When we talk about Global SEO, we refer to marketing our products/services on a global level, to international customers. So, if you own a business that provides global services, global SEO is something you should know and learn about.

SEO has grown a lot in the past couple of decades, both in terms of strategies and reach. No longer businesses are satisfied by promoting their services in local areas only; they want to expand their reach. And what is a better way to do that than the internet? The internet and social media can give your online/offline business the much-needed exposure and take it to the global platform.

The ongoing growth and reach of the internet have motivated both business owners and SEO executives to expand their services beyond regional boundaries. However, doing SEO for a global business is somewhat different than SEO for a local business. So, if you’re looking to promote your business through Global SEO, we suggest you to hire a Good and experienced SEO Company who know how to generate the highest ROI in their SEO Campaign, we will here teach the best way to build a strategy for the same.

Creating a Global SEO Strategy

The target of your global SEO strategy should be clear – to market your business on a global platform to a global customer and to expand the reach of your business to multiple countries. Here’s how to do that.

One of the best secrets to promoting your business well globally is to focus on building yourself as a brand. Ever wondered why most people go with Apple or Samsung when they have to purchase a new smartphone? Because these are brands. And no matter what country the buyer is from, he/she is familiar with these brands and will, therefore, gladly buy their products.

You should also aim to achieve that kind of reputation for your business.

Here’s how to rank well and become a brand globally.

Localize Your Business By Translating Your Content in Multiple Languages

To start with, you should translate your website to be available in multiple languages so that visitors coming from different regions can easily read the information. For this, you can either conduct a research of all the potential locations your website gets traffic from or you can choose the top languages across the globe.

Make sure that your content is ready for the audiences in each region you wish to promote your business in. Translating your site in multiple languages should be the first thing to do, for which you can consider hiring an expert editor who knows the local region, understands their language and the market.

Your website content for a specific region should be written for people in that region to make sure that they understand it and accept it as it was written for them only.

Once you’ve generated multiple (language) versions of your site, the next thing to do is tell Google about it. This is crucial to make sure that Google does not simply disregard your content as duplicate or shows irrelevant content for a country. The best way to tell Google about your website versions and which version to rank for which keywords/location is to hreflang code. Take the help of Google to check out how that works.

Optimize the Website Content for Local People in Each Region

Since SEO has become quite competitive now, simply translating your website may not be enough. You’ll also have to optimize your content according to the local markets. For instance, you should do keyword research to find all the popular terms people in a specific region are using and then optimize your content accordingly.

To be able to market your business properly in a specific region, you should be able to find and use the keywords that are popular among the people speaking the regional language. For this, you can use any keyword research tool to get ideas for new keywords and key phrases.

Once you’ve all the right keywords, you can not only translate & optimize your existing content more effectively for the target markets but also you can create new content according to the specific needs of customers in those markets.

Link Building through Outreach

Outreach emails are probably the best way to gather genuine and relevant links to the local version of your global site. The best thing about international targeting is that link building is easier here because of the available languages.

Make sure that the person doing the outreach knows the languages as well as understands the target market. You can use the same person who did the translation job for your website.

Other than email outreach, you can follow other good link building techniques such as blog posting, guest blogging, commenting, forum posting, etc. Just make sure to build a solid strategy before you get started.

Also, try your best to avoid spam or paid sites for building your links. You can do well by focusing on genuine links, as these markets are relatively less competitive.

Choosing from Subdomains vs Subdirectories

Another thing that you might struggle with when creating separate language versions of your site is choosing between subdomains and subdirectories.

If you go with the common point of view, subdirectories are better in terms of ranking because the overall authority of your website is maintained throughout its subdirectories.

However, some experts, including the likes of Neil Patel, believe that subdomains are better than subdirectories, as they are easier and quicker to rank. Moreover, they will give your visitors the impression of a separate site rather than a different language version of a parent website. Alternatively, you can consider having a separate, country-specific domain for each version to which the respective subdomain can be redirected.

Setting up Automatic Redirects for Your Site Visitors

Once you’ve created separate language versions of your site and made them live, the next thing you need to do is redirect users to their preferred version. Here’s how it is done.

For this, you need to set up hreflang codes on your main site. The code will automatically analyze the location of a visitor and based on that will forward them to the relevant language version of your site.

For instance, if someone is visiting your site from Barcelona, the code will interact with the visitor’s browser to find their preferred language. If their preferred language is Spanish, they will be redirected to the Spanish version of the same page that they were originally browsing.

While forwarding people to their preferred language versions will do good to your online reputation, it will also help you get better rankings by making it easier for search engines to recognize country-specific versions of your site.

Focus on Building a Brand by Building Communities Globally

People will remember your name (or your brand name) only when you have something extra to offer, something which is no one else is doing. This is where engagement can make all the difference, and what’s a better way to create user engagement than building communities.

You can start by replying to your blog comments. Even if you do not speak a regional language, seek someone’s help but do reply to all the comments. Users love it when a brand takes their suggestions or questions seriously.

Second, you should start promoting your posts extensively on social media to people in all your targeted regions. Facebook ads are the best tool for this, as they let you filter the target audience by location.

If possible, do some offline marketing by hiring teams in specific regions where your business exists. Conduct webinars and conferences to connect with your target audiences in distant regions.

Conclusion

Once you’ve tried everything mentioned above, you should start seeing results for your global business, in terms increased traffic, leads and rankings. However, this may take time, the same way it does for normal search engine rankings. If you’re doing everything right, you can expect to see visible results within 3 months or so.

Besides the above things, you should particularly focus on optimizing your mobile site or mobile version of your site for a better user experience. For instance, the page load speed has a great impact on your site traffic, conversions as well as rankings.

Make sure to leverage the internet benefits to expand the reach of your online business, products and services to a global market. If you stay confined to just your local region, your competitors providing services to an international audience will surpass you.

Have a question or suggestion for us? Write in the comment section below.

Author

Amit Gupta is the CEO and founder at SAG IPL, an India-based technology firm providing a range of service/software solutions in the web development, design, app development, and SEO industries.