14 International SEO Strategies To Expand Your Global Reach

Most brands want to expand their business activities globally to get more customers and reach. However, the diverse regions and languages pose challenges in optimizing the strategies and establishing an online presence. This is why it is important to implement global SEO strategies that connect with the target region and its customers. In this article, we dive more into international SEO strategies and how you can leverage them to build a global brand presence, let’s get started.

For those who don’t know, an international SEO strategy focuses on establishing a brand’s online presence, boosting website visibility, etc across different nations worldwide. Let’s explain with an example, 

Suppose you have an e-commerce site having three pages selling the same product. One is in English, the second one is in Arabic and the other one is in French. With a well-executed international SEO strategy, when someone in the Middle East searches for that specific product, they will see your Arabic product page and not the other ones in the search results.

How International SEO Strategies Benefit You

Businesses are looking to break into new markets by implementing international SEO strategies, why? More traffic, higher reach, and better brand visibility are some of the benefits offered. But there are even more benefits of international SEO services which are as follows:

Eliminates Duplicate Content Issues

Having duplicate web content lowers your rankings and makes search engines confused in figuring out the relevant one. International SEO helps by signaling search engines the right page for the user based on region and language

Expands Your Business Reach

International SEO strategies result in your web pages getting higher rankings in search results. More rankings mean more reach and better visibility. This results in higher brand recognition and trust among customers.

Displays Your Most Relevant Pages

All businesses want their relevant web pages to be ranked and dominate the first spot on Google. With international SEO, when people find your webpage having exactly what they are looking for in their language, this results in higher engagements and it will be surely picked by search engines.

International SEO vs Traditional SEO: The Differences

When speaking about global SEO strategies, they are usually different in execution when compared to traditional or local SEO. Both of them can be considered as the two sides of a coin. So, how are they different? Let us find out below:

International SEO	Local SEO
Competes with various businesses on a global scale	Competes with local businesses within the market
Focus on broader and general keywords	Focus on keywords specific to a single location
The target audience includes a diverse customer base across multiple geographical regions	The target audience includes customers in a specific area
Consists of ccTLDs and subdomains for different regions	Consists of a single straightforward structure
Business listings include international search engine platforms	Focus on optimizing search engines specific to that region.

International SEO Strategies To Expand Global Reach

Develop a Localized Content Strategy

Whether you plan to implement international SEO, one of the things is to prepare a content strategy for your intended target region and language. Region-specific content allows you to meet user requirements and tailor your services to match their needs. You must prepare content specific to the target region and even though it is valuable, you must use the right keywords to target the local audience.

Use Hreflang Tags

These HTML attributes signal the search engines which language and geographical region a webpage is intended for. The following is a hreflang tag example:

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”fr” href=”https://yourwebsite.ae” />

Here the “ae” tag is targeted at people in the UAE, therefore, the domain leads to the UAE version of your website. Therefore, Hreflang tags ensure that the correct website version is shown to the intended audiences.

Include Local Cultures

Want to achieve long-term success with global SEO strategies? Embrace and incorporate the local cultural elements. What worked for one region may not have the same result for another market. If you plan to enter a foreign market, it is important to research the particular region’s unique perspective, culture, language, time zone, color, style, etc. After getting all these factors, make a tailor-made custom website to suit their interests

Optimize for Mobile

It’s crucial to make your business website mobile-optimized. This is because Google uses mobile-first indexing as it evaluates the mobile version of your website for rankings. Having a mobile-optimized website means better user engagement, reduced bounce rates, and increased conversions. As most regions worldwide have a higher mobile internet usage, this is something you shouldn’t avoid at all.

Identify An International Market Presence

Before venturing out into the global market, you must identify if your brand/business has an international audience. You can use Google Analytics to check the source of your traffic. Focus on markets or regions where your brand or products are popular.

Research More About Your Global Audience

Just like finding out if there is a market for your brand, you have to understand the audience you plan to reach out to. You must start by researching more about their needs, interests, and problems and offer your brand/business as the solution to their requirements.

Perform Global Keyword Research

Keyword research is something that makes or breaks your SEO campaign. Whether international SEO or not, targeting keywords is important to get customers to visit your website. Make sure to focus on long-tail keywords that have less competition and are culturally relevant to the region and target audience.

Focus On The Most Popular Search Engines

Google retains around 90.01% of the global market share when it comes to search engines. Due to this, most brands don’t focus on other search engines, making it one of the international SEO mistakes. When you implement global SEO, you should be optimizing the most popular search engine in that particular region or country you are targeting.

Comply with local Laws & Regulations

When it comes to SEO marketing, different regions have different laws, rules, and regulations., so, if you are into global SEO strategies, it is important to adhere to local laws and make necessary modifications to your website to establish your brand or business.

Don’t Ignore Off-page SEO

You worked hard formulating an international SEO checklist strategy and created content that connects with the audience, good. But it won’t be much of use if you haven’t done off-page SEO. Off-page SEO are optimization strategy done externally on your website to build domain authority and trust. Some of the strategies include link building, guest blogging, influencer outreach, etc.

Maintain a well-configured URL structure

Take any international SEO expansion strategy, it will be well-configured and updated with SEO-friendly elements. Having such a URL allows search engines to index your brand website correctly. It also helps with improving SEO, and user experience, preventing duplicate issues and enhancing click-through rates

Pick The Right Social Media Platform

Choosing the right social media platform is crucial to understand your target audience and their needs. Even though these platforms won’t contribute to your rankings directly, they can help increase brand reach. When choosing a region for implementing global SEO, you must know the popular social media platform used there, what type of audience interacts with your brand, etc.

Optimize & Localize Your Content

Entering a new market is good but you have to make sure your web contents are translated and localized to the target region’s audience. Unless you are fully versed in that particular language, it’s wise to hire someone who can make the localisation work easier for you. Also, relying on online translators only isn’t enough.

Track Your Global SEO Performance

Once you implement a global SEO campaign, the work isn’t over. The campaign’s performance and various factors have to be measured using certain metrics. This includes the keywords, content and other areas of your website. Some of these performance metrics include organic traffic, bounce rates, localization effectiveness and more.

Conclusion

In this evolving digital landscape, businesses need to think and act globally to achieve long-term success. Having a well-executed and optimized international SEO expansion strategy ensures that your brand is engaged by audiences worldwide. This results in higher reach, revenue and visibility. However, creating one from scratch involves significant research that can take time. 

This is why you must hire GTECH, Dubai’s most renowned digital marketing agency for your brand. With our professional expertise, you can take your business to new international heights. We have worked with several brands in establishing a global presence and we can do the same for you.

What do you think about the various international SEO services to expand your global reach? Do you have more in mind? Please let us know in the comments.