The document discusses international SEO and provides a 9 step process for optimizing a website for international audiences. The steps include identifying potential international markets and keywords, creating localized content in other languages, structuring the website for different countries/languages, using technical elements like hreflang tags, international link building, testing results, and tracking success metrics. The overall goal is to guide search engines to a company's country/language specific content to be indexed internationally.

1. #ExportWeek

2. International SEO
Using the Internet to
Grow Internationally
Laura Hampton
Hallam Internet
www.hallaminternet.com
0115 948 0123
Laura.hampton@hallaminternet.com
@lauralhampton

3. lauralhampton
uk.linkedin.com/in/lauralhampton
Web: www.hallaminternet.com
Email: laura.hampton@hallaminternet.com
Search Engine
Optimisation (SEO)
Paid Search (PPC) Email Marketing
Social Media Digital Strategy Training

6. Today’s Agenda
• Search engines and how they work
• Why International SEO
• Major considerations
• International SEO: 9 steps
• Setting and tracking goals

7. How Search Engines Work

8. How Do Search Engines Work?
A search engine is made of three basic components:
A Spider or Robot
An automated browser, it
searches the web for new
websites, or changes to
websites, and then strips
out the text content
A Storage System
or Database
A record of all the pages
viewed by the Spider
A Matching Process or
Relevancy Algorithm
The rules that tell the search
engine how to determine
what would be relevant to
your search

9. Keyword Focus
• Each page on your website
should have a clear focus
• For example, you can’t expect a
page that lists all of your shows
to produce high rankings for
every single show on that list
• Comes back to providing the
most relevant search results

10. Importance of Links
• Links to your website count like
votes for your website’s
authority and value
• Not all links are equal – must be
relevant and authoritative
themselves
• Search engines crawl the web
through links

11. International SEO: Targeting a Global Audience

12. Why International SEO?
• Search results differ in each country
• Search engines don’t know that your website content
should be targeted at more than one country
• You need to explicitly guide them to your
country/language specific content if you want it to be
indexed in more than one region.

13. Major Considerations: Localisation
• The products/services in other languages
or countries won’t be searched necessarily
with the exact same “translated” phrases or
terms – localisation is essential.

14. Major Considerations: Search Volume
• The search volume and potential organic traffic in
other languages or countries will be different.

15. Major Considerations: Search Engines
• There might be local search engines in
some countries that are more important
that Google and you will need to optimize
and rank for them to be where your
audience is (for example, in Russia is
Yandex and in China is Baidu).

16. 1. Identify Potential Online Markets
• Webmaster Tools
• Google Analytics

17. 2. Identify International Keyword Targets
• Begin with UK/English Keywords
• Professionally translate and localise
• Ensure you identify the correct keywords in each location
• Even English Language keywords differ in other countries
(Courses/Programmes Example)

18. 3. Create Localised Content
• It's important that you develop attractive and optimised
content for your international target audience that
includes the desired keywords, is interesting & serves to
connect with your visitors
• Native Support = Essential.

19. 4. Geo Target Your Site
• You can geo-target your site using your website structure
(ccTLD’s)
• Add each different country/language section of your
website to webmaster tools as separate properties, and
specify a target country.
• If possible, host your site with a local IP address – this is
not essential but can provide a small boost

20. Geo Targeting in Webmaster Tools

21. 5. Website Structure
• Each language or country specific page/area of the site
should have its own website structure, so they can each
be crawled and indexed as ‘separate’ entities. Never use
cookies or scripts to show your language versions in the
same URL.
• Your websites URL structure has the potential to impact
the visibility of your website to your global audience than
any other marketing activity.

22. ccTLD Website Structure
• Purchase a Country-Code Top Level Domain Name
(ccTLD). This is a domain name tied to a specific country –
.co.uk is the ccTLD for the UK. For example,
http://www.example.co.uk

23. Subdirectory Website Structure
• Use a gTLD with a country or language specific
subdirectory, e.g. http://www.example.com/uk. If you
are targeting countries where more than one language is
spoken you will need a structure that includes both
country and language subdirectories. For example,
http://www.example.com/gb/en/ would be used to
target English speakers in Great Britain.

24. Subdomain Website Structure
• Use a Generic Top Level Domain Name (gTLD), with a
country (or language) specific subdomain, e.g.
http://uk.example.com or http://en.example.com

25. Website Structure Summary
• ccTLD = www.example.fr
• Subdirectory = www.example.com/fr
• Subdomain = fr.example.com

26. 6. Technical Elements
• rel="alternate" hreflang="x"
• Meta Content Language Tag

27. Rel=“alternate” hreflang=“x”
• Use rel="alternate" hreflang="x" tags in the HTML <head>
of each page – referencing itself too.
• Create a Hreflang XML Sitemap using this free tool:
http://www.themediaflow.com/tool_hreflang.php
• Note: both options require an understanding of how to
use Hreflang markup

28. 7. International Link Building
• Promote your international website assets by leveraging
relevant local sites, understanding cultural factors,
building relationships with local influencers and media,
and identifying what works best in each country to scale
and track the response to each international version.

29. 8. Testing Your International Results
• Test International results using http://isearchfrom.com/
• Test International Targeting in Webmaster Tools for Href
Lang issues.

30. 9. Tracking Your Success
• Track each of your International ‘properties’ separately in
both Analytics and Webmaster Tools.

31. Setting Your Goals/KPIs
• What do you want to achieve?
• Make it measurable
• Think SMART

32. What is an effective goal?
S
M
A
R
T
PECIFIC
EASURABLE
TTAINABLE
ELEVANT
IME BOUND

33. Example Goals
• Increased brand visibility = traffic increase
• More visibility in search engines = increased traffic from
Google organic
• To sell more tickets = more completed online bookings
• To sell more tickets = more enquiry forms submitted

34. Today’s Agenda
• Search engines and how they work
• Why International SEO
• Major considerations
• International SEO: 9 steps
• Setting and tracking goals

35. Laura Hampton
www.hallaminternet.com
0115 948 0123
Laura.hampton@hallaminternet.com
Recommend me on LinkedIn:
www.linkedin.com/in/lauralhampton

36. #ExportWeek