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| International SEO: How To Rank Top On Serps Using Different Languages by Seofingers(m): 12:36am On Aug 03, 2018 |
Introduction to International SEO The need for International SEO considerations emanated from the growing number of internet users index from Europe to Asia-Pacific and across Africa continents which equally increased users search intents across different geographical landscapes. Suffix to this development, multi-national companies with a business interest in different continents need to optimize their website with an eye to capture the Local markets across these divides. This is needful because SEO for international business enables global operators to communicate their brands with local clients or customers in a way that appeal to their individual culture, language and national identity. Therefore, for a corporate entity to function optimally in different geographical zones across the globe, it must integrate some International SEO best practices into their official website. This and many more International SEO strategies will be uncovered in the following highlights. What is International SEO? International SEO is the technical process of optimizing a website for the search engine with the interest of easily interpreting which geographical location and business language an entity hold. Unlike a Local SEO strategy which focuses on capturing some local searcher intents through On-Page optimization, International SEO gravitates towards a more complex web optimization technicality. Although both Local and International SEO strategy’s endpoint is to increase a website’s webpage rank on the Search Engine Results Pages, however, the former operates with a unilateral idea of common culture and identity while the latter is more heterogeneous to these elements. International SEO features geo-specific optimized URLs, multi-lingual translations for different operational locations, link building from country-specific domains (ccTLDs) and business directory update on geo-specific Google My Business Pages. In essence, SEO international targeting ultimately positions your website to capture global audience irrespective of their culture, language or identity. How to do International SEO SEO for international sites requires the know-how of a certified international SEO expert due to its complexities. Nevertheless, if you are savvy in web design and development, you should be able to crack the fundamentals of building a website that integrates an International SEO marketing approach. Here are details into International SEO Checklist and what needs to be done; #1. Implement The Hreflang Tag Implementing the hreflang tag helps the search engine to easily understand the localized versions of a webpage and ultimately point users to the most appropriate version of your page with respect to their language or region. To practically activate the hreflang tag on your website, you can follow three specific routes namely; • HTML tags • HTTP Headers • XML Sitemap HTML Tags: The choice of HTML tags in hreflang tag integration is useful if your website does not have a sitemap or an HTTP response header. Simply add <link rel="alternate" hreflang="lang_code"... > elements to your page header. This action intimates the search engine about all the language and region variants of each webpage on your website. For different pages on your website, each should include a set of <link> elements [<link rel="alternate" hreflang="langcode" href="url-of-page" />]in the <head> element. For example; An international SEO optimized website that serves users in the USA, Great Britain, and Germany. The following URLs variations occur due to regional differences. http://en.example.com/page- Generic English language homepage that contains page information for the Great Britain Market. http://en-us.example.com/page - US homepage that displays webpage information for the USA market. http://ng.example.com/page - Nigeria homepage specific for the Nigerian market. http://www.example.com/ -Default page that doesn't specify any language or locale. However, it is important to reveal that the language-specific subdomains in these URLs (en, en-gb, en-us, de) are not used by search engines to determine the target audience for the page; instead, you must explicitly map the target audience. HTTP Headers: The choice of an HTTP header for hreflang tag implementation is often adopted if you have a non-HTML file on your website which you want to geo-target for a better user experience and familiarization. Link: <url1>; rel="alternate"; hreflang="lang_code_1", <url2>; rel="alternate"; hreflang="lang_code_2", ...<url_x> For example; header returned by a site that has three versions of a non-HTML files: One for English speakers, another for French speakers from Switzerland, and one for Portuguese speakers: Link :<http://example.com/file.pdf> ; rel="alternate” ; hreflang="en", <http://fr-ch.example.com/file.pdf> ; rel="alternate” ; hreflang="fr-ch", <http://pt.example.com/file.pdf> ; rel="alternate”; hreflang="pt" XML Sitemap Use for Hreflang Tag Integration: Alternative to the two approached explained earlier is using Sitemap to structure each Url on your website with respect to language and regional variations. Proceed to identify the <loc> element specifying a single URL, with child <nhtml: link> entries listing every language/locale variant of the page including itself. This positions your webpage(s) to showcase multiple entries distinct for each region or operational base. Using the example used in HTTP headers; for English, French and Portuguese speakers; encoding your Sitemap for Hreflang should follow this