TL;DR

International SEO is about far more than translating your content. Successful expansion into new markets also requires that you adapt your messaging to fit local language, culture, search behaviour, user expectations, idioms, and technical requirements. 

A strong international SEO strategy will combine localisation, keyword research, technical implementation (including hreflang and localisation signals), authority building through local links, competitor analysis, and UX/UI optimisation. We provide end-to-end strategy and implementation to help brands avoid common international launch mistakes, improve visibility, target the right audiences, and generate revenue faster in new territories.

Pain points

Brands online are able to grow beyond their country of origin a lot faster than those requiring bricks-and-mortar locations – but though it’s an option, doing it well and in a way that is able to quickly deliver a return is something altogether different. What many brands overlook about international SEO is that new territories are about more than language barriers, they’re understanding barriers and technical barriers. 

So, if you’re getting ready to launch a new, alternative language site, folder structure or subdomain, or you’ve already launched and are struggling with any of the following, get in touch:

• Trouble replicating traffic and visibility in a new language or territory.
• Low conversion rates or high volumes of irrelevant traffic and rankings.
• Problems ranking revenue driving pages that perform well in your home territory.
• Problems breaking the awareness barrier in a new country.

What we mean by international SEO strategy and implementation

Oscar Wilde once wrote of the US that we, the English “have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.” It’s a phrase that’s as true today as it was in the late 19th Century. So if we cannot expect idioms and nuances to directly transfer even across the Atlantic – how can we expect them to survive translation?

Take the idiom ‘burning the candle at both ends’ – you can pretty much get away with it in French, which has long used the phrase “brûler la chandelle par les deux bouts”, but a Spanish speaker would likely be non-plused – preferring to use a rope based metaphor such as “estirar demasiado la cuerda” (over-extending the rope). 

Languages are a product of their environment and also come to influence how their speakers think. A good SEO strategy will not just recommend translating the language, but to seek dynamic equivalence translation – which looks to translate the meaning of your copy, not just the words.

But language is just the start of an international strategy – and while it can give you a deeper understanding of what you need to be ranking for, it is still no guarantee that you’ll improve visibility.

Good international SEO also needs to build you the authority in your new locale that you have earned in your country of origin – with links from trusted country-specific TLDs, with technical fixes that declare the new language and currency requirements clearly in the code for appropriate pages, it will need to check your UX/UI in your target country and so much more. 

The below from Shopify provides a good example of the need for language specific checks:

It probably goes without saying, that when we say ‘implementation’, we mean that we’ll take charge of executing the work we outline in the strategy documentation – allowing you to focus on other aspects of the launch, knowing that your international SEO is in safe hands.

MMC Digital’s international SEO strategy service

While we’d love to be a group of polyglots, we’ve only got tourist level French and German within the team – but we do have trusted partners we can put you in touch with for sense-for-sense translation if required. The technical side of the project – both pre- and post-translation – is where we excel and, therefore, what we offer as a service. 

As part of our international SEO strategy service, we’ll set out in detail exactly what you’ll need to do to succeed in your target location – including hreflang audits, UX/UI audits, keyword strategies, content targets, competitor profiling and more. We’ve worked on multilingual and multinational projects for some of the UK and Europe’s largest brands – and know what it takes to make a successful territorial launch.

• Technical SEO audit – we’ll kick the metaphorical wheels of your CMS and check under its bonnet to make sure you are serving the right signals to each of your target countries, and fix it if you aren’t.
• Keyword strategy – we’ll review your content and identify keywords you can target that represent the meanings you’re targeting rather than direct translations (we’ve just spotted a German ad that read “Liebe macht keinen unterscheid. Wir auch nicht.” which can be read two ways – one of which is “Love makes no difference. Neither do we.” which we doubt was the intention).
• Content strategy – once we develop a list of target keywords, we’ll make sure you’re ready with a plan for how to go about producing content to address them.
• Competitor/sector profiling – we’ll produce a competitor or sector analysis report that delivers genuine knowledge of the landscape in your target nation.
• UX/UI audits – once the project is ready to launch, we undertake a series of audits of your launch to make sure that everything is working as intended in your chosen territory.

What can our international SEO strategy service do for your business?

You never get a second chance to make a first impression – our international SEO strategies make sure you don’t need one. Brands have made all possible mistakes – let us help you learn from them, so you don’t end up having to redirect a lot of poorly translated Swedish URLs following press coverage (we didn’t work on that one), or end up with a large fine for improper data collection.

An international SEO strategy prepares you with an understanding of the technical, on and off-page requirements of your target country, making sure that you’re ready to hit the ground running. Moving into a new market can be an expensive and logistically difficult process – we make sure that your work behind the scenes is ready to become a revenue driver from the moment you launch.

Our international SEO strategy and implementation helps you to:

• Understand the competitor landscape
• Target the right keywords rather than just translations
• Set your international technical SEO tags correctly
• Plan properly for changes in UX/UI presentation and expectations
• Help you prepare for any regulatory or legal requirements in your target area
• Allows you to focus on other priorities while we take care of your SEO