What is International SEO?

Optimizing a website  is very important and causes an increase in website traffic and success in any online career.



Now we have to go beyond the limits and use international tools to introduce our services internationally, to make our website accessible for users around the world, so you can get closer to your main goal. In line with achieving this goal,  international-SEO  can be used, which we will explain in this regard.

What is International-SEO?

International SEO is the process of organizing and optimizing website pages. Through this website optimization, search engines can easily determine which countries you want to target and which languages you will use for your website and your business.

What is the difference between international SEO and regular SEO?

The word SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. To do SEO, you need to perform techniques and activities inside or outside the website  to get a high website ranking in search engines. This will increase user visits as well as website traffic.  International-SEO  is the same as regular SEO, with a difference that in international SEO, your business is based on geographical location. By performing techniques, you attract users from near and far geographical locations, which attract users from all around the world with different languages and cultures.

In other words, in international SEO, instead of optimizing your website to increase traffic to your website from nearby locations and attracting users with a common language and culture.

What are the reasons for using international-SEO?

To be as successful as possible, we need to attract users from different regions to increase website traffic. To achieve this goal,  international SEO  is very important. It can be a great way to improve the position and progress in business because this is a method that many  web designers  are unaware of, and most of them haven't used it yet.



In other words, international-SEO can create a better  user experience  (UX) for all users of your website and make all of them feel satisfied, and even share your website in social networks such as  Facebook, Instagram, etc., so that it helps your website to get a high ranking on the Google search page easily, and eventually you will achieve great success.

How to do international-SEO?

After considering all the benefits of doing SEO for your website and also for your business, you have thought about the way of doing SEO; if you want to create a completely international website, there are three steps to reach this goal:

First step:

Specify your target country with a URL structure that can be used by all users internationally, and target the country you want.

Second step:

On all pages of your site, specify the language you have selected as a language tag.

Third step:

While writing content, you should pay attention to the language you have chosen as your target; in other words, create and maintain content in the languages of your target users.

The best ways to internationalize a website SEO:

The URL structure for international sites:

To internationalize the SEO of a website, we must use the appropriate URL structure to correctly identify a target country on our website; in this way, the following URL can be used.

ccTLD: 

ccTLD  stands for Country Code Top Level Domain, it contains the letters after the top level in a recognizable domain name that contains two letters (for example, "UK" at www.example.uk), this type of URL determines which geographic area is your target and will gain the trust of users in that geographical area to your website.



When a website uses this type of URL structure, the Google search engine concludes that all content on that website is in the Geo-targeted ccTLD area and should be displayed on the search engine results page for that area.



The positive point of this structure is that it is great for increasing the  click-through rate  and has a great impact on the local ranking. On the other hand, it has negative points that one of them is the high price.

Subdomain:

Subdomains are parts of a larger top-level domain that have many applications in  international-SEO  and are very accessible.

Despite all the points as mentioned earlier, it should be noted that, unlike ccTLDs, this type of structure is not suitable for increasing click-through rates and also sends a weaker signal to search engines about the place that you want to rank.

Subdirectory:

With a subdirectory, they can have separate websites with different features and systems under the domain, which is very important, but the most important thing about this type of domain is that if it is penalized, the entire domain will be penalized too.

Hreflang:

The Hreflang tag shows the Google search engine what language the page is in, and as a result, search engines can show users results based on the country and its language

gTLD with language parameters:

A general high-level domain which targets a specific language.

Content analysis of international-sites:

The content of the website is very important and should be appropriate to the geographical location of the target, and in fact, it should be localized.

Backlinks:

It is necessary to be careful where the  backlinks  are taken from, because in this case, the users will click on these links to reach the source, and it must be compatible with the user's language.

Product variety:

The products offered must vary according to the different geographical areas that are the target and, in fact, must meet the needs of each target area.

Pricing structure:

When presenting a product, the pricing structure should also be different due to the different currencies of each country.

Strategy:

1- Select the best and most appropriate URL structure:

Given the different URL structures that we have described, you should choose the most appropriate one for your purpose, and you should pay attention to the pros and cons of using each URL.

2- Manage your strategy:

Managing an international  SEO strategy, is often being done by a professional team in the central department that is responsible for defining the strategy, and there are some teams that are responsible for the implementation.

3- Identify your audience:

In order to present a product as well as possible, you must determine your audience to offer the product according to their needs of them and put all your efforts into responding to the same users in order to gain the desired popularity among users and expand your business.

4- Research about competitors:

In order to win the race and achieve success, competitors should not be neglected, and their activities should be constantly analyzed.

5- Provide the necessary budget:

To succeed in the long path of international-SEO, you must have enough budget to be able to advance the path completely and not face a shortage of budget halfway.

6- Change your way of thinking:

To succeed in SEO, it is not enough to pay attention to the content and linking, but you must also change your way of thinking and attitude according to the geographical area so that you can get the attention of users and achieve more success in the field of your business.

7- Do thorough research on the keyword and create a successful keyword mapping:

While conducting international  SEO strategies, keywords should not be translated alone because they may have different meanings and may no longer be considered as a keyword.

8- Determine your content by keyword ranking:

Depending on the target geographic area, you can select keywords that have a high ranking and produce content based on these keywords.

9- If you use photos and videos, you must localize:

You may see the need to use photos and videos on a website. In this case, it is so important that it is appropriate to the culture and needs of users in different geographical areas so that you can create a positive user experience for the users of your website.

10- Use different methods for link building:

As we mentioned in the previous section, links are very important in international-SEO. To be more successful in this field and also achieve your goal, you must use different link-building techniques.

Last word:

To succeed in different geographical areas and develop your business in another geographical area, you must try international SEO. In this article, we tried our best to explain this issue as easily as possible, but it should be noted that international-SEO is a complex process; For this reason, we must consult with those who have enough experience in this field and use the guidance of these people to be successful in this field.