04/04/13 // Written by admin

Reasons Your International SEO Strategy is Failing

Have you recently tried to break into foreign markets online, only to realise that your strategy is failing to produce any results? Perhaps you think you have done everything you can to appeal to overseas customers and are being found for the right phrases but your strategy isn’t converting into sales. It is likely that your international SEO strategy is missing some key ingredients for success. Even when you think you have ticked all the search engine boxes, an international approach requires a greater understanding of search strategies and cultural differences in search behaviour.
So what could be the issue?
You’re not sufficiently localised – Creating a translated version of your website or simply owning a local domain is not enough to guarantee international success in the SERPs or encourage conversions. Your site needs to be sufficiently localised in order to appear in foreign search engines. Website copy should be translated and optimised correctly after translation. Links should be acquired naturally from local and relevant sites. It can be useful to have a native speaker perform your SEO and help your strategy.
Your translation is poor – Search engines are smarter and they can recognise poor quality content, including poor translations. Not only does your content need to be correctly translated into the target language, it needs to be a human translation. Optimised content that works in the UK doesn’t necessarily work everywhere else. Different cultures may have different terms that are removed from direct translations of keywords.
You only focus on Google – Google may not be the search engine of choice in other countries. As a result, it is important to monitor and optimise for other search engines in the regions you target. A good international SEO companyshould be able to monitor and target the appropriate search engines.

Source: via WebMarketing on Pinterest

You use your domestic strategy abroad – Don’t assume that your domestic SEO strategy and currently working ideas will work abroad. Your international SEO strategy must be tailored to your target market abroad. The competition could vary and customers will respond differently to your tactics. Different cultures may favour different products, brands or a different approach all together.
You haven’t analysed your international audience – It is not always a good idea to target solely by country. Look at targeting by culture. Local keyword research tools are useful for finding out which of your products will be popular to which people.