How to optimise content for different markets based on user needs and region vocabulary.
How to optimise content for different markets and languages?
How to optimise content for different markets
As a business owner, you are trying to get your business expanded to multiple markets as much as possible. This is where SEO and content marketing strategy can help you to rank. People from different markets are using search engines to find what they want. You just need to optimise content for different markets, and you will be able to end up with getting their attention. Keep on reading and we will share how to optimise content for different user intents and languages, based on keywords, clusters and topics.
What is international SEO and why is important?
To optimise content for different markets, you should clearly understand international SEO. International SEO is an approach that you can follow to manage multilingual and multi-regional sites. It’s a part of the search engine optimisation process, together with content creation, content optimisation and product strategy agains competitors. When you do this, the search engines figure out what version of your website should be ranked for what market. You will need to optimise content for different markets, so that search engines will be able to go ahead and make them visible for respective markets.
Multi-regional sites are different from multilingual sites. Multilingual sites are the websites, which are optimized for different languages. However, multi-regional websites are optimized for different markets or regions.
The main objective of international SEO would be to improve the overall user experience to the visitors who come to your website from different parts of the world to know more about your product or service. You make sure that all those visitors can go through an effortless journey, regardless of the region that they belong to. No user would end up with visiting a website that ruins their user experience. You can localize content according to the interests of the visitors and secure maximum opportunities that are available for you to grab. High-quality content, based on content intelligence recommendation, is a part of this process.
Planning out your multilingual SEO strategy
You should have a clear plan to optimise content for different markets. Here are some of the steps that you can follow when creating the plan of your multilingual SEO strategy.
The very first thing you should do when planning your multilingual SEO strategy is to get a better understanding about your audience. Along with that, you can even get to know about the search habits of the audience as well. This would be different from one country to another.
That’s why you will need to focus more on the languages that people speak. Based on that, you must ensure that your website offers a solution, which can translate content of the website.
The way how people use the internet differs from one country to another. For example, people use social media in different ways. You will be able to keep that in mind and focus more on the on-site SEO efforts. You can then focus on building backlinks. You will need to plan how you are building backlinks to cater to the needs of people from different markets.
You can build “customer vocabulary” a language match between your product and customer intent. This vocabulary will be different for each market and even each region, as people will have different challenges and their solutions are different as well. Optimisation for certain language can start with keyword research based on a specific topic, enriched with a big-data layer, where for example, you can add typical titles covering certain topic from competitors, your typical tickets or sales queries, etc.
Digital marketing strategy, based on user centricity, plays a big role in right content adaptation on certain market. For example, in Belgium, people who are native French speakers search differently than Dutch speakers. Also, competitors are different in the two parts of Belgium, as you can see bigger influence of international companies on language, compared to locals. So, person from Belgium, searching in French can see French blogs covering certain topic, when person living in next house, searching in Dutch can see blogs from Nederlands (Holland).
In this case you need to came up with a strategy to optimise and plan content based on market and language. This is a must in competitive sectors, where hundreds of pages are fighting for search engine rankings and organic traffic.
Next, you will need to focus on the search terms and content strategy. Some forms of content will be able to deliver more successful results to you with attracting audiences when compared to others. Along with that, you will be able to determine whether you can add new content for different international audiences as well.
Visitor statistics should never be ignored when you work on planning the multilingual SEO strategy. You can seek the assistance of a tool such as Google Analytics to figure out the sources of your traffic. Then you can compare those sources and plan your multilingual SEO strategy.
In case if you are managing an e-commerce store, you will need to focus more on the currencies that are supported. Likewise, you should also ensure that you are offering products, which can address the needs of people who come from different markets. Based on that, you can focus more on the local SEO efforts.
Even the domain name will need to be considered as you plan the multilingual SEO strategy. In some instances, you will come across the need to have a different domain name to make your website more appealing for people who come from a specific market.
Gain ideas for engaging content on audience level
Using the same content for all markets is not the best thing that you can do. Instead, you will need to make sure that you are using different content for different markets. This is where you will need to gain ideas on how to create engaging content for different audiences accordingly.
You will need to deep dive and do market research on different audiences. Then you will be able to figure out how to create engaging content for different audiences accordingly. It is better if you can refer to the local forums and social media groups, where you can get a better understanding on what people are discussing. Based on that, you can get additional information on what content you need to be writing.
As you write localized content, you should focus more on local politics, local holidays, local terminology, and newsworthy events. This will help you to differentiate content and write them accordingly. You can also take a look at the local marketing campaigns that are run by your competitors for specific markets. They can provide inspiration to you on how you should be optimizing content for different markets.
International SEO best practices
As you proceed to optimise content for different markets, you will need to be mindful about international SEO best practices as well. Here are some of the best practices that you can keep in your mind to dominate international SEO.
– Language target the website
Based on the market, you can make sure that you are loading a localized version of your website. You will be able to do this with the help of language meta tags or hreflang. You will need to ensure that everything on your website, from the content to navigation, is properly translated for the local visitors. You should never rely on local machine translations. Instead, you will need to get the assistance of a native and proceed with translating content accordingly.
– Have a proper URL structure
There’s a specific URL structure that you will need to follow when you are maintaining an international website. This is where you can use the top level domains of different websites. For example, when you are targeting people in the USA, you can have the TLD .us.
– Focus on other important SEO signals
You will also need to focus on the other important SEO signals. For example, you can host your website under a local IP. Or else, you can link to local content under the website. If there is a possibility for you to build links from local resources, you will need to do that as well. On top of everything, you should look for ways to rank on the local search engines. Baidu in China and Yandex in Russia are perfect examples of such local search engines.
