Establishing a Successful International Web Presence #InternationalSEO #SMX West 2017

@aleyda#InternationalSEO #12A
Establishing a Successful International Web Presence
SPEAKING IN
TONGUES

@aleyda#SMX West @aleyda
Hello #SMXWest
#InternationalSEO #12A

I’m Aleyda Solis

ORAINTI.COM @ALEYDA FB.COM/ALEYDASEOTIPS/
I Do SEO
BITLY.COM/LIBROSEOALEYDA
I PublishI Share
I’m Aleyda Solis

I Blog I Speak I’m Featured
I’m Aleyda Solis

I help companies to connect with
potential customers all over the world

Expanding & diversifying trafﬁc sources

With a sustainable organic trafﬁc growth

Generating actual customers,  
conversions & proﬁt from them

Here’s how you can do it too!
Avoid
targeting
markets that are
not profitable
Select
the best Web
structure to
target your
international
markets
Effectively
geolocate &
localize your
Web presence

Avoid targeting markets  
that are not proﬁtable

Identify which countries & languages are
already bringing trafﬁc & conversions

The ones where your competition & industry
leaders are already proﬁting from
https://www.similarweb.com/

Verify which are the countries with more
organic search trafﬁc potential in your industry

Check the level of already existing 
organic search competition there

Align this with your own multilingual &
international operations capacity
Other  
Trafﬁc  
Drivers
Used Search
Engines Competitors
Authority
Audience
Search Behavior
& interests
Organic
Search Trafﬁc
Volume &
Share
COUNTRY
CURRENT ORGANIC
SEARCH TRAFFIC
COMPETITION
LEVEL
SEARCH VOLUME OPPORTUNITY
SEARCH TREND
IN MARKET
SEARCH
ENGINE USED
SPAM LEVEL
UK 100 per month High 500,000 searches per month Positive Google Low
Spain 50 per month Medium 300,000 searches per month Positive Google Medium
Country &
Language
Operations
Capacity

Verify if there’s enough organic search trafﬁc
to compensate a proﬁtable Web activity
Cost of international Web projectNumber of Conversions
for a break-even Average conversion value
=
No. of Conversions for Break-evenNumber of visits
for a break-even Average Conversion Rate
=

Identify if you should language  
or country target first
Is location a factor that influence your Web operations?
Yes No
Is there enough traffic & conversions to
target each country?
Language
Targeting
Yes No
Country
Targeting

Like they have done
vs
Language TargetingCountry Targeting

Use the International SEO ROI calculator 
to facilitate this
http://www.aleydasolis.com/en/international-seo-tools/roi-calculator/

Now you can decide which  
international search markets to target
>Your International trafﬁc potential Visits & Conversions for a break-even
Yes No
Continue with the international
Web & SEO project
Might be too early
For most important countries
Buy & secure
your ccTLDs for
future activity
Create
custom alerts
Create a pilot
project prioritizing
main pages

Select the best Web structure to
target your international markets

Avoid using scripts or cookies showing your
international Web versions with the same URLs

As well as parameters for your  
international Web structure

If you’re country targeting, select between
ccTLDs, Subdirectories & Subdomains
ccTLDs
www.yourbrand.es
www.yourbrand.es/categoria-a/
Sub-directories 
w/ gTLDs www.yourbrand.com/es-es/
www.yourbrand.com/es-es/categoria-a/
Sub-domains
w/ gTLDs es-es.yourbrand.com/
es-es.yourbrand.com/categoria-a/

Each have pros & cons to country target
* Need less technical resources
* Need less efforts to grow popularity 
* More chances to get all versions penalized if something goes bad
* Need more efforts to geolocate
* Need more technical resources
* Need more efforts to grow popularity
* Better than sub-directories to organize larger & more complex sites 
* Need more efforts to geolocate
* Ideal alternative to geolocate if competition is not too high
* Need more efforts to grow popularity with a new domain
ccTLDs
Sub-directories 
w/ gTLDs
Sub-domains
w/ gTLDs

If you’re language targeting, select between
using subdirectories or subdomains
Sub-directories
www.yourbrand.com
www.yourbrand.com/es/categoria-a/
Sub-domains
es.yourbrand.com/
es.yourbrand.com/categoria-a/

Which also have pros & cons to language target
* Need less technical resources
* Need less efforts to grow popularity
* Generates a deeper url structure
* More chances to get all versions penalized if something goes bad
* Need more efforts to grow popularity
* Generates shorter URL structure which can be better for larger sites
Sub-directories
Sub-domains

It’s key to be consistent though and  
avoid mixing international Web structures

Take into consideration that Google doesn’t
support “continents” to geotarget

Verify which Web structures are used  
by the top sites in the desired market
13 ccTLDs
vs.
7gTLDs

As well as those rankings for the
potential top queries in that market
https://serpchecker.com/
7 ccTLDs
vs.
2 gTLDs

What’s the authority of those top ranking sites?
Can you compete with a new ccTLD?

