International SEO Agency - Global SEO Agency

International Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) involves making your website appear at the top of search results in different countries (SERP), and generating qualified traffic in each target country.

NB What you need to understand beforehand is that the internet is only a distribution channel, admittedly a very powerful one because it is "easily global", but Google will index you by country and not by language.

In other words, you won't get identical results in the UK, the USA or Canada with the same approach, quite apart from the local competitive aspects.

Multilingual SEO can't be improvised. 

A successful international SEO strategy presupposes that you have analysed upstream, as you would in a traditional business, your market potential, your capacity to deliver or to deliver, the currencies in which to convert your sales policy, and often the human and financial resources you need to back it up.

If Pernod Ricard had wanted to export its Pastis 51, the reality of the market would have caught up with it very quickly...

Consumption being French (or almost), all the SEO efforts in the world would have achieved little or nothing, including in countries that drink aniseed in a different way (Ouzo, Raki, Anisette).

On the other hand, selling Ballantine's Whisky all over the world really makes sense.

Except that for the latter, local laws, local taxes, distribution costs and modes of consumption are not enough to say to oneself... "well... what if I created a global online shop"...

Once you've said that, and assuming that its products and services can be distributed and presented anywhere in the world, you'll have to deal with Google, which accounts for 95% of internet searches worldwide...

So let's ask the question before we start trying to get into the top positions in search results.

And let's not forget to optimise the "basics" of local SEO.

• SEO On Site
• SEO Off Site
• Writing SEO-optimised content
• Content Marketing SEO
• Local referencing

If all the issues of offers, logistics, currency complexities, return policy and digital Road to Market are ready, then we can indeed try to take advantage of this international, even global, market.

And let's ask ourselves the question of presence with our website... and potentially, our websites...

From a purely Internet technical point of view, this time the question will arise, and you'll quickly understand why.

There are two essential facts to know on this subject:

1.Google thinks by country (and not by language - at least initially).

2. translation into the language of the country alone is not enough to be well referenced

 Let's get a little more technical:

In fact, everything will depend on the size of your business and the resources you can devote to it, whether in terms of financial resources globally and/or human resources locally.

In addition to choosing your domain names, another aspect to take into account is the number of currencies to be managed for e-commerce sites, any product ranges specific to each market, and banking and logistics interconnections.

So the structure of URLs, but quite simply your overall organisation, will be crucial.

the ccTLD ("country code Top Domain Level"): e.g. www.le-site.fr / site.es / site.be ...

This means that the URL extension carries the abbreviation of the country concerned. ( ex .fr for France )

Undoubtedly the most effective approach to international SEO strategy and local by country, because this approach is specifically linked to each target country and requires managing as many sites and content as there are countries.

The advantage will be to make things easier for the search engines in each country, to offer specific content marketing and a dedicated content strategy.

The disadvantage will be having to manage as many sites as there are countries, with the associated costs and resources needed to maintain and keep the websites alive.

For very large SMEs and multinationals, this will obviously be the ideal solution, although there will be other issues, such as coordinating Marketing and Sales actions if cross-functional strategies need to be coordinated and then implemented locally.

From an SEO point of view, however, if everything is done properly, this will be the best way to work on your local SEO, with the exception of traffic, which will only be local.

the gTLD ("generic Top Level Domain") ex www.le-site.com 

Ideal for global international brands distributed in every country in the world, this makes it easier to present the same offer on the same centrally administered site.

Languages and offers can then be managed using sub-directories and sub-domains (+ so-called "hreflang" tags, to which we will return later).

gTLD with subdirectory ( ex: le-site.com/it )

gTLD with subdomain ( ex: www.italia.le-site.com )

In both cases, the big advantage will be the ability to manage a single site with only branches and specific features for each part of the site. 

This means a single hosting solution, a single back office, and greater control over what you can offer online.

On the other hand, from an SEO point of view, it will undoubtedly be less easy to push as it will be hosted in a single location (unless you have the artefact of a CDN), so potentially with a longer response time, and indexing in each local country will be more complicated to do.

The final word will no doubt be on the ability to manage multiple currencies, delivery issues (for physical products), and the particularities and local standards of certain countries, linked more to the offer itself (different packaging for each country, different containers for each country, etc.).

As you will have realised, E-Commerce is about "commerce", and so it will obviously have to comply with export conditions, local laws and standards, as well as logistical capacity, which can go as far as taking into account Customer Service / Returns and Refund Policy, bank charges, etc etc.

The Hreflang indicates to search engines that the content of a page has been translated.
It indicates not only the language, but also the location of the country concerned.

For example, you can write in "French from France" or "French from Quebec".

So, over and above the purely translation and content writing aspects, the coding of the pages themselves will be of vital importance in making the pages easier to read for the indexing robots.

Call on a good Digital Agency expert in SEO to guide you.

Then, of course, if we want to offer Internet users in international markets multilingual content that matches their local Wording, it will be essential to be as close as possible to the mother tongue of each country.

Depending on whether you have the budget or not, translation can be carried out using plug-ins and automatic translation software such as "Translation". weglot" which is fairly inexpensive and already quite effective.

If you really have the means, for any new language on the website, it will be preferable to have a perfect translation into the local language for all the target foreign markets.

In this case, you need to bear in mind that any additional content or changes to the site will have to be submitted to your translators. 

Which means that over time, this can represent colossal budgets.