SEO International
What is SEO International?
Every company that thinks about expanding beyond the German border should think about a new, international SEO strategy at the same time.
The aim here is to extend the company's reach beyond its own national borders in order to tap into new international markets.
The main focus of an international website is multilingualism. This means that you have to optimize the pages country-specifically to get a good ranking.
What do you need to consider with SEO International?
Other countries - other search behavior. Even if in Europe mainly Google is used as primary search engine (approx. 92 % search share), it is different in many countries. If you want to expand your business especially to these countries, you have to consider the corresponding SEO guidelines of these search engines as well.
Here is an excerpt of countries with their specific search engine market shares:
| Country | Market shares in % |
|---|---|
| USA | Google approx 81% Bing approx. 12% Yahoo approx. 4.5% |
| China | Baidu approx. 71% Sogou approx 13% … Google approx 3% |
| Russia | Google approx 53% Yandex approx. 44% |
| Japan | Google approx 75% Yahoo approx. 21% Bing approx. 4% |
| South Korea | Google approx. 80% Naver approx 15% |
What is the search behavior in these countries?
As with search engine optimization in Germany, SEO International must also take into account the individual search behavior with regard to short-tail or long-tail keywords. One must include regional as well as global references. Furthermore, one has to analyze correlations of words, phrases and sentences.
Which cultural and religious peculiarities must be taken into account?
In order to be able to develop a sophisticated content strategy, it is important to exercise particular caution here.
Prejudices are not only widespread in Europe. In order to successfully gain a foothold internationally, a thorough analysis of the cultural customs of the various countries is imperative.
Otherwise, you could unintentionally put your foot in your mouth in the respective country. That would mean a significant drop in user experience. And this is what the company wants to avoid with its international orientation.
Example: If you include pictures with a lot of naked skin in your website, this can lead to irritation or, in the worst case, even to the termination of business relationships in countries where such things are rather unusual.
Another example: If you include sections with political statements in your content, whether hidden or direct, it can lead to complications that you didn't intend.
It is advisable to cooperate with SEO or content marketing agencies in order to get an easier entry into this country. This way you can avoid unnecessary complications right from the start.
What special care must be taken with DACH countries?
DACH is the abbreviation for the countries DGermany, Austria (Austria) and Switzerland (Confoederatio Helvetica).
The most common mistake here is to simply copy the website three times and use the same content without referencing which version is the original.
Here you quickly get into the area of duplicate content, combined with the risk of ranking damage. The remedy here is the Canonical Tag, with which one refers to the original source, or the application of the HREFLANG attribute with which one informs the crawlers that this is a country-specific version of the website.
Summary
As you can see, international search engine optimization results in many advantages that you can use for yourself, but also many traps that you can fall into.
Another big advantage is having employees who know the country-specific conditions and can contribute their expertise.
If you have any further questions on this subject, we can help you as a SEO Agency in Munich would be happy to help.
