Conquering International Search Markets: #InternationalSEO at #SMConnect

#internationalseo at #smconnect by @aleyda
Your guide to conquer the search world
INTERNATIONAL SEO

#internationalseo at #smconnect by @aleyda#internationalstrategy for #mnsummit by @aleyda from @orainti
Ciao #SMConnect

SPEAKER
BLOGGER SHARER
@aleyda +aleydasolis
SEO
I’M ALEYDA SOLIS

#internationalseo at #smconnect by @aleyda#internationalseo at #smconnect by @aleyda
I DO INTERNATIONAL SEO
ME TOO

GOING INTERNATIONAL MIGHT BE KEY TO EXPAND
YOUR SEARCH GROWTH BUT CAN BE COMPLEX

WHICH COUNTRY OR LANGUAGE SHOULD YOU TARGET  
& WITH WHICH CONFIGURATION?

HOW DO YOU CONNECT WITH YOUR NEW AUDIENCE?

HOW DO YOU COMPETE WITH HIGH AUTHORITY LOCALS
& ESTABLISHED MULTINATIONALS FROM SCRATCH?
This is your site

HOW DO YOU CONFIGURE THEM ALL TO AVOID
MISALIGNMENT ISSUES?

A PROCESS IS NEEDED TO AVOID THEM
MARKET
POTENTIAL
VALIDATION
TARGETING
SELECTION
CONFIGURATI
ON &
DEVELOPMENT
PROMOTION &
CONNECTION
1 2 3 4

THE GOAL IS TO MAKE YOUR INTERNATIONAL WEB
PRESENCE & SEO EFFORTS SUCCESSFUL
ROI > COSTS

1
START BY VALIDATING THE POTENTIAL TRAFFIC &
PROFITABILITY OF YOUR VIABLE INTERNATIONAL MARKETS

IDENTIFY YOUR CURRENT SITE BEST  
PERFORMING COUNTRIES AND LANGUAGES
which are the top countries & languages
from a traffic & conversions perspective?

HOW MUCH OF YOUR THE INTERNATIONAL TRAFFIC
COMES FROM ORGANIC SEARCH RESULTS ALREADY?

AS WELL AS YOUR YOUR ORGANIC SEARCH VISIBILITY  
PER COUNTRY

CHECK WHICH ARE THE TOP CURRENT INTERNATIONAL
MARKETS FOR YOUR COMPETITORS
USE
SIMILARWEB

AND THE OVERALL TOP COUNTRY MARKETS  
FOR YOUR INDUSTRY

CHOOSE THOSE TOP INTERNATIONAL  
COUNTRY & LANGUAGE MARKETS TO ASSESS
Other  
Traffic  
Drivers
Seasonality
& Trend
Search
Engines  Devices
Competitors
Authority
KeywordsOrganic
Search
Traffic
Volume &
Share
COUNTRY
CURRENT ORGANIC
SEARCH TRAFFIC
COMPETITION LEVEL
SEARCH VOLUME
OPPORTUNITY
SEARCH TREND IN
MARKET

IDENTIFY THE POTENTIAL ORGANIC SEARCH FOR EACH
COUNTRY

YOUR MOBILE TRAFFIC, SEASONALITY & TREND

… THE MORE SOURCES YOU USE TO VALIDATE, THE BEST!
USE SEMRUSH,
SISTRIX,
SEARCHMETRICS

DO A KEYWORD & COMPETITION RESEARCH FOR THEM
Use
KeywordTool.io &
KWFinder along
Google’s tools to
validate volume &
trends

IDENTIFY DIRECTLY IF THERE ARE BIG MISSED
OPPORTUNITIES
USE SISTRIX

USE TRANSLATION SUPPORT TOOLS ALONG TRANSLATORS
& NATIVE SPECIALIZED SPEAKERS TO DO THE ANALYSIS

VERIFY IF THERE’S ENOUGH ORGANIC SEARCH TRAFFIC TO
COMPENSATE PROFITABLE WEB OPERATIONS
Cost of international Web projectNumber of
Conversions for 
a break-even Average conversion value
=
No. of Conversions for Break-evenNumber of  
visits for a  
break-even
Average Conversion Rate
=

USE THE INTERNATIONAL ROI CALCULATOR TO MAKE IT
EVEN EASIER
http://www.aleydasolis.com/en/
international-seo-tools/roi-calculator/

IT’S TIME TO MAKE A DECISION REGARDING THE
INTERNATIONAL SEARCH MARKETS TO TARGET
>Your International trafﬁc potential Visits & Conversions for a break-even
Yes No
Continue with the international
Web & SEO project
Might be too early
Buy & secure
your ccTLDs
for future
activity
For most important countries
Create
custom  
alerts
in GA
Create a
pilot project
prioritizing
main pages

NEVER RELY EXCLUSIVELY IN AUTOMATIZED TOOLS
TO DO THIS FOR YOU… YOU NEED TO VALIDATE!

