Global SEO: Our Tips to Create a Winning International Strategy

If your customers are all over the world, you need to have a website reaching them. Global search engine optimization (SEO) allows you to create and optimize content to reach audiences in international markets. This way, international users can find your website when they’re searching in their home country and your content will rank on their search results page, in turn, increase conversions.

‍What Is a Global SEO Strategy?

A global SEO (or international SEO) strategy is the approach and tactics used to optimize a website's content for search engines in multiple countries and languages. It aims to encourage search engines to serve the right content to the right users in different countries at the right time.

What Is International SEO vs. Global SEO?

While often discussed as separate concepts, global SEO and international SEO are essentially the same in practice. The idea of "global SEO" as a one-size-fits-all approach to worldwide audiences is misleading – there's no such thing as a truly global audience. Every effective global strategy must consider local nuances, making it international SEO by default.

Even when targeting English-speaking markets, regional differences in search behavior, language preferences, and cultural context require localized approaches. Success in reaching global audiences comes through careful attention to regional specifics, making all effective SEO strategies inherently international in nature.

What Is Global SEO vs. Local SEO?

Local SEO and global SEO serve fundamentally different purposes in your digital strategy. Local SEO focuses on optimizing your online presence for nearby customers through location-specific keywords, Google Business Profiles, and local review management – perfect for businesses wanting to attract customers to physical locations.

Global SEO, by contrast, breaks down geographical barriers to reach customers worldwide through language-specific optimization, cultural adaptation, and regional search engine considerations. It requires implementing hreflang tags, creating market-specific URL structures, and developing content that resonates across different cultures and languages – essential for businesses looking to expand their global digital presence.

Why Is a Global SEO Strategy Important?

Unless you run a local brick-and-mortar business with no ecommerce component, chances are that your customers hail from all over the world. When you’re providing goods and services to international audiences, where you’re located doesn’t matter.

If you do it right, you can attract customers regardless of their geographic location, so it’s important to think about your business from a global perspective.

Appearing in international search engines and ranking highly for your desired search terms isn’t something that you can achieve just by having your website translated into a local language.

While it’s important to have your web content accessible to readers who speak a different language, that’s not enough to build a comprehensive global SEO strategy to reach your international audience. 

Creating a Global SEO Strategy

So, how do you 'do' Global SEO?

There are two ways for your business’s website to go international: you could have country-specific versions of your website using local domains in each target country or have only one global website.

This is what’s called Country Code Top Level Domains (CCTLDs) and/or subdomains/subdirectories.

In the first case, you could make your US-based website a .com site, while creating a duplicate site in Japan with a .jp domain and one in Spanish (Spain) with a .es domain. However, this can get rather costly and complicated, as it requires you to maintain multiple domains and make updates to multiple sites every time you want to make a small change.

The other option for a global SEO strategy is to have one multilingual website that’s translated into the languages of the market (or markets) that you’re trying to target.

Weglot is a versatile tool that can help marketers with website localization and multilingual SEO. Here are some of our top tips to help you build a global SEO strategy to cater to international audiences: 

Optimize Your Website for International Audiences: SEO Best Practices

Before you address global SEO strategy, it’s important to first look at your overall content marketing efforts and SEO performance. You’ll want to assess your website to determine whether it’s in good condition and optimized for search engines and human site visitors.

Looking at the bigger picture and overall SEO best practices will lead to you ask yourself the following questions:

• Does your website offer content that’s informative, educational, and valuable to the reader? In any language, if the content on your website isn’t useful, visitors won’t come back.
• Is your page loading speed fast? Slow page loading may get your page de-prioritized from search engines and hurt your overall SEO rankings.
  

• Are the images on your website compressed and/or optimized? If your image sizes are too large – if they take up too much memory – this can contribute to your pages loading too slowly. It can also use too much space on your server and interrupt your bandwidth.
• Is your site easy to navigate? You’ll want to make sure to have an updated Sitemap file on your site for search engines to use to crawl your website, but you also want to make sure that it’s easy for human visitors to find their way around for a better user experience.
• Is your website responsive or mobile-optimized? Search engines penalize websites that aren’t mobile-optimized since mobile devices are such a common way to surf the web these days.
• Is your website accessible? That is, do your images and videos have appropriate alt descriptions and tags? Are you using the most current accessibility practices? Websites that aren’t inaccessible can sometimes face SEO penalties that get them de-prioritized.

Analyze Your Target Audience for Your Global SEO Strategy

Before you can move forward with your global SEO strategy, you’ll need to do some background research.

Competition

Check out the type of content that competitors are offering, especially competitors that already have a foothold in the local market you’re looking to expand into. Look at their URLs, images, and offers to get a good idea of what keywords they’re ranking for. 

Fresh ideas could help drive more organic traffic and if your new content is better than theirs, you have a chance to outrank them.

Market research will help you assess your opportunities. There’s also a way to find out what shows up on a specific country’s Google search results, giving you insight into the kind of content you’re up against. Don’t worry – we’ve got you covered with our guide on seeing multi-location search results. 

Search engines

You’ll also want to look closely at which search engines are important in your target market. While Google has the market share for search, different regions may have search engines with a strong specific country presence.

To reach customers in China, for example, you’ll need to rank well in Baidu rather than Google. South Koreans use Naver, and in Russia, you'd need to optimize for Yandex. Each of these search engines will have slightly different algorithms, so you’ll want to find out how they work and find out what their ranking factors are.

Link building

Finally, you’ll also need a link-building strategy that works in your target market. To optimize your global SEO strategy, you need to obtain backlinks from sites with a high authority rating for a particular region, language, and/or search engine. This means you’ll need to do some research to find which directories, publications, or websites will provide you with the best backlink opportunities.

Keyword Research for Global SEO Strategy

Keyword research for international SEO builds on traditional SEO practices but requires additional considerations for global markets. Like any SEO strategy, you'll need to select keywords that are relevant to your business and drive qualified traffic to your site. However, international SEO demands an extra layer of analysis – proper translation and localization of keywords for each target market.

You’ll need keywords with a high enough search volume to get you sufficient traffic, but that aren’t so competitive that you won’t be able to get a ranking for them and waste your SEO efforts.

As with all types of SEO, you want to consider keyword placement in your content. Keywords that are strategically placed in the page title, page descriptions, alt text, anchor text, and header text sections will usually boost the SEO rank of that page more than keywords that are written in plain text.

And just like any SEO, it’s important to look at the intent behind a user’s search. All over the world, voice search and natural syntax search is becoming more commonplace, meaning that users are being directed more and more often to sites that fit their presumed intent.

You need to create helpful content, such as writing articles, that provides the users with the information they’re looking for.

Create Useful Content for an International Audience

Creating content for an international audience goes beyond simple translation. Your content must resonate with local audiences while maintaining your brand's global identity.

Here's how to ensure your content delivers value across different markets:

Start with user intent in each region. The core purpose of a search might be similar across countries, but how users phrase their queries and what they expect to find can vary significantly. For example, an American searching for "apartment rental tips" might expect different information than a British user searching for "flat letting advice" – even though they're essentially looking for the same thing.

Cultural context matters as much as language. Consider how examples, analogies, and case studies will be perceived in different cultures. A reference to American football might work well in the US but could confuse audiences in countries where "football" means soccer. Similarly, certain colors, numbers, or symbols might carry different meanings or connotations across cultures.

Structure your content for international accessibility:

• Use clear, simple language that's easier to translate
• Avoid idioms, slang, and culture-specific references unless they're adapted for each market
• Include region-specific data and examples when possible
• Consider different date formats, currencies, and measurement units
• Use visuals that are culturally appropriate and inclusive

Create a Language-Specific, Long-Term Plan For URL Structure

Your global SEO strategy isn’t just about content. You need to make sure that your site is robot-friendly, too.

A great global SEO strategy will have a clean, correctly configured, frequently updated sitemap, along with SEO-friendly and people-friendly URLs in each language you’re optimizing for.

URL Structure Options for International SEO

When optimizing for international SEO, choosing the right URL structure is crucial. It helps search engines understand your target audience and rank your site appropriately. Here are the main options to consider:

• Country Code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD)
  • Example: www.example.fr
  • Pros: Clear geo-targeting, user trust
  • Cons: Requires separate domains, loss of existing domain authority
• Subdomains
  • Example: fr.example.com
  • Pros: Easy to set up, allows regional hosting
  • Cons: Requires careful hreflang implementation
• Subdirectories
  • Example: www.example.com/fr/
  • Pros: Maintains domain authority, easier management
  • Cons: Less clear geo-targeting
• Generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) with language parameters
  • Example: www.example.com/?lang=fr
  • Pros: Simple implementation, maintains domain authority
  • Cons: Less clear geo-targeting, potential URL confusion
• Different Domain Names
  • Example: www.examplefrance.com
  • Pros: Complete control over branding and SEO
  • Cons: Starts from scratch, no existing domain authority

Each option has its advantages and challenges. The best choice depends on your specific business needs, target markets, and resources. Consider factors like SEO impact, user experience, and management complexity when making your decision.

It’s also a good idea to include some keywords in your URLs, as this makes it easier for bots and humans to know what the page is about, and it’s a good idea to have different pages in different languages link to one another; for example, the French version links to the English version and so forth.

