Want to see massive traffic growth? Most likely the answer to that question is yes, because who wouldn’t? One of the easiest ways to do this is to optimize your SEO strategy to be suitable for different countries and languages.
The international market for copywriting services is huge. And remember: a large part of the world doesn’t speak English, so if you target your customers exclusively as English speakers, you miss out on a lot of opportunities.
In order to take advantage of this international and multilingual market, you need to make sure you use the best practices. Here are some of the basic solutions for achieving an adaptable SEO for several countries:
Establish your strategy
To start things off right, you need to figure out where your traffic is coming from. If you already have a large international audience, you should start with the top country. You can find this out in Google Analytics -> Audience.
Create multilingual content
If your services are similar to others in the industry and globally, then you should focus only on foreign languages. For example, as Facebook offers the same product to all users, regardless of country of origin, they focus on the language and not the country.
Choose a domain and a URL structure
The most important factor when creating a site that is suitable for different locations and languages is the URL structure. This may seem very simple, but it is not so. You can choose from a combination of top-level domains (such as .ca or .co.uk) or sub-directories (/ es or / de) and sub-domains (es.example.com or us.example.com). The decision must be based on your goals; if you target a country, it is good to use sub-domains, and for languages, sub-directories are best.
Adapt SEO for international
First, the content must be translated into the language of the country you are visiting. Although Google Translate has evolved quite a lot, it is best to use a human translator, preferably a proficient SEO optimizer.
Create a sitemap. To help search engines find your content more easily, you need to create a detailed sitemap with language content. Thus, the engines will correctly mark the specific pages, which they will present to specific users.
Use hreflang and alternative tags to avoid identical structures for different pages. This will specify to Google that your page is an alternative version of another page, in another language, and not duplicate or copied content.
Review and change HTML content for different regions to make it as relevant as possible. The main elements that need to be changed are the title, meta descriptions, navigation and intertitles (H2, H3, H4, etc.).
Adapt the content / design according to the culture. Certain cultures may not accept a certain tone of address, certain colors and will avoid collaborating with you.
