International SEO, The Untapped Market…

By Chris Longo, Natural Search Supervisor, Content Solutions

Optimizing a site’s content past domestic search engines is now more important than ever in order to become a true global brand. If a company plans on going global or is already global it is necessary to market towards the country-specific search engines to achieve optimal results. Below are several tips to achieve visibility in the non-domestic search engines:

1. Identify the language with the appropriate Meta tag.

This tells the country-specific search engines what region and language it is from to send back to the user for geo-targeted queries.

Ex: Meta Name=“Language” Content=“CN” for Chinese.

2. Use domain extensions of the country.

This identifies to the search engine and the user that the side is geared towards that specific country and/or language.

Ex: _.fr (France), _.co.uk (UK), .de(Germany

3. Provide content using the native language.

Country specific search engines are more likely to index and effectively rank pages that contain that countries language. It provides the most relevant content to the user.

Ex: A user in Italy will not query “soccer scores” for results in a game. They would type in “calico punteggi”

4. Include addresses within the country.

By including an address that is from a specific country it further conveys relevance to the search engines as well as the user browsing the site.

Ex:

eBay Inc.
2145 Hamilton Avenue
San Jose, California 95125
eBay International AG

Helvetiastrasse 15/17
3005 Bern
Switzerland

5. Increase inbound links from sites of same country.

By having inbound links from the same country, it will create yet another medium to prove relevancy to the geo-specific search engine

6. For similar languages, be sure to spell words accordingly.

It is extremely important to use the correct dialect when creating content on the site. Depending on the word, the user will query it and because you have it in the improper dialect the page might not be seen within the SERP.

Ex: American English “Theater” and Britain English “Theatre “

7. Host the site in the country if possible

Where a site is hosted plays a role on how it could potentially rank within a SERP. You want the user to find the site through a regional or international query and by having it hosted outside of that country could affect overall rankings.