What Is International SEO – Benefits, Common Mistakes & Strategy [2024 Guide]

Getting your dream international SEO strategy is no mean feat. There are a lot of factors at play to which people tend to give credit as it happens to be a thankless job. A successful international SEO strategy requires extensive knowledge about the company’s commercial strategy along with technical knowledge backed by excellent data skills. Still, many in the industry consider international SEO strategies as part of your hreflang setup Below is a comprehensive list of the popular international SEO strategies.

Why companies need to comply with international SEO strategies

Companies evolve by expanding their products and services where the focus is on gaining penetration into the new markets. The goal of the team may be a tactic, to generate revenue as the leadership team may be working under different sets of parameters. Most of the time the goal of the leadership is to enhance maximum shareholder value.

Figuring out the reasons why your company needs to comply with international SEO best practices is important. What may be the best practice for SEO may not be suitable for the business.

Order the target markets in your investment stack to determine priority.

An international SEO strategy is all about commercial awareness as this is expected to make you a better professional. Most companies have different markets to reflect how much priority each market has. An example is that American companies tend to prioritize English-speaking countries such as the UK or Canada. They are similar to the core market and most of them tend to be transferable.

Define URL structure 

As part of the international SEO checklist, there are a few URL structures each with its pros and cons. Going with sub-directories happens to be the favorable option among all of them. The benefit of international SEO is that it may look personalized to people outside the US who may be thinking about whether you can service their markets.

International content may be placed on a subdomain. Of late the takers are limited since it is not going to bring anything to the table anymore. Subdomains face issues with international SEO best practices as Google ends up considering them as separate entities. The separation may dilute the link but does have the advantages of geo-targeting.

Understanding the Hreflang set- up

This turns out to be a complex aspect of an international SEO service. It is a module where search engines are told that a document is a version of the other and explains the relationship between them. The concept of Hreflang is very interesting from a technical point of view. Development teams mostly manage it as it can follow a hit-or-a-miss procedure.

In some cases, there may be a field in the CRM that the development teams need to pull up from the Hreflang setup. There is a need to find out how Hreflangs are generated as it can be useful when it comes to risk identification. An international SEO strategy advocates the implementation of hreflang without errors

There are numerous ways by which you may implement Hreflang on your website. Most of us are familiar with the method of HTML head. As part of your international SEO strategies, you can use more than one method but it needs to be used perfectly. If it is not done you may end up confusing the search engines

Hrelfangs need to be reciprocal and at the same time, regular audits are also important. This happens to be one of the international SEO mistakes that you need to avoid. If you are interested in the technical aspect beyond Hreflang there are other recommendations to follow. Translation of top-performing content topics should be part of your international SEO strategy.

By now the commercial or technical knowledge has been covered it is the right time to go ahead with a content strategy. In the core market, there is a wealth of content that can be recycled. However, the focus has to be translated on the top covering topics not just any topic. The reason being otherwise you would be wasting your time and budget.

The key is to go step by step and understand which topics you would be translating first. You need to choose how many topics or content you are looking to translate first based on your budget.

Localize English content

Once you are done with the key pages and a few content topics, the time is right to evaluate your investment and understand how you will get a better return. This is one of the benefits of international SEO that you should look to cash in. At this juncture, many of the companies would have translated their content into various languages. After having done the translation, the time is right for localization.

You may want to instruct the translation and localization providers in adapting to the spelling of certain words and changing the choice of words. 

Invest in market content should be part of international SEO best practices

After having the basics in place, you could end up targeting the basics of other markets. This strategy is expensive and you should be using it only in priority markets which sets you apart from the competition. For this reason, you may have to work with a local linguist to identify pain points or needs exclusive to your target market. This happens to be among the international SEO strategies that you need to comply with at all levels.

Integration with other content workflows

In our earlier step, we evaluated the top-performing content, chose the best articles, and got it down. To be running a successful international SEO campaign you need to integrate all teams publishing content in your organization.

There is a lot of content and you will not be able to integrate it all at once. You need to prioritize the teams that create the most revenue-generating content such as product marketing or SEO content. Once you work with these teams you will be able to create a process for what happens when you are creating a new piece or removing an existing piece. The process may differ for everyone.

To conclude, international SEO is complex and vast, even no article can cover it at all. Numerous interesting resources have been created by the SEO community for all those who are looking to learn more. It takes skill to navigate the nuances of foreign SEO. 

From understanding the core motives of the company, meticulously implementing hreflang tags, and localizing content international SEO best practices have an important role to play.

For such interesting blogs, you should connect with GTECH, one of the leading International SEO agencies from Dubai.