites are Sony, Disney, and McDonald’s. For more details, feel free to contact Portkey SEO Solutions, the best web design company in Coates, MN, today!
Target Languages With Hreflang Tags
Hreflang tags are small snippets of code used on those websites that have content in multiple languages. They help search engines match up the correct language with the searcher. Now, how can search engines determine a user’s language? Let’s take Google as a case. Google, by analyzing the search terms and through its access to a user’s settings, search history, location, and which Google domain they are using (google.com vs. google.in, for example), can figure out the language preferences of a user. Because of these tags, you can be assured that Spanish speakers who search for your page get to see its Spanish version and not the English or Italian ones. These tags also help stop your different page versions from competing with each other, therefore providing better ranks.
Hope after reading this, you have more clarity in the realm of international search engine optimization. There are some other factors to consider as well. For instance, although Google usage is ubiquitous in the United States, it might not be the case in other countries. For example, 63% of searches in China are made through Baidu while Yandex is the popular choice in Russia and Eastern European countries. To come up with SEO strategies that work for you, contact Portkey SEO Solutions today!
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