Having an online business for an international market can be a challenge. To be able to rank in different countries and different languages it is important to learn some of the International SEO Consultant Best Practices.

In this article, Moz explains how to optimize your site so that search engines can easily identify which countries you want to target and which languages you use for business.

International SEO Best Practices

If you’re looking to create a completely internationalized site (i.e., one that specifically targets a different country and a different language), your high-level to-dos for accomplishing this “international geotargeting” are:

URL structures for international sites:

There are a few URL structures International SEO Consultants can employ to target a particular country with their websites. They include using a country code top-level domain , a subdomain, a subdirectory or subfolder, a gTLD with language parameters, or even using a different domain name entirely. Let’s take a closer look at each one of these options:

Language-target your website

International SEO Consultant can show search engines which languages you’re set up to handle with these few practices:

• Make sure that everything from your site navigation, to your content, to your help desk, is in the primary language of the region you’re targeting.
• Don’t use machine translations (they’re still just not good enough).
• Don’t automatically redirect a user to a different language based on location. It’s fine to suggest an alternate language site, but you don’t know (without asking) if that English-language searcher in France is an expat, a student of foreign language, or someone who’s lost on the internet.
• Stay away from using cookies or scripts to show different-language versions of page. Search engines can’t crawl that type of dynamic content, and human users may not be able to see it, either.

Tailor your content to your target user’s language and culture

Make sure you are providing information that’s suited to your target audience(s). By using the local language, currency, and timezone together with contact information like addresses and phone numbers, you’re sending users and search engines strong signals that they’re in the right spot.

Also think about cultural differences when you ask International SEO Consultants to create your design and content. Different regions look at things like color, layout, and style of humor in very different ways.

By making it unambiguously clear that your page is for them, you’re increasing the chances that they’ll have a positive experience.

Other signals International SEO Consultants use

Other signals to show search engines that your site targets a specific country include:

• Hosting your site on a local IP
• Linking to local content
• Building links from local resources
• Finding ways to rank on local search engines like Yandex in Russia and Baidu in China

Other points to consider when optimizing your website are making it responsive. To know more about the best mobile friendly practices read the Multilingual SEO Agency Guide to Mobile First

If you are looking to expand your online business globally and rank in different languages and countries, Contact Us, our International SEO Consultants know the best practices to make you stand out in a global market.

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