Avoiding International Mistakes in SEO

Any company that has a global marketing strategy understands the importance of international SEO efforts.

This has also been a very popular topic for many global companies and enterprise-level brands since the increased ease of connecting with others around the world means that companies need to employ international SEO strategies.

There are certain common mistakes regarding international SEO efforts that companies should avoid.

Avoiding such mistakes helps companies optimize their websites and content for consumers who speak different languages or live in different countries.

International User Experience

Many companies invest a lot of time and effort into optimizing their user experience domestically while overlooking any other market.

However, it’s important for global companies to take different markets into consideration, and detail their customer journey to improve their user experience. It’s best to start by analyzing the market device usage for a company’s product or service.

Most of the time, mobile devices account for the largest portion of organic search, and while there are many markets that prefer desktop devices, it’s important for businesses to optimize for every popular device type.

Even the biggest search engine, Google, has noted the importance of mobile user experience, and companies that don’t prioritize optimizing for mobile devices can negatively impact their overall business operations.

Aside from optimizing for mobile use, companies should also optimize the user experience for the actions they want the international consumers to take on their website.

That means taking note of the color pallets, images, text styles, and languages a company uses on its landing pages, to ensure the content will resonate with international audiences.

International Buyer Persona

One of the most important things that all businesses have to do is understand their target audience in detail. While many companies create buyer personas for their domestic audiences, it’s also important to create targeted personas for international markets.

Many consumers aren’t ready to make a purchase as soon as they find what they’re looking for, which means businesses have to guide those potential consumers through relevant experiences and content before introducing the conversion.

To improve this process, companies can create international buyer personas which help them understand the needs of different audiences. And to do that, businesses should take note of international search data.

This data helps companies understand the market opportunity they have by using Google’s Keyword Planner, which measures the level of interest consumers in a market have for a given solution.

Technical Elements

When looking to optimize content for international audiences, companies shouldn’t overlook potential technical issues that those consumers might face.

That’s why businesses should comb through their websites to find how they can improve the technical elements, such as the load speed of the website, its multilingual plugins, and more.

This way, businesses can improve their search performance in international markets, and avoid giving consumers a poor experience when opening their websites.

Ronn Torossian is the CEO and founder of NY based PR firm 5W Public Relations. Torossian is also the founder of the Ronn Torossian Foundation, and a lifelong New Yorker.