order; <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9" xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <url> <loc>http://www.example.com/english/page.html</loc> <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="http://www.example.com/english/page.html"/> <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-ch" href="http://www.example.com/franciase-deutsch/page.html"/> <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="pt" href="http://www.example.com/portuguese/page.html"/> </url> <url> <loc>http://www.example.com/francaise-deutsch/page.html</loc> <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="http://www.example.com/english/page.html"/> <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-ch" href="http://www.example.com/francaise-deutsch/page.html"/> <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="pt" href="http://www.example.com/portuguese/page.html"/> </url> <url> <loc>http://www.example.com/portuguese/page.html</loc> <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="http://www.example.com/english/page.html"/> <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-ch" href="http://www.example.com/francaise-deutsch/page.html"/> <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="pt" href="http://www.example.com/portuguese/page.html"/> </url> </urlset> #2. Structure your Website for Language Translations and Country-Specific URLs Every webmaster interested in capturing international SEO needs to design a site architecture that is optimized around a country code top-level domain [ccTLDs]. ccTLDs are top-level domains specially reserved for a sovereign state or dependent entity within a country. These are often expressed using canonicals like .us, .uk, .ng, .de, .ca, .fr, .se, .kr, .au and others. Furthermore, you should organize webpage contents with reference to regional languages that suits each sub-domain and sub-directory. Permit me to add that using adopting ccTLDs for transcribing your web contents could put your site at the risk of duplicate contents if not properly handled by an International SEO webmaster. Besides, the implementation of ccTLDs as international SEO strategy could demand a lot of financial outlay which could only be sustained by the big industry players. As a matter of fact, avoid using google translation as a translation tool for your web contents. To clear all doubts of mis-transcribing your contents, you can employ the services of a certified language translation amongst the locals in your country of operation. These hurdles have seen more global brands and international SEO agencies embrace the use of subdomains and subdirectories to neutralize the language and cultural barriers. #3. Register your NAP for each region using Google My Business Just like the Local SEO approach, you should equally register your business information like Name, Address, and Phone contacts related to specific locations where you have an operational base. This helps to ensure that your business is not missing out on being visible to local users on Google business listings. Advisably, consider streamlining your International SEO Keyword Research and Landing page to capture the regional specifics that suit each search intents for your business. Ensure you properly optimize your title tags, meta tags, images and snippets that simply direct your contents for an increased visibility among other competing search engine results pages (SERPs). You must understand that the seamless transcription experience of your web searchers in different regions across the globe could have a great influence on your conversion rate which could as well affect your International SEO ROI. Therefore, it is important that you create a sketchy framework into that defines each operational region or zones you are targeting for International SEO and endeavor to showcase them in each geo-targeted website outlook. #4. Build Links From ccTLDs. The link-building approach for International SEO is quite different from the standard SEO practices you are familiar with. Before now, you already know that link-building is an important strategy to adopt if you want to get your contents to the first page of search engines. However, the approach you need to follow in getting ranked on top of search engines in different geographical space is to build links from websites with a similar country-specific domain. This International SEO link-building approach will enable the search engine to profile your web contents in a specified format for optimal visibility to searchers. To track the links from other ccTLDs, you can integrate Google Search Console into WordPress or your choice Content Management System and employ the use of other relevant international SEO tools to get further explicit information into searchers intent across your all regions. #5. Get a Good Web-Hosting Package To ensure that your website optimally performs when visited by a web user from different locations, you need to choose a tested and trusted web hosting package. Consider a web host with a regional Content Delivery Network (CDN) feature to ensure that there is a guarantee for quick loading of your web contents ranging from the HTML pages, JavaScript files, stylesheets, images, and videos. CDN hosting package serves high traffic social sites like Facebook, Netflix and E-Commerce giant site- Amazon. A website configured using CDN gets secured against some common malicious attacks, such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks. It equally guides against an excessive cost of bandwidths consumption through caching and website interruptions that could come from a large amount of traffic. On a Final Note… Before launching an International SEO campaign for different markets, you should consider weighing the costs/benefits of such an expensive strategy. You can adopt the use of International SEO ROI Calculator which will offer reliable statistics to evaluate if an international SEO effort will produce a good return for your company at this time. Should you decide to implement International SEO fundamentals into your business operations, you can consider employing an international SEO manager with an international SEO certification as a member of your in-house marketing team or outsource your international SEO projects to a top SEO company or consultant. Kindly share your thoughts about this topic and reveal if your entity has ever considered employing International SEO strategy. Source: www.seofingers.com/international-seo 1 Like
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