Global SEO Tips: Boost Your Site's Worldwide Reach

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Global SEO Tips to Enhance Your Website’s Global Reach

Adrijana Palatinus
Last updated: September 3, 2024
Reading Time: 23 minutes

In just 5 years, between 2019 and 2024, the time we spend on our phones went from 3 hours and 45 minutes to 4 hours and 49 minutes ^[1]. From the look of things, the average person can’t spend more than a few minutes without being connected with the rest of the world.

And in this connected world, your business can’t miss on the opportunity to further its reach and expand its market. Apple is a company quite aware of that. They have an elaborate global marketing strategy that targets emerging markets ^[2]that they can dominate with little investment.

Sure, you may not have the resources Apple has. But with some hard work, creative thinking, and planning, you can expand your reach as well.

If you want to grow, global SEO is the key to success. It allows you to reach people of different origins, languages, and cultures. Here’s how to get started with your SEO global strategy.

What Is Global SEO?

Global SEO is an assortment of optimization strategies that can help your website rank in multiple markets, across a number of countries and languages. The approach ensures your products can be easily discovered by potential customers in different regions of the world.

OK, let’s explain that in simpler terms: Unless you have an old-school brick and mortar shop, you don’t have to limit yourself to local consumers. No matter what you’re selling, there are millions of potential customers all around the world interested in it.

Let’s look at a more recent example.

Tens of thousands of companies were able to save and expand their business thanks to global SEO. Giants like IKEA and Zara have been able to blossom in the post-COVID-19 world, mainly thanks to the fact they market and sell so well in dozens of markets around the globe.

To attract people in various markets, you need to:

Discover what markets you can target;
Carefully translate website content;
Optimize website content for targeted regions.

Sure, the entire process is much more nuanced, but we’ll talk about it more detail later.

For now, you should keep this in mind: In 2024, over 90% of all Internet users ^[3]are located outside of the United States. That’s not just a big piece of the pie-that’s nearly the entire pie right there.A global SEO strategy is different than an SEM strategy. These two marketing strategies, while similar, have major differences. To find out about these differences, read our SEO vs. SEM article.

Key Elements of Global SEO

Every SEO strategy has it’s own components, global one is no different. Here are a couple of important elements of global SEO:

1. Language Considerations

Let’s say you’re trying to offer B2B software solutions to businesses in India, Germany, and Brazil. Your global strategy would include optimizing for the keyword “business management software” in the official languages of these countries:

India: “व्यावसायिक प्रबंधन सॉफ्टवेयर.”
Germany: “Geschäftsverwaltung Software.”
Brazil: “software de gestão empresarial.”

You would have to create brand-new content in target languages around these keywords.

2. Cultural Nuances

Directly translating your content isn’t an option, because a lot of nuance would get lost in translation and would appear mechanical to native speakers.

Tools like Google Translation and platforms like AI Translator might be able to help. However, if you want to have content that feels natural, you’ll need to work with native speakers and professional translators.

You also need to consider that same words can mean different things some languages. Here’s an example we’re all aware of: if you look up the word “football” in American and then UK market, you’ll find completely different results.

3. Geotargeting and International Domains

Google’s algorithm technically works the same, no matter where you are. But it gives users different results, based on their geolocation. If you want to understand search engine results in your target regions, you can use tools like Screaming Frog.

One thing you need to know is that Google prioritizes local domains in search results.

Using geotargeting and international domains, you can rank your content in different markets more easily. Here’s what you need to know about URL structures in the context of global SEO:

ccTLDs: Use country code top-level domains (e.g., .de for Germany) to indicate to search engines the target country.
Subdomains: Place international content on separate subdomains (e.g., de.example.com).
Subdirectories: Use subfolders within the main domain (e.g., example.com/de/).
gTLD with Language Parameters: Append language parameters to a general top-level domain (e.g., example.com?lang=de).
Different Domains: Host international content on entirely separate domains.

These URL structures help Google, Yahoo, Baidu, and other search engines to read, process, and index your content properly, improving visibility and ranking in target regions.