IF YOU FOLLOW THIS CRITERIA YOU WILL AVOID HAVING
“TOO MANY VERSIONS YOU CAN’T SUPPORT”

2
ESTABLISH YOUR INTERNATIONAL TARGETING &  
OPTIMIZE YOUR ONLINE EXPERIENCE FOR IT

SHOULD YOU TARGET COUNTRIES OR LANGUAGES  
WITH YOUR WEB PRESENCE?
Is location a factor that influence your Web operations?
Yes No
Is there enough traffic & conversions
to target each country?
Language
Targeting
Yes No
Country
Targeting
You can start with

HERE’S A LANGUAGE VS. COUNTRY TARGETING EXAMPLE
VS

CHOOSE YOUR INTERNATIONAL WEB STRUCTURE
ACCORDING TO YOUR TARGETING & COMPETITORS
ccTLDs
Sub-Directories
Sub-Domains

WARNING! DON’T USE PARAMETERS TO ENABLE THEM

BEWARE OF USING COOKIES OR SCRIPTS SHOWING
DIFFERENT INTERNATIONAL VERSIONS IN THE SAME PAGE
In Spanish In English

FOR COUNTRY TARGETING
ccTLDs
www.yourbrand.es
www.yourbrand.es/categoria-a/
Sub-directories
www.yourbrand.com/es-es/
www.yourbrand.com/es-es/categoria-a/
Sub-domains
es-es.yourbrand.com/
es-es.yourbrand.com/categoria-a/

* Ideal alternative to geolocate if competition is not too high
* Require more technical resources
* Require more efforts to grow popularity
* Require less technical resources
* Require less efforts to grow popularity 
* More chances to get all versions penalized if something goes bad
* More efforts to geolocate
* Better than sub-directories to organize larger & more complex sites 
* More efforts to geolocate
ccTLDs
Sub-directories
Sub-domains
FOR COUNTRY TARGETING

VERIFY WHICH EXTENSIONS ARE TREATED AS GENERIC
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1347922?hl=en

IF YOU’RE USING SUB-DIRECTORIES OR SUB-DOMAINS TO
COUNTRY TARGET, REGISTER & GEOLOCATE THEM

FOR LANGUAGE TARGETING
Sub-directories
www.yourbrand.com/es/
www.yourbrand.com/es/categoria-a/
Sub-domains
es.yourbrand.com/
es.yourbrand.com/categoria-a/

FOR LANGUAGE TARGETING
* Require less technical resources
* Require less efforts to grow popularity 
* Deeper url structure
* More chances to get all versions penalized if something goes bad
* shorter URL structure which can be better for larger sites
Sub-directories
Sub-domains

FOR EXAMPLE

BESIDES WEB STRUCTURES PROS & CONS:  
WHICH STRUCTURES ARE USED BY TOP SITES IN MARKET?

THE EXTENSIONS OF PAGES RANKING FOR THE MOST  
POPULAR TERMS IN YOUR INTERNATIONAL INDUSTRIES
In certain
countries
like China,
a ccTLD &
local IP will
be much
more
important

AS WELL AS THEIR THEIR LEVEL OF AUTHORITY VS. YOURS

USE THESE INTERNATIONAL EMULATORS, PROXYS & HTTP
STATUS TOOLS TO VERIFY YOUR INTERNATIONAL SERPS

IF YOU HAVE ACCESS TO SITES TARGETING THESE MARKETS
ALREADY: HOW EXTENSIONS USAGE AFFECT CTR?

SELECT THE WEB STRUCTURE THAT WILL ALLOW YOU TO
PERFORM BETTER, KNOWING THAT YOU CAN MIGRATE
High Authority Domains with a Mix of ccTLDs & gTLDs?
Start with a sub-directory in your current gTLD that
you can later migrate to ccTLD

SELECT THE WEB STRUCTURE THAT WILL ALLOW YOU TO
PERFORM BETTER, KNOWING THAT YOU CAN MIGRATE
Using a gTLD for your Italian version & want to enable
an English one?
If you want to prioritize your English market in the
future, migrate it to the root & take Italian to sub-
directory or ccTLD

3
CONFIGURE, DEVELOP & OPTIMIZE YOUR SITE
TARGETING

ONCE YOU CHOOSE YOUR TARGETING IT’S A MUST  
TO BE CONSISTENT WITH EVERYTHING ON YOUR SITE

1
2
3
4
7
Title & Meta Description
URLs
Phone, delivery info, currency
Menu & navigation elements
5 Headings
Price
6 Images ALT description
LOCALIZE YOUR WEB CONTENT & OVERALL EXPERIENCE
WITH THE TARGETED KEYWORDS & PRODUCTS

EVEN IF THEY’RE IN THE SAME LANGUAGE

ALSO FROM A DESIGN & BRANDING PERSPECTIVE
VS

AS WELL AS INDICATING YOUR INTERNATIONAL
TARGETING WITH THE META AND HTML LANG TAG
http://bit.ly/binglang

WITH HREFLANG ANNOTATIONS, SPECIFYING EACH
PAGE LANGUAGE & COUNTRY TARGET & ALTERNATIVES
http://bit.ly/googlehreflang

