Without a good SEO strategy, businesses miss out on a great opportunity to boost their online presence, which is crucial for market success today.
SEO optimization is a multidimensional process and is much more complex than it seems at first glance. There are several types of SEO optimization that need to be performed in order to increase the amount of relevant traffic to your website. In this blog, we will talk about two types: international and local SEO optimization.
What is international SEO optimization?
As the name suggests, international SEO ( or global SEO ) refers to optimization that gives your website a better position in international search results. That is, through international SEO optimization, you target a specific country or language, or both.
Whether you target just the language, just the country, or both depends on the needs of your business. For example, if you run an e-commerce store where the main product is mugs with slogans in German, you will not only target Germany, but also Switzerland, Austria, and any other area densely populated by German speakers.
Benefits of international SEO optimization
If you are planning to expand your business by reaching customers who speak foreign languages or live in other regions, then international SEO optimization should be an essential part of your digital strategy.
If you're wondering whether it's worth investing in this type of optimization, just look at the fact that Google has 192 different web search engines for different regions and countries. In addition, some of the other benefits that international SEO optimization brings you are:
Better user experience for international visitors
Better brand visibility and a wider audience
Improving brand reputation and authority
Increase website traffic and higher conversion rate
How to carry out international SEO optimization?
A prerequisite for any type of SEO optimization is to have a technically optimized website. So, before you start with international SEO optimization, make sure that your technical SEO optimization is at a high level.
When you decide to optimize your SEO internationally, there are a few key steps that you should never neglect. One of them concerns the URL structure, which needs to be adjusted to lithuania phone number data target specific countries and/or languages. There are several ways to do this. You can use a ccTLD, a subdomain, a subdirectory, a subfolder, or a gTLD with language-specific tags. You also have the option of creating a completely new domain.
A country code top-level domain (ccTLD ) refers to the two letters after the last period in your website's domain name. It is a code that tells you which country or territory your website is registered in. For example, in www.example.de, the ccTLD code would be "de", which indicates that the website is registered in Germany.
A subdomain would look like this: de.example.com. A subdirectory would be www.example.com/de. A generic top-level domain, or gTLD , with language tags would look like this: www.example.com/?lang=de.
If you decide to completely change the domain name for each area, you could do so as follows: www.examplenjemackastranica.com. Keep in mind that all of these options have advantages and disadvantages, so they should be studied and evaluated in detail before making a final decision.
When it comes to targeting a specific language, you can include hreflang or language meta tags. These are sets of codes that signal to web search engines which languages your website is available in.
Next, be careful not to use machine translation tools. Machine translations are difficult to read and could damage your brand's reputation. Additionally, it's a good idea to give visitors the freedom to choose which version of your website they want to view, so it's not advisable to have it automatically switch between languages and/or regions.
It is also important to emphasize that the importance of the content itself should never be underestimated. If you have the resources, make sure to adapt your content not only to the language but also to the culture of your visitors. Be careful when choosing expressions, tone, and type of humor.
By following the best practices above, web search engines will be able to more easily identify which versions of your website are available for specific regions and languages. Additionally, international visitors will feel valued by your good user experience and will gain a good overall impression of your brand.
What is local SEO optimization?
Local SEO is the optimization that helps your website rank better in local search results, as the name suggests. Essentially, the ultimate goal is for your business to dominate local search results to be noticeable to potential customers who are nearby.
Why is local SEO optimization important?
Research shows that 76% of people who search for a business online visit the store within the next 24 hours. But even without this statistic, it is known that local SEO optimization can boost the success of your business in many ways: