06/11/17 // Written by Emma Phillips

International Outreach Tips

International outreach is essential for all companies hoping to target new clients and customers overseas, whether you have existing business abroad or are looking to expand in the near future. A major part of achieving success when it comes to international SEO will be through international link building.  

It can follow a similar pattern to working on outreach campaigns for local and national audiences but there are major differences to remember, such as the language, link sources, competition and consumer variants. The following international outreach tips will help any business create an effective outreach campaign outside of their local country.   

Target the Right Bloggers

As ever, finding appropriate bloggers to collaborate with is essential for any outreach campaign and the same is true for international outreach. However, there can be the added challenges of language barriers and unfamiliarity with a new market. Using local search engines and social media sites, not just Google and Facebook, is a good start, such as Baidu when doing international outreach in China.   

Cultural differences are important as well. You may find some ideal bloggers to work with but not receive a response due to making a cultural faux pas. Research the best way to contact them and construct an email, as some cultures value getting straight to the point whereas others will expect some small talk beforehand.  

Identify International Backlinks

Using a tool such as SEMrush allows you to see if there are any existing links pointing to your domain. For businesses that have already been doing local or international link building, this could be the case. You will need to check where such links are pointing towards though, as for strong international SEO they need to be territory specific. SEMrush provides a top-level breakdown of existing backlinks and helps you identify ones which can be made more territory specific.   

Create Local Content

Multilingual link building is not simply writing some content, sticking it through Google Translate and leaving it at that. Great content is vital for any international outreach campaign to be a success and this means spending time and effort to get it right. The outreach content you produce needs to be quality but also relevant to the blog, business and target audience.  

Research local news stories, trends and interests that fit with the business to provide inspiration for appropriate content. If you do not speak the local language or have the resource, it is far better to use local speakers and writers to produce unique content in the relevant language, rather than use a translation tool.  

Review Your International Outreach

An easy way to measure the results of your first few bits of international link building are to look at the engagement via number of comments and shares. This can provide an overall positive or negative sentiment, showing how well it has gone down. Conversions, shares per post, audience size and more can all be measured against KPIs too. If things don’t go as well as hoped, review your competitors who are also doing multilingual link building and see what they’re doing differently and well.  

International SEO with Ingenuity Digital

At Ingenuity Digital we offer a variety of international SEO services to help improve your business’ online visibility. Through international link building, on site optimisation, SEO copywriting and more, you can ensure your international outreach is a success with our expert help and services.