International SEO: Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them for Global Success

Jun 22 / 2023

Going global is every business owner’s dream but it comes with its difficulties. You will have to put in a lot of time and effort but going global is necessary to get a foothold in the growing global e-commerce market.

International SEO marketing is an essential thing to tackle when a business enters foreign markets. It is common for even the experts to sometimes find it hard to deal with international SEO.

Common Mistakes in International SEO

International SEO varies according to the website and the needs of the business owner. What works for one might not work for another. Hence, it is important to have a deeper understanding of the practice.

Fortunately, we can learn from the mistakes of others and make critical decisions based on their experiences. Here, we have compiled some common mistakes made while handling international SEO and some tips on how to avoid them.

Optimizing Based on Language Rather Than the Country

The businesses that go global often tend to think about the languages spoken in the countries they target rather than the proper location. After all, international SEO is about optimizing the site in the target language, right?

But this is where the business owners take misguided decisions. Most business owners create the website based on traffic in the United States. The language, currency and targeted keywords are all for the U.S.

When they expand the business to other English-speaking countries, the site for these countries would simply be the duplicate of the U.S. site created first. This will cause the traffic from other English-speaking countries to bleed into the U.S. site since it was created first.

If a Canadian client landed on the U.S. site, the experience will of course be bad and bounce rates would be high.

Solution: Strategies should be created with the specific country in mind. If you don’t have the resources to do it, prioritize countries based on the business size.

Focused research about what works for the particular country’s audience, constant communication and optimization would help keep international SEO efforts on track.

Also Read: 5 Ways to Convert Your Visitors into Customers

Targeting Google Alone

Google is of course the largest search engine in the whole world but that doesn’t mean that it is every country’s favorite.

For example, in South Korea people prefer using Naver over Google, and in China, it is Baidu. Often, business owners optimize their sites for Google even while targeting these countries and this in turn affects the traffic inflow.

Solution: Find out the search engine leader in the country you are targeting and then optimize your site for the particular search engine.

Simply Translating the Content

International SEO is not simply translating a site using automation tools. This is one of the most common mistakes businesses make since the process is inexpensive and easy to implement.

But the auto-translated content is usually useless and the local audience finds it confusing and sometimes even completely incomprehensible. The local audience might easily get a negative perception of your brand since a poorly translated site means zero effort.

Even if these sites have high rankings, they would not generate leads that would be useful for the business.

Solution: Research the local market you are targeting and choose keywords that generate high traffic in that market. Then, hire native and local translators who live in the particular region. Include the researched keywords to create high-quality content for your site. This means that you understand and respect the audience.

Not Taking the Local Legal Issues Seriously

While creating web content for target markets, make sure that you adhere to the local laws and regulations regarding marketing and sales.

Often, people focus on the U.S. but in some countries, the laws are more restricted than in the U.S. and this can cause problems.

Solution: Research the laws and regulations in the local market that you are targeting. Never fail to check multiple times to make sure the features and content on your website do not breach any regulations on data security and priority.

Also Read: 5 Mobile Marketing Techniques That Can Grow Your Business

Ignoring Local Competition

Your job isn’t over with just creating the website for the target country. You are a new business competing with the already established ones in the region. Often, business owners do not take this into account.

Solution: Conduct a thorough competitor analysis in the country you are aiming to expand your business. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses and doing this before creating the website can help create a better website that understands its target market.

LBN Tech Solutions

International SEO is hard but not for a star digital marketing company like us. We have experts who have dealt with international SEO successfully for years. Check out our site for more info!