Global SEO vs. Local SEO

Now, global SEO isn’t that different from local SEO when it comes to execution. They’re basically just the opposite sides of the same coin.

Global SEO: Optimizing website content for a number of locations, consumers, and sometimes, even search engines (Yandex, Yahoo, Baidu, etc.).
Local SEO: The process of content optimization to increase local traffic, brand awareness, and name recognition for your business.

Needless to say, there are many, MANY differences between local and global SEO – and you can find some of the major differences in the table below.

Difference	Global SEO	Local SEO
Keyword Focus	General and broad.	Location-specific.
Target Audience	Diverse consumer base, often spanning multiple countries and regions.	Local customers in a specific area.
Optimization Tactics	Authoritative backlinks, broad content strategies, and brand visibility.	Local citations, Google My Business, and location-specific content.
Domain Structure	ccTLDs and subdomains for different regions and languages.	A single domain with a straightforward structure.
Competition	Competes with businesses on a national or a global scale.	Competes with businesses within the local market.
Language Considerations	Often involves optimizing content in multiple languages.	Only requires optimized content in local languages.
Business Listings	Broader online directories and international search engine platforms.	Optimizing for local directories and maps.

With global SEO, you need to find keywords that work well in your local area, find keywords for other regions, and publish content that works in a number of languages. You’re probably wondering, will SEO work for your business?

You’re definitely not alone on that. That’s why we’ve written an article about it. You can read it by clicking above, but TL:DR of the situation is, yes, SEO can and will work for any business.

Consider this: Leads that come from Google have a 14.6% close rate ^[4]while outbound leads have a nearly 10% lower rate.

Admittedly, global SEO is hard… But hard work pays off.

Benefits of a Global SEO Strategy

Increased traffic. Bigger reach. Brand recognition.

More money. Possibly, a lot more money.

There’s that benefit too.

For a well-developed business, global SEO can, and most probably, will bring all these benefits.

All these benefits sound appealing… But… They sound a bit too good to be true? But we’re not trying to sell you on empty promises. That’s why below, you can find benefits of an effective global SEO strategy, backed up by actually case studies.

Improved Organic Visibility Worldwide

While billions of people around the world speak English at a relatively proficient level, most users like to consume content in their native tongue. When you enter a new global market, you quickly realize that many people completely IGNORE English content altogether.

Native content, on the other hand will attract attention of local consumers, rank in SERPs, and even get a few shares on social media. All of that contributes to increased organic visibility of your brand on a global scale.

How Global SEO Improves Organic Visibility?

When Gaia, a premium video content-producing platform, tried to enhance its global presence, it wanted to adapt its content for each market. Their global SEO strategy ensured that their foreign content was properly indexed and subsequently, ranked by Google.

As a result, the company has seen a 41% increase in international subscriptions. Most notably, their organic subscriptions increased by 333.3% in Span and by 1,080% in France^[5].

Achieve Rankings in Multiple Markets

Even though you’re just creating content in English, you probably have a solid percentage of visitors from none-English-speaking countries. You can check that using a number of tools like The HOTH, Ubersuggest, and Semrush.

Go on, check it. We’ll wait.

You’re back. Great! The point is, there’s probably a huge part of your visitors you haven’t tapped into yet. With global SEO, you can rank in multiple markets – some of which probably have little to no competition at the moment.

How Global SEO Helps Rank in Multiple Markets?

BlissLights is a company that specializes in creating unique laser and LED lights. They aimed to spread brand awareness, shorten the competitive gap with other companies, and increase page-one rankings on Google.

They came up with a strategy to create content that would boost Google impressions and target keyword rankings. Over the next two years, they created hundreds of articles across seven different international domains.

As a result, they increased impressions by 600% and first-page rankings by 587%^[6].

Boosts Organic Conversions Globally

SEO won’t just help you rank and expose your brand to new consumers. It’s main goal is to help you convert more consumers into full-fledged customers.

