International SEO

Since customers are now used to using services worldwide and being able to order conveniently from anywhere, the demands on companies and their websites are also growing. However, this development does not only bring the advantage of an extended target group for companies but also the challenge of international search engine optimization. International SEO describes the search engine optimization of a website for different countries and languages. A well-thought-out internationalization strategy is absolutely necessary to ensure that a website performs well in terms of SEO not only in its country of origin but also in all other countries. The adaptation to the respective target market plays a central role because a simple translation of the website is far from sufficient here.

International SEO is mainly relevant for companies where it may make sense to additionally offer their own products or services in other countries. With the right international SEO strategy, different target markets can be addressed, visibility can be increased and in this way traffic on one’s own website, as well as sales can be significantly increased.

The biggest mistake is when one simply assumes a direct translation of keywords is sufficient. While translating keywords may be correct in meaning, localization takes local and cultural backgrounds into account.

Example:

If an insurance company from an English-speaking market also wants to gain a foothold in Germany and simply translates “car insurance” as “Autoversicherung”, they will lose a lot of traffic. The reason: In Germany, “KFZ Versicherung” is the keyword that is predominantly searched for, even reaching a search volume four times greater than the keyword “Autoversicherung”. Native speakers help to circumvent these semantic hurdles.

At Claneo we work hybrid. Our team of native speakers is responsible for our core markets: Germany, USA, Canada, UK, Ireland, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy, Turkey, Brazil and Portugal. For markets that we cannot cover internally, we cover with curated freelancers (at least two per market). Since Google is the main search engine in most countries, it basically comes down to strategy and content to be successful internationally.

At Claneo, we work with the six-eyes principle: An SEO analyst takes over the content strategy, an editor writes the content, and a proofreader does the final review. In addition, tools can help to accompany the process or to work with term weightings.

In our experience, a country code domain is a good choice if, for example, you were previously only active in Germany with the country code top-level domain “.de”. Furthermore, studies show that country code domains have a high reputation among local customers. A language directory makes sense if you already have a strong .com with a high authority and then decide to localize.