How to Prepare Our Website for International SEO Efforts?

Companies often perform search engine optimization and this could cause them to try to undertake specific efforts. There are things that they should do if they want to target international market. Their website should be able to communicate with everyone, including international users. However, we should know that we may not be able to fill the gap, because we are not able to provide geo-location adjustments. We should know that when we want to achieve true localization, it will be more than just simple translation. Many companies will rely only on direct translation engines, which may not be able to accurately translate content from one language to another. This will reduce interests, because people find it difficult to understand information.

There are other things that we need to do when we seek to prepare our website for International consumers. Content for International consumers should be appealing, consistent and common. This should allow us to orchestrate our effort. Our website should be based on a system that makes it easy to post our content. As an example, we should consider adding sub-domains of our website specialized for specific countries. In this case, although we may duplicate the layout and navigation structure, but it is important to hire content creation team from that specific country. They will be able to modify text, image and video according to local preferences. This will make sure that we are able to create a conducive environment to maintain our brand, image and message.

Content should be nicely translated by native speakers. As an example, each country has language styles that can’t be generated even by the most sophisticated translation engine. It is also possible for native speakers to add new updates relevant with a country. This will make sure that our website will be able to benefit local readers. In fact, we should be able to encourage our International staff to add unique content that is consistent with the country’s current situation. In this case, there could be some content that shouldn’t be displayed on sub-domains for other countries. As long as these pages meet specific corporate standards and guidelines, we should be able to consider them as welcomed additions to our international-oriented website.

Regardless of how many sub-domains we use to focus on different countries, we should keep our DNA intact. There should still be strong resemblance if we compare these sub-domains, regardless of the language used. Navigation structure and layouts are the DNA of our website. This also includes main color, background image, logo and others. Keywords should also be consistent, although they are translated for each sub-domain. Google and major search engines will be able to detect these consistencies and they will group our sub-domains. The right sub-domain will be displayed on the search result, depending on the keywords used. We should also make sure that these keywords are properly translated.