By given a diverse audience a great user experience, global SEO will improve your conversion rates and in turn, increase your bottom line.

You can optimize the entire customer journey from brand discovery to product purchase. Sometimes, you just need a good partner to achieve this.

How Global SEO Boosts Organic Conversions?

To increase organic conversions for The Happiest Hour, NUOPTIMA implemented 301 redirects to secure the site’s URL structure, optimized the sitemap by removing invalid URLs and integrating orphan pages, and improved site architecture with better navigation and CTAs.

They also conducted keyword research, optimized meta tags and H1 headings, and resolved 404 errors. As a result, The Happiest Hour saw a 324.31% increase in conversions, a 78.54% increase in organic traffic, and a 169% increase in top-ranking keywords over four months.

A blue-themed strategy infographic with the word "Strategy" in a playful font at the top left. The center features a globe with surrounding icons representing various strategic elements like a megaphone, light bulb, chart, gears, and a dollar sign.

How to Create a Global SEO Strategy

Remember how we mentioned that ACTUALLY creating a global SEO strategy wasn’t that complex? We’re still standing by those words. You should just be aware that it will take a lot of research and grinding to make it work.

Here’s how to create a global strategy that will help you dominate local searches in a number of regions.

1. Assess Profitable Foreign Markets

How large is your company? If you have multiple departments within your SaaS firm, some may have worked on foreign market research before. Consult with them if so. And if not, you’ll have to do your own research. Where to start?

The first thing you need to do is check and see if you already have an international audience. Use Google Analytics to check where is your traffic coming from^[7]. If your product is already popular in a certain locations, prioritize these markets.

2. Analyze Your Target Audience for Global SEO

If you want to sell something to your audience, you need to understand your audience. That’s just self-explanatory, right? No need to point that out.

When you look at new research… You probably do… HubSpot research has discovered that less than half of marketers^[8]know what their audience is interested in. What’s worse, more than half of marketers say they’re missing key information on their audience.

Our point here is to tell you to research, research… and then research your audience more.

Here are a couple of things you need to research thoroughly before you start:

Target Languages: See what languages you’ll be targeting and simply research them. Your content will require more than simple translations. Explore different dialects and cultural nuances that will resonate with your new target consumers.
Analyze Competitors: You certainly have more than a few competitors. Find out what markets they’re focusing on. See if there are any markets you might’ve overlooked during your initial research.
Social Media: There are multiple social media channels you’re using. Well, make use of them to analyze your audience’s behavior patterns and preferences in different markets. The information will help you refine your market selection process.
Local Communities: Visit local Facebook pages, Reddit boards, and forums to learn more about your audience. That way, you’ll have a deeper insight into your target audience’s interests in specific regions.

By analyzing your target audience, you will have a good grasp of who you’re marketing toward, and who the user is. This way, the job of expanding will be much easier and more successful, with less resources wasted.

Researching the market will help assess your opportunities. Our SEO services to boost conversion rates can help you with ranking higher and get more engagement.

3: Target Relevant Search Engines

We’re pretty sure you’re aware that Google dominates the search engine market. As a matter of fact, it holds over 91% of the market share worldwide^[9].

The brand’s name is synonymous with the product just like Kleenex, Chapstick, or Band-Aids, so it’s easy to forget that people out there use different search engines as well.

But you need to make sure you’re optimizing for a search engine that’s popular in the country you’re targeting. For example:

In Japan, Bing has a nearly 15% market share^[10].
In China, Baide corners 53% of the entire market^[11].
In Russia, Yandex holds around 70% of the market^[12]

We can give you many other examples, but you get the point.

What’s important to note is that all search engines rank content differently. When creating a localized version for your site, you’ll need to consider their ranking factors. Check your analytics to see where the traffic is coming from, so you can deliver the correct user experience.

Of course, Google is still vastly popular in a majority of markets. Take, for example, a random market like Poland. There, Google dominates over 96%^[13] of the market, so you wouldn’t need to focus on any other search engine.

