Maybe business is going well in the UK, and another country looks like the next obvious place to grow. You already know which products sell and that the website is doing its job here, but the temptation is to keep most of it the same and just change whatever looks obviously British.
Not quite, as search terms can trip you up. What you call something here isn’t necessarily what somebody elsewhere will type into Google. Sometimes the difference is less obvious, as two phrases can mean much the same thing, but one gets searched for regularly and the other hardly gets used. You wouldn’t necessarily spot that by looking at the website.
It also means a keyword that has been brilliant for you in the UK could turn out to be almost useless when you start looking at another country.
That’s why international SEO (search engine optimisation) needs its own keyword research. Translating the phrases you already target might give you somewhere to start, but you still need to check what people in that country actually search for.
The website itself may need changing as well. Some businesses use a separate domain for each country, while others keep everything together and create different sections for each market. There isn’t one setup that suits everybody. It depends on where you’re selling and how much the content needs to change.
There are technical considerations too. Hreflang tags can help Google understand which version of a page is intended for a particular language or region. Visitors probably won’t ever notice them, but they can be important when you have similar pages aimed at different countries.
Then, there’s what people see when they land on the site. Someone in the US might be less comfortable buying from a page showing prices in pounds, UK delivery information and terminology they don’t normally use. Spelling, measurements, currencies and product names can all need adjusting.
Links are key as well. A strong collection of links from UK websites can help you here, but it doesn’t automatically give you the same presence abroad. Links and mentions from relevant websites in the country you’re targeting can help build this visibility.
You don’t need to tackle every country at once. Pick the market that is most important to you, find out how people there search and make sure the website feels like it was built with them in mind.
If you require any assistance with the SEO performance of your website, get in touch with us at Engage Web today.
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