Virtual stores have reached the peak in recent years and the trend is that they continue to grow more and more. That’s why, If your time has come to grow and cross borders, do not do it without international SEO.
Consumers around the world have massively adopted this form of consumption that, thanks to all its advantages, they will hardly be able to stop using. Various factors have contributed to making this medium a daily way of shopping and many e-commerce companies are beginning to see opportunities outside their borders.
If the time has come for your internationalization, you should know that it is not the same to stand out in your market than to stand out in another with different characteristics. Therefore, if they work in your territory, they can also generate great results for your brand abroad. But for this, the particularities of this strategy must be taken into account when it is implemented in different countries simultaneously.
In this article, we will tell you everything you need to know about international SEO and how to make your optimization efforts go beyond the limits of your country and lead you to success.
So let’s go!
What is international SEO?
As you know, SEO is the strategy that optimizes web pages to get good positions in search engines. Thus, international SEO is the set of optimization tactics that are used for search engines to identify in which countries and languages you want to establish a presence.
In other words, we can say that international SEO is the geolocation of SEOthat is, instead of attracting local traffic, you will optimize for different countries and, if you wish, for other languages.
What are the possibilities of international SEO?
There are three types of models that can be explored in international SEO and we will look at them in detail now.
Country
When a company wants to reach another nationit is important to carry out an analysis before deciding on the best strategy to follow, considering the local culture and other factors that may influence it.
An example of a country objective is a Mexican underwear company that wants to start selling its products to other Latin American countries that have Spanish as their native language.
Idiom
In this case, the company wants to reach another country that does not speak the same language as its original market. In this way, in addition to studying the target audience to establish the tone of the communication, you must do all the adaptation of the content to the new language. For this, it is essential to consider the cultural aspect of the new target.
An example of a language target would be if a Florida online store, which started selling its products to Americans living there, wanted to target the state’s Hispanic community.
country and language
This case is quite specific, but in a world as globalized as it is today, it is not so difficult. Occurs when a company wants to reach an audience in a language other than that of the target country.
For example, if the Mexican company that we mentioned wants to sell to the Italian community that lives in the United States, in Italian and not in English, it will have a hybrid objective, that is, country and language.
What are the advantages of doing international SEO for virtual stores?
International SEO for virtual stores allows you to:
Access new markets
Provides more opportunities for visibility in markets that do not know you yet, thanks to a good positioning. This allows you to exponentially increase your potential customers.
Increase your organic traffic
With greater visibility, greater probability that your virtual store obtains visits from potential new market customerswhich in the medium and long term will give you excellent commercial results.
Improve your brand image
Having a project with international visibility, your company grows remarkablywhich improves the image of your brand in all the territories you reach.
Increase revenue
By reaching new markets, even though you have higher costs, your sources of income also increase and multiply your sales. This provides you with a higher volume of income and higher profitability.
Improve supplier conditions
Higher rates of organic traffic through search engines will, over time, provide you with higher sales volume. With these results you can get better conditions with your suppliers, reducing costs that you had in your original market.
How to undertake an international SEO strategy in your virtual store?
Before actually starting your international SEO strategy, the first step should be to research your current situation with your new market. That way you can identify the potential of the new region and set your main goals.
For that, you can follow the next steps:
- Find out the current status of your position in organic searches in your new—or new—markets.
- Identify where your international visitors come fromif they are one of those new markets that you want to reach or if there are opportunities that you have not yet discovered.
- Analyze which are the most searched keywords by international visitors.
- Identify how they behave and what are your needs.
It is important to consider that, The more culturally distant a market is, the more resources you should allocate to it.. Therefore, it is preferable to start with a market that is not so different from yours.
Once you have done the analysis and you know which market you are going to conquer, it is time to start your international SEO strategy and for that you should worry about the following points.
hosting
We will start by hosting your website. Depending on where your new target audience is, you may need to switch from . If you are in a distant territory, it is better to look for a hosting that is closer to your new consumersso that the loading time does not affect the SEO results.
domain names
In case you need to change hosting, you can also consider changing the . In this way you will be able to adapt it better, both to the language, if you need it, and to the country of destination.
For that you can use a domain with the ending of the local country, known as a ccTLD. For example, if you want to sell to Spain, the ccTLD is .it isso you can choose a domain of the type: mitiendavirtual.com.es.
In the event that your domain has more than one language, you can create a subdomain or a subdirectory for each different languagesince it is a less expensive URL structure than that of ccTLDs.
Country or language targeting
It is important that define if you want to focus on one country or several that speak the same language. If you want to focus on a country, you must create a targeted strategy for this goal, considering its specific cultural characteristics.
On the other hand, if you prefer to target several countries that speak the same language and work with a larger audience, you can use keywords that reach those consumers without focusing on the particularities of a specific country.
In this way, you should worry about using a language that is familiar to everyone.
Web design
If the new market you want to reach is very different from yours, you must adapt the characteristics of your e-commerce for the new market. For that, visit pages that sell products from the same sector as yours and analyze their characteristics.
Local aesthetic standards can help you more easily reach the public. Thus, you can achieve greater identification with your brand.
Cultural influence is very important to reach the public of a traditional country, for example. That’s why, it is worth dedicating time and resources that contribute to visual communication. So, if possible, contact a local web designer or a professional who really knows the cultural particularities of the country you want to reach.
Currency and transactions
It is important that you know not only the local currency, but also those of the new market. This is a fundamental part to facilitate transactions. Find out which methods are preferred by local consumers and offer them those forms of payment.
Contents
As much as the market is similar, it is necessary. Even in countries that speak Spanish, it is not the same to speak with Argentina as with Spain, for example. Although we all speak the same language, there are words that are different and can keep the consumer from converting.
Therefore, if your goal is to reach different countries of the same language at the same time, it is essential that you use a language that is understood in all of them. Likewise, if your target is a country that speaks another language, you must do the translation with native professionals from the target market Or know him very well.
And here it is worth highlighting a recommendation. It can be very tempting, but don’t automate the translation. That can lead your entire investment to failure and even harm your local brand. Even more, when it comes to the , machine translation errors can convey the wrong message of the article and it is possible that you damage the image of your brand.
The ideal is to locate the content taking into account the particularities of the user of the country to which you are targeting, to obtain better click rates and conversions.
International SEO can give your virtual store excellent long-term permanent results, so it is worth doing a good job from the beginning. Therefore, if you are thinking of internationalizing your virtual store, do not do it in any way, use international SEO so that later you can reap its organic advantages for years.
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