If you’re looking to improve your search engine rankings with SEO, you’ll need to be aware of the difference between local and international SEO.
Read on to find out how the variations in the two can be crucial in determining the scale of conversions, and impact of your business on potential customers for your website.
Before deciding on an SEO strategy for your business, you may want to hire a local or international SEO agency to help you gain a deep understanding of your needs, and how to meet your objectives. This will enable you to plan how to distribute SEO services, as every business’ need is different. Whether you decide to concentrate on link building to build trust and reputation with search engines, improve your technical SEO to build strong website visibility, or use keyword queries to optimise your on-site relevant content, an expert SEO team can advise you along the way.
One factor to bear in mind is that due to the scale of international SEO, the results can be more difficult to obtain, and more expensive. However, local SEO for small business use can be integral to boosting your local strategy. The larger audience you will be seeking to attract will mean that you’ll be required to do more in depth research of your target market.
What is the Importance of International SEO?
If you’re a large scale business wanting to target global SEO services, it’s important that your International SEO strategy seeks to drive organic traffic from different countries. This will allow your business to compete in the global marketplace for customers by seeking to increase web traffic from a combination of different geographical locations, as well as linguistic locations.
For this reason, using international SEO services like language targeting and researching for relevant keywords are integral to attract traffic in a specific country for local search.
How Do I Implement My International SEO Strategy?
It’s important to do your research into the territories you want to target, as different search engines are prevalent in different locations. For example, if you want to target China with your International SEO, you will need to research how search engines like Baidu ranks its pages.
Additionally, when optimising for international markets, it’s always best to work with a native speaker of the target language for accurate translations. Multiple languages can vary according to local colloquialisms, and cultural differences, so it would be wise to avoid using direct translation tools, which can create poor quality or even offensive translations.
You will need to bear in mind that directing localised imagery and language towards your targeted countries, will help browsing users to feel welcomed by your company. This may result in an increased number of conversions, and returning users.
To help counter these issues, and encourage traffic from users from your targeted countries, it would be helpful to ensure that search engines can tell which countries or territories you are targeting with your content. Using inbound links from these relevant counties in the right language is an example of one way to achieve this.
Although you might be working towards recognition in the international market, updating your address, contact details, and getting listed in your local business listings will help to reach your target audience. Keeping these details up to date is important, particularly if you rebrand or move location.
What is the Importance of Local SEO?
If you’re looking to master your local market, creating a local SEO strategy can help to take you there. By optimising for localised searches, you can quickly sail through SERPs pages in a search engine like Google with results tagged with your business’ location.
By setting up your Google Business profile, you can ensure that your business listing will appear in the local pack when a customer searches for services your business provides. Research has shown that around 44% of clicks go to local packs during localised searches. By registering with Google My Business, your business will appear in these local listings, as well as on Google Maps.
How Do I Create My Local SEO Strategy?
If you want to boost your local SEO strategy, adding detailed information to your content will enable search engines to pick up the most relevant information regarding the services you offer, and direct your local audience to your website. This will result in a higher number of conversions if your information is as relevant as possible, so this is something to bear in mind.
Similarly, by conducting keyword research into local keywords, you can gain knowledge about which keywords your target market are searching for in search engines. This will enable you to optimise your content marketing accordingly to appear in SERPs when those keywords are used in search.
Google will also factor results based on distance from the location searched. Therefore, it’s important to make sure that your location data is up to date and accurately displays the location of your premises.
You may also want to factor in how well your local business is known in the area. Search engines will take information from elsewhere on the internet to build a profile of your local business’ popularity and customer satisfaction. By capitalising on the benefits of being a local business, you can generate interest in your brand faster. For example, local businesses are often incredibly supportive of the local community and economy, and generally offer cheaper shipping and better service.
You will also need to be aware of your competition, whether it’s in your immediate area, town, city, county or region. Exploring your closest competitors will help you to better understand how to close the gap to get ahead.
Positive reviews on local review sites, local backlinks and business directories will all make a difference to how you’re ranked. Link building is a highly effective way to build trust in search engines and boost your business’ online visibility, and this can be achieved through our blogger outreach service to help you climb the search engine ranks.
How Do I Know If I Need Local or International SEO for My Business?
If your business is focused on local trade and is a smaller or independent business, you may want to consider focusing purely on Local SEO, as local businesses can hugely benefit from the growth that can result by starting with local SEO.
Considering your business’ size and place in the international market is integral to understanding whether you need Local or International SEO. Small businesses are likely to become lost in the international market, without gaining any substantial reputation through the local market first.
If you own a global scale business, or an international brand, your ranking factors will be determined on how you can compete with local search and international markets. Working with International SEO services in a global SEO agency will help you build those blocks towards international recognition from search engines.
Both local and international SEO are an ongoing process dedicated to building trust and reputation within search engines, which will, in the long term, help you break into new markets and build successful campaigns with your SEO efforts.
What Else Can I Do To Build My SEO Strategy and Rank Higher in Search Engines?
If you want to build your SEO strategy even further, it might be wise to invest in technical SEO support from an agency, especially if you’re involved in small businesses just starting to navigate the SEO world. We provide a free technical SEO audit that will identify all the barriers your business may possess to reaching that coveted #1 organic search spot on the first search engine results page.
In order to target users more effectively, you will also need to conduct keyword research relating to your location. This will allow you to appear in “near me” searches through Google, and for the building of local citations.
Additionally, using digital marketing strategies like creating a mobile friendly website can help to boost your place in business listings. Research shows that over 60% of internet users now access websites through a mobile device.
An expert SEO team like Maratopia can help you deliver content optimised for search engines through mobile access, whether you’re shooting for an international SEO strategy, or looking for local SEO tips to get your business noticed by local searchers.
Contact us today for a free SEO or technical SEO audit, and let us help you take your SEO strategy to new heights.
