101 Checklist for Making Your International SEO Stand Out

Shuvashis Das
4 min readNov 6, 2021

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All organizations strive for increased growth as measured by visits, revenue, and conversions. For firms, broadening their emphasis to include clients in a foreign market represents growth. Geographic expansion is a very simple approach to grow for the proper firm. For example, if your target audience is in the United States, expanding to similar English-speaking nations such as the United Kingdom or Australia might be a lucrative possibility.

International SEO
International SEO

Suppose you want to expand your reach to an international audience and boost your company’s digital presence. In that case, worldwide SEO is a cost-effective and scalable solution to save costs while increasing reach in a global market.

Your local activities may eventually reach a point where they no longer provide a major advantage to your company. In such cases, consider international SEO to assist you in reaching new levels of success. Making your website international attracts and appeals to a worldwide audience. International SEO focuses on increasing conversions by attracting visitors from all over the world to your website.

WHAT IS INTERNATIONAL SEO?

International Search Engine Optimization, or International SEO, is the process of promoting your company or brand to a larger worldwide audience, regardless of where your headquarters are situated. Using numerous international SEO tactics, you may optimize your website for worldwide locations, allowing search engines to discover regions and marketplaces you wish to participate in.

International SEO also assists you in ranking your website for a certain place by utilizing desired keywords in several languages. Consider obtaining separate domains for each nation in which you want your company to have an internet presence.

WHO NEEDS INTERNATIONAL SEO?

Suppose you are a business owner or manager looking to expand and wants to tap a varied global audience. In that case, you should make use of international SEO. It is an ideal option if your business:

  • Has a worldwide customer base
  • Is trying to reach international markets
  • It is operational in different countries
  • Has a customer base whose first language is not English (and therefore would make using your English-based site exceptionally difficult)

Once you have decided to include International SEO to improve your overall digital presence, we have compiled a checklist that will give you the desired competitive edge:

RESEARCH

If you have not implemented International SEO before, your preliminary step should be to conduct research. As a business, research will help you identify and evaluate the potential of each region you are targeting around the globe. It is a practical step that also allows companies to prioritize their long-term goals and objectives.

TARGETING

After conducting thorough research, you should have enough information about your target regions. If not, consult a professional SEO service to assist you. Select the countries where your research shows you have sufficient organic search volume for preferred keywords. You must compile a list of relevant and competitive keywords for your business and industry. Consider implementing a language-based targeting process if your preferred keywords do not have enough organic search volume in the targeted region. This will help you gain maximum traction in the target market. An SEO company can help you with this, as well.

OPTIMIZING

By now, you have locked the targeted regions in which you want to expand. This is the perfect time to optimize your website accordingly. The easiest method to help you gain a maximum global presence in such regions is by ensuring that the content you have on your site is not only relevant but crawl-able and index-able.

Your website must feature all the targeting signals required to tap into the international market. In addition, ensure that you do not have duplicate content, URLs, or other such issues that may halt the overall process of International SEO.

CHOOSING THE RIGHT DOMAIN NAME

Apart from the techniques mentioned above, it is important to choose the right URL structure if you want to implement a successful international SEO strategy. Your website URL should be based on the audience and region you are looking to target. As a business, you have three domain options to choose from:

  • Country Code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD): It is the ideal structure. With ccTLD, you are operating a website with a specific country extension. Despite being a good option for geolocation, businesses have to work hard to lure traffic to their new and independent domain (e.g., in the UK and Australia example, register for new domains that end in .uk and .au, respectively, to maximize your international SEO benefits in those countries).
  • Sub-Domain: If you are looking for a Generic Top Level Domain, or gTLD, subdomain is a perfect option. Subdomain makes your overall website structure simple. However, it is recommended only to use this option to add a unique product or entity to your website.
  • Sub-Directory: If you are looking to maintain the same reputation as your current domain, which also happens to be a gTLD, the subdirectory is the way to go! Businesses with limited content or resources on their website usually prefer a sub-directory structure.

BOTTOM LINE

In a nutshell, international SEO helps you look at the bigger picture. Even if your business is performing quite well domestically, neglecting to expand it for a varied global audience means you are potentially missing a larger opportunity. Most businesses, sooner or later, will opt for international SEO to tap new markets resulting in increased revenues and higher profitability.

Position Punisher
Position Punisher

Contact Position Punisher, the best website companies today, to discuss the details of how we can add value to you and your online business.

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Shuvashis Das

Content Writer at Position Punisher LLC | Freelance Content Writer | Copywriter | Creative Strategist | Blogger | Affiliate Marketer | Product Review Expert