Performing international SEO strategies for startups is essential if we seek growth and development of online business at an international level.
Basically, international SEO consists of optimizing the web to position it in the first results of different countries or languages.
As a startup, your goal may be to reach more users of multiple languages, sell abroad, make yourself known internationally, internationalize your business, etc., if you are facing any of these cases, then it is necessary to develop a good international SEO strategy. Why? Well, because if there is already a lot of competition trying to sell in your country, it will be much greater at an international level.
There are many business opportunities waiting for you abroad, but there is also a lot of competition, so you have to know how to reach them. Think that without positioning, there is no internationalization.
SEO strategies for international startups
As we were saying, thanks to international SEO for startups, the Internet gives your business the possibility to open up to the world. But first, you have to plan how to best reach the specific audiences of each country that your startup wants to address.
Therefore, the first step towards the internationalization of your startup implies that you decide whether you will address an audience that speaks a specific language, that is in a specific country, or both at the same time. In other words, decide whether you will use a multi-language, multi-country, or hybrid strategy.
Multi-language or Language Targeting Strategy
Language targeting is the international SEO strategy used by startups that want to target a global audience that speaks a certain language.
Typically, people only browse sites written in their language. Therefore, if you work well with SEO, the more languages a website is translated into, the more global the audience will be.
And the more audience, the more potential customers. The good thing is that for this strategy you only need one domain: you can host the version of each language in different folders or sub-domains.
The more languages a website is translated into, the more global the audience will be.
However, translating a website is a job that requires a lot of effort. It is a continuous work, since the contents of a website have to be updated from time to time. In addition, a support service should be offered in that language.
And each translation has to be accompanied by a keyword analysis for each country. Because literally translated searches are no good.
Multi-country strategy or Country Targeting
This international SEO strategy for startups consists of targeting the audience of one or more specific countries.
If you decide to opt for it, you must be clear that your services may be more interesting in one country than in another. That is, you have to have different marketing strategies in each country.
If you decide to use country targeting, you need several domains, unlike language targeting: one for each country. As an alternative, you can use the .com domain and use sub-domains or folders for each country.
When choosing keywords, keep in mind that each place has its own localisms: it can affect searches.
And that, perhaps in some countries, Google is not as strong as the search engine we are used to here. As it happens in China, if your startup’s website wants to be positioned in this country, it will have to adapt its strategy to Baidu’s requirements, which is the most used search engine, and not Google’s.
Advanced hybrid model
It is the right one when startups want to position themselves internationally and reach audiences that speak another specific language in another country. For example, in the US there is a large Asian community that searches in their original language.
The result? Your start-up’s website will be organized by country and language. That is, it mixes the best of both strategies, but the work is double. That’s why this strategy is only recommended for very advanced startups.
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