4. Keyword Research for Global SEO

Whether you’re creating an international SEO strategy or not, keyword research is something that can make or break your campaign. It’s crucial that you target the right keywords. To dominate foreign markets, you need to hit the following marks:

Contextual Relevance: Look for culturally relevant words and phrases to rank for. Remember, not all words have direct translations in other languages, which is why you need language experts to consult with.
Decent Search Volume: Of course, use Ahrefs and Semrush to determine search volumes of global keywords. The smaller the market, the smaller the volume will be, but try to find keywords that have decent conversion rates.
Target Long-Tail Keywords: There are always longer, more specific keywords that have less competition than others. These keywords will help you rank high in a short amount of time and reach your target audience.

While you don’t have to be an expert in a language you want to target, you still need to have a rudimentary grasp of local slang terms and basic expressions.

Remember that you might have keywords in one market that don’t exist in any other, even though they speak the same language.

Here’s an example: Does your Portuguese-speaking audience search for “telemóvel” or “celular” when they look for a mobile phone? While both Portuguese and Brazilian users speak the same language, they use many different phrases and terms for the same products.

5: Consider Local Laws and Regulations

Local regulations and laws might require you to change or remove certain sections of your website.

For example, GDPR, a new EU regulation, requires companies to display privacy policies to customers, giving their users much greater control over how their data is being used.

While in the US, you can collect website cookies without consent from the user, in the EU, the customer chooses what information you can collect and what purpose you’ll use it for, while being able to opt out of all of it.

6. Language-Specific, Long-Term URL Structure Plan

An SEO global strategy will include a clean, well-configured, frequently updated sitemap with SEO-friendly and people-friendly URLs in each language that it’s optimizing for.

It’s generally a good idea for a URL on your page to have keywords so both the bots and the humans will know what the page is about.

A good URL structure is crucial, both for SEO and user experience. It makes it easier for search engines to index your website correctly while helping users find and trust your content.

Clear and understandable URLs enhance click-through rates on search results and help logically organize your site’s content. Including relevant keywords in URLs can boost your search rankings by a ton.

Short and easy-to-read URLs are much more likely to be shared, increasing your site’s visibility. Lastly, maintaining a consistent URL structure prevents duplicate issues, leading to improved SEO performance and rankings.

7: Localize and Optimize Content

Unless you speak the language of the target market, you’ll most likely need to hire someone to not only translate, but localize the content also. While Google Translate is getting much better at its job… Using simply isn’t enough.

Hire a person or an organization that can help you craft a global strategy that will attract native speakers without looking “spammy” or like a badly translated scam. Here are a couple of things you should pay attention to when localizing your content:

Target Country’s Culture: Your content needs to be relatable to local users. Reference local occurrences, companies, and even statistics as examples. Your content needs to feel naturally written and culturally appropriate.
Up-to-dateness: Make sure not to reference things that happened two or three decades ago or to use slang words that haven’t been in use for years. You shouldn’t try to use trendy words either, but still, ensuring that your content sounds up-to-date is crucial.
Local Search Behaviour: Lastly, your content needs to reflect trends and the search behavior of local users. Don’t use the same keywords for multiple regions, even if they speak the same language.

Just a reminder: take into account the hreflang tag, which works to ensure the proper language page is served to the right country.

8. Build Regional Backlinks

Doing all that work researching, planning, and creating content means nothing of off-page SEO isn’t done right. And what is off-page SEO?

It refers to all optimization tactics taken outside of your website that impact rankings. That includes social media marketing, branding, and link building.

First, we need to talk about building links from relevant websites in foreign markets. Building links in multiple markets is a bit complicated, since it prevents you from reusing or repurposing content.

For instance, let’s say you have an infographic about hiring stats in the United States – translating it to Spanish, French, or Portuguese won’t provide value to your international audiences. You’ll have research local, region-specific stats to create articles or visuals for these markets if you want your content to get backlinks.

Here are a few content pieces that typically get links lin all markets and niches:

In-depth guides;
Data visualizations;
