In the following, we have put together the most important questions you need to ask yourself for successful, international SEO:
1. Should I do international SEO ?
Before carrying out a corresponding search engine optimization, you have to ask yourself: Is there a market for my products and services abroad at all? The answer to this question provides a detailed analysis.
Check if you have a lot of traffic from other countries on your site. This is an important first indicator. You can get this data from Google Analytics, for example.
If you are planning to expand in a specific country, you should of course also carefully check the general situation here. Is there a correspondingly high search volume for relevant keywords? What about competitors?
Only with a precise analysis can you determine whether international SEO is worthwhile for you at all.
2. How do I create my website in other languages?
A particularly important point in the context of international search engine optimization is the technical implementation of a website in different languages or versions.
There are basically three options:
Top-level domain for every country : With this method you can create a separate website for practically every country, which can then be reached with the appropriate suffix tr, ch, uk, au, etc.
The advantages of this strategy are the simple URL structure and the precise overview of each individual page. Also, if you are penalized, only one side is affected, not your entire side.
However, there are also disadvantages: You have to implement SEO measures for several domains instead of just one and potentially maintain many websites. If your site is to appeal to customers from all over the world equally, the many domains can make it difficult for them or they seem confusing.
Subdomains for each country : This variant can be recognized by a prefix, for example nl.domain.fr or au.domain.co.uk is in the URL. The advantage here is also the great clarity, the disadvantage is again the fact that SEO measures have to be carried out for each individual subdomain.
Subdirectories for each country : If you create subdirectories for the different language versions of your website, it looks like this, for example: domain.au/fr or domain.fr/nl. Particularly practical here: All SEO measures that are carried out for the main page also affect the subdirectories. However, this solution is also limiting. This means that the different versions of the website cannot be implemented as flexibly as may be necessary depending on the country.
In this context, we can of course only roughly outline the exact advantages and disadvantages of the individual solutions. Before starting your website, you should always check which variant is best for you – also with regard to the applicable Google guidelines!
3. What should my SEO & Marketing strategy look like for different countries?
We already touched it briefly above: The language is not the only difference between different sales markets. Not only the technical structure of your international website requires an individual adjustment of the search engine optimization, also cultural differences affect your marketing measures.
As part of your SEO strategy for international success at Google, you should pay close attention to all of these areas and plan how you will design each of your web presences.
Instead of hiring an SEO company in each individual country, you can directly fall back on an expert for international SEO. This ensures that not only the technical adaptation, but also the content and design of your pages is effective.