Weglot will automatically update the metadata for your website. Once Weglot is installed, you can use the “Inspect Source” feature on your finished site. At the top of the code section, just above the “head” tags, the code on your website tells the user’s browser (and the search engines) what page your website is displayed in.

Be Patient!

SEO is not a magic wand, and it doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time for search engines to properly index your site, and once your site is cataloged, it will take some time before your site develops the longevity, clout, and reputation to rank for your selected SEO keywords.

International SEO can be just as competitive as local SEO, so a great global SEO strategy with localized content optimization is necessary for getting the long-term results you’re looking for and to help you appear at the top in a Google search.

Essential Tools for Your International SEO Strategy

Implementing a successful international SEO strategy requires the right combination of tools. Here's a comprehensive overview of essential tools that will help you reach global audiences effectively:

• Weglot: Handles automatic translation, SEO metadata, hreflang tags, and server-side implementation. Perfect for websites needing fast, scalable translation with SEO benefits built-in.
• Ahrefs: Offers keyword research capabilities across multiple countries and languages, with comprehensive competitor analysis features.
• SEMrush: Provides country-specific keyword data and allows you to analyze search volume in different regions.
• Google Search Console: Monitors your international site's performance and identifies issues with language targeting.
• Google Analytics: Set up country and language segments to track performance across different markets.

While Weglot handles many aspects of international SEO automatically, combining it with these specialized research and monitoring tools can help you create a more comprehensive and effective global SEO strategy.

Other Technical Aspects of International SEO to Take Note Of

Now, let’s look at technical SEO, which involves work such as adding hreflang tags and a language switcher.

Be careful when navigating these technical issues, as they can be tricky to implement if you don’t know your way around them.

Setting up Server-Side Translation

There are two approaches to translating your website content before it is displayed to the visitor.

The first is client-side translation (using a Javascript snippet), where your original content is sent to your site visitor. The content will then be swapped with the translation into the visitor’s local language.

Client-side translation can be good in certain situations, but it does make it hard for Google bots to index the translations because they will “see” only the original content.

The second approach is server-side translation, where the translation will replace your original content before the server sends the page to the visitor.

Since server-side translations are embedded into the page’s source code, Google’s bots can detect and index them more easily. Using server-side translation also means your SEO tags (metadata, alt tags, and more) are automatically translated in the source code.

Given the benefits of server-side translation, we recommend using it to translate your website content wherever possible.

Adding Hreflang Tags

Okay, so this is where things can get a little more challenging if you aren’t a developer.

Hreflang tags are small code elements in your pages’ source code that tell Google the language of a page and its intended region.

Implementing hreflang tags on your web pages can help Google serve these pages to users with matching language and regional settings.

However, adding them can be complicated and time-consuming, particularly for beginners.

You’ll need to insert your hreflang tags into the “head” section of your HTML page, HTTP headers, or in your sitemap. It’s crucial to be consistent here and choose only one option for placing your hreflang tags. Otherwise, search engines can misinterpret them.

Check out our ultimate guide to hreflang tags for more information (and options for fuss-free hreflang implementation).

Making It Easy for Users to Switch Languages

Remember, IP addresses don’t necessarily indicate the country a person is browsing from or the language in which they want to view your content.

For example, if you’re a French-speaking person in Spain or a German speaker in Brazil, it might be frustrating to land on the Spanish-speaking or Brazilian Portuguese version of a website, with no option to switch its content to your desired language.

To avoid this problem, set your website’s default language based on the user’s browser language setting.

You can also install a language switcher to help visitors toggle your website to their preferred language.

This way, your users will stay on your website longer since they can consume your content more easily. Such increased “dwell time” may also boost your website rankings.

If all these technical steps we’ve discussed seem intimidating, you can cut out many of them by choosing Weglot as your multilingual translation solution!

For one, Weglot automatically handles server-side translation and hreflang tag implementation for you. It can also help install a customizable language switcher on your website.

Try Weglot on your website with a free trial here.

Streamline Your International SEO Implementation

A good international SEO strategy can help you sell to people all over the world. There are a lot of factors to think about, even if the actual implementation is a breeze. 

You’ll want to do plenty of research. Just because it’s a high-volume keyword in one language doesn’t mean it has the same volume or importance in another.

Even if the language is the same, search volume can differ a lot in different countries or regions, so keyword research is important.

Don’t tackle too many new markets at once. It’s better to establish your brand in one or two additional markets and build a reputation of high-quality products and culturally relevant content than to flood the web with low-quality copy in 30 markets. Slow and steady wins the race!

Marketing to international customers is essential in today’s global marketplace, and international SEO is how you put your product or service in front of your customers. 

Get a free 10-day trial of Weglot and benefit from a translation solution that’s also optimized for SEO.

‍