THE BEST ALTERNATIVE IS TO INCLUDE IT IN THE HEAD AREA
OF THE HTML

… IF YOU WANT TO AVOID THIS, THEN ONLY ADD
THOSE THAT ARE REALLY NECESSARY

BE CAREFUL WITH USING INCORRECT VALUES

INCLUDING NON-RELEVANT OR MISTAKEN URLS

OR NOT ADDING THE RETURN TAGS

USE THE HREFLANG GENERATOR BASED ON GOOGLE
SPECIFICATION TO AVOID HREFLANG ERRORS
http://www.aleydasolis.com/en/international-
seo-tools/hreflang-tags-generator/

http://bit.ly/hreflangsitemap
YOU CAN ALSO INCLUDE HREFLANG IN SITEMAPS…
BUT DO IT ONLY WHEN YOU CAN’T IN THE HTML
MAKE SURE
TO
CONSOLIDAT
E XML
SITEMAPS TO
BETTER
MONITOR
THEM

GOOGLE WEBMASTER TOOLS WILL WARN  
ABOUT SOME OF THEM

www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/
BUT YOU SHOULD VALIDATE YOURSELF BY USING  
AN SEO CRAWLER THOUGH

onpage.org
ONPAGE.ORG HAS ALSO AN IN-DEPTH INTERNATIONAL  
& TRANSLATION REPORT

DON’T FORGET ABOUT THE URLS, ALTHOUGH BEWARE
OF IDNS & NON-LATIN CHARACTERS IN URLS
Use
latinized
URLs for
Russian &
Chinese

BE CAREFUL ON ASSUMING TOO MUCH ABOUT YOUR  
USERS INTERNATIONAL TARGETING THOUGH…

IT’S BETTER TO SUGGEST YOUR INTERNATIONAL VERSIONS;
OTHERWISE, WARN WHEN REDIRECTING & USE 302 REDIRECTS

REMEMBER THAT INTERSTITIALS ARE INTRUSIVE &  
MIGHT CAUSE CRAWLING ISSUES TOO

IF YOU IMPLEMENT THESE CONFIGURATION,  
YOU’LL AVOID MISTARGETING YOUR USERS

4
UNDERSTAND & INCREASE YOUR POPULARITY  
AMONG YOUR INTERNATIONAL AUDIENCE

START BY IDENTIFYING TOP SOCIAL NETWORKS, OVERALL
TRAFFIC SOURCES & REFERRERS

WHICH ARE THE MOST LINKED PAGES (AND CONTENT) OF
YOUR COMPETITORS…

THE MOST POPULAR AND HIGHLY SHARED TOPICS,
IDENTIFYING WHERE AND WHO SHARED THEM

AS WELL AS THE CONTENT CHARACTERISTICS PER NETWORK

WHICH ARE THE RELEVANT & AUTHORITATIVE SITES THAT
YOU CAN OUTREACH PER COUNTRY & LANGUAGE

USE NATIVE OUTREACH PEOPLE, INFLUENCERS TOOLS &
(LOW-COST) PR FIRMS TO CONNECT

POPULAR
TOPICS &
KEYWORDS
TRAFFIC
CHANNELS
CHARACTERISTICS
AUDIENCE SHARE
AND SEARCH
BEHAVIOR
LOCAL
INFLUENCERS
& TOP
REFERRERS
WITH ALL THIS YOU CAN ESTABLISH A CONTENT, SOCIAL &
LINK BUILDING STRATEGY FOR YOUR TARGET MARKETS
POPULAR
CONTENT
CHARACTERISTICS
LOCAL
COMPETITORS
PROFILE

MAKING THE MOST OUT OF LOCAL ACTIVITIES  
& CULTURAL NUANCES

AND CONNECT WITH THE LOCAL AUDIENCE

NOT ALL RESULTS WILL BE THE SAME, BUT YOU DON’T NEED
THEM TO BE THE SAME!
A total of 46 links have been built as follows:
•  41 Links from .com to .co.uk link reclamation
•  2 Links from UK Relevant Directories
•  2 Links from 404 link Update
•  1 Link from Sponsorship
in the uk in Germany
A total of 20 links have been built:
•  9 Links from .com to .de link reclamation
•  7 Links from German Relevant Directories
•  3 Links from 404 link Update
•  1 Link from Educational Resources
in france
A total of 8 links have been built from the
following strategies:
•  1 Link from .com to .fr link reclamation
•  3 Links from French Relevant Directories
•  4 Links from Educational Resources

REMEMBER THAT THE KEY IN INTERNATIONAL TO GROW …  
IS BECOMING A REAL LOCAL AUTHORITY

THANKS! DO YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS?
NOW IS YOUR TIME

Conquering International Search Markets: #InternationalSEO at #SMConnect

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