@aleyda#SMX West
Yes
@aleyda
Choose your international  
Web structure accordingly
What’s your international target?
Country Language
Are your top
competitors using
ccTLDs?
Yes
Is the domain
authority of your
competition higher
&  
a concern?
Yes
Use ccTLDs
No
No
Use Geolocalized
Sub-Directories
YesNo Do you need a
ﬂatter & more
differentiated URL
structure?
Use  
Sub-Directories
Is the domain
authority of your
competition higher
&  
a concern?
Use  
Sub-Domains
No

Effectively geolocate &  
localize your Web structure

@aleyda#SMX West#InternationalSEO #12A @aleyda
Avoid ranking with a non-relevant Web version
in your international search results
com.au
com.au
com.au
com.au
com.au
com

Not only with country versions, but also
language ones that will cannibalize themselves
Searching from Google Spain

Misaligned pages will have worse rankings,
CTR, user experience and conversions
This happens with a UK ccTLD

Check if you’re suffering from this already!

Verify which domain extensions are treated  
as generic by Google to geolocate if needed
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1347922

Register & geolocate in GSC each  
sub-directory or sub-domain to country target

It’s better to avoid automatic
redirects based on the IP location

As you might assume too much and
give a negative user experience

Suggest the relevant international
version instead

Localize every aspect of your
Web content & design
URL
Meta Description
Currency
Menu
Title
Images
H1

Including the URLs

Get native support to optimize the content
using the relevant terms of the target markets

Remember that language might be the same but
the terms could be different based on country

Not only the content, but also the design;  
based on local preferences & culture
In Japan In the UK

Indicate your international targeting  
with the meta & html lang tag
http://bit.ly/binglang

As well as specifying your pages language  
and country alternates with hreﬂang
bit.ly/hreflangannotations

Every page should include its language &
country target, and point to its other versions
English for the US
Default
Spanish for the US
English for the UK
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.brand.com/dogs/“ />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang=“en-us" href=“http://www.brand.com/dogs/“ />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang=“es-us" href=“http://www.brand.com/es/perros/“ />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang=“en-gb" href=“http://www.brand.co.uk/dogs/“ />
<link rel="canonical" href=“http://www.brand.com/es/perros/“ />
brand.com/dogs/
brand.co.uk/dogs/
brand.com/es/perros/
English for the US
<link rel="canonical" href=“http://www.brand.co.uk/dogs/“ />

Using ISO 639-1 values for languages  
and ISO 3166-1 for countries

Without changing the canonical tags
conﬁguration

You can add them in the HTML Head or in
XML Sitemaps, as well as HTTP Headers
Add them in XML
Sitemaps in non-
ﬂexible sites with
a high number of
versions
Add them in
HTML in sites
with lower
number of
versions & coding
ﬂexibility

Start with only the necessary ones checking
trafﬁc misalignment if there are too many

Beware of including incorrect hreﬂang values
hreﬂang="en-gb"

Adding a country without a language,  
which is mandatory
hreflang="pt-br"
hreflang="en-ca"
Not supported
hreflang="es-mx"
hreflang="en-us"

Using underscores instead of dashes to
separate language & country values
hreﬂang=“fr-ca”

Forgetting to self-refer by specifying  
the current URL in the hreﬂangs

Not referring back at all from one language
or country version to another

Adding non-indexable, canonicalized, error,
redirected or blocked URLs in hreﬂangs

It’s critical to avoid these errors so the
hreﬂang tags are not ignored…

Monitor the existence of these issues with  
the GSC International Targeting report

It speciﬁes the type of error and  
the number of pages affected

As well as the URLs where these  
issues have been found

Avoid these issues by generating correct
annotations with the Hreﬂang Generator Tool
bit.ly/generatorhreflang

Generating the XML sitemaps along
hreﬂang tags with the hrefbuilder
hrefbuilder.com

Validate the hreﬂang implementation using
crawlers like Botify that supports it

With OnPage.org that allows to segment  
each international version issues

Or DeepCrawl that veriﬁes hreﬂang  
implemented in XML sitemaps too

If you follow these generation & validation
steps you’ll be able to specify them effectively

And grow your international search visibility
with effectively geolocalized Web versions

That are also proﬁtable :)

@aleyda#InternationalSEO #12A
LEARN MORE: UPCOMING @SMX EVENTS
THANK YOU!  
SEE YOU AT THE NEXT #SMX

Establishing a Successful International Web Presence #InternationalSEO #SMX West 2017

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