International SEO has long been a popular subject for large brands and international businesses. However, the ease with which people may now communicate with one another globally means that these strategies are becoming critical for a growing number of companies.
Regarding optimising for searchers who live in different countries or speak other languages, international search experts Clayton Warwick, Gary Reilly, and Jeramie Heflin of Safeguard Global recently presented a webinar highlighting some of the most common pitfalls and their solutions.
Here are three crucial strategies offered by the panel on how marketers should avoid international SEO blunders.
Create A Global Strategy Based on Personas
Heflin stated that as marketers, “understanding who our customers are, and when and how they buy, is the most critical thing we can do.” You’ll create focused personas if you enter new international marketplaces.
It’s acceptable if these personalities differ from those in your primary markets; they likely will.
Before pushing for conversions, marketers need to coach most of these new customers through pertinent material and experiences because they need more time to buy. Heflin advises using client personas when contacting foreign markets to aid in this process, and this can assist marketers in better comprehending the requirements of their new audience.
Marketers must, however, pay attention to foreign search data to gauge their brands’ market opportunities to guarantee that these personas appropriately represent viewers.
“We found that Google’s Keyword Planner is a good way to quantify this,” added Reilly. “It’s excellent for gauging consumer interest in a market. We advise using the Planner to conduct regional and national keyword research in these new areas.
Enhance the Global Customer Experience
As much as we value user experience here, Warwick noted that it’s frequently disregarded in other areas. “We’ve tailored our user experience based on what Americans prefer, and it’s vital to take into account how people in new markets want their journey to be.”
Warwick advises business owners to consider how consumers use their products or services. As of the second quarter of 2021, mobile makes up a sizable portion of the organic search market (61%). Additionally, marketers should optimise for desktop searches, even though there are some business areas where this is the case.
“Google has released a lot of changes that emphasise the value of mobile user experience and the consequences for marketers who don’t prioritise it,” said Reilly.
Adhering to Google’s Page Experience guidelines is one technique to improve UX. The Page Experience upgrade, which started in June last year, awards websites for having top-notch user experience indicators, such as dependable security, optimised page speed, mobile friendliness, and more. To make sure their content offers positive user experiences to users worldwide, marketers may check the Page Experience report in Google Search Console.
Beyond that, according to Reilly, marketers should concentrate on maximising desired activities within their global audience: It’s a good idea to test a variety of cultural UX considerations on essential landing pages for low-funnel content or conversion material, mainly when it’s a new market, and you’re unsure of the optimal type of design elements to utilise based on the target demographic.
Make sure your content appeals to these new audience segments by paying attention to the text styles, colour schemes, picture types, and languages utilised on your landing pages.
If you’re looking for someone to provide assistance in monitoring customer’s consumer trends or your audiences’ needs and interests, feel free to contact DMA SEO Analytics Services. Our team would be more than ready to help you in attaining progress.
Make Sure the Technological Components Are in Harmony
Marketers should collaborate closely with developers when tailoring their content for global audiences because ignored technical problems sometimes cause campaigns to fail.
Start looking through your website to identify areas where your technical set-up could be improved, advised Warwick. Could you fill it out for your developers to begin working on the things on the list?
He also mentioned the significance of in-market page load time, saying, “We all know how essential page speed is to SEO and sponsored initiatives. We won’t want to squander media funds directing someone to a website where they’ll unavoidably leave.
Marketers can assess the speed of their site using tools like PageSpeed Insights, which uses Google’s Core Web Vitals and suggested loading times.
The sole aspect marketers should take into account is page speed. The CMS and multilingual plugins have the power to make or ruin campaigns when targeting foreign markets. To avoid unpleasant experiences, these technical frameworks should be able to adjust to the location and language of the searcher.
According to Reilly, “CMS and localization plugins can have a major impact on the efficacy of search efforts, as well as the amount of things you can improve and test.”
You might need help to optimise the technical parts fully, which might influence search performance, he continued, depending on how the CMS and the translation tools are created.
At the very least, marketers should use a CMS that enables them to specify the language and location data in the hreflang tag. Search engines can then deliver the most relevant results to your global audience by better comprehending the linguistic and geographic context.
Because of the increased connectivity in our society, more and more brands must ensure their content appeals to searchers outside their local regions. Ignoring global SEO issues may result in wasted search time and missed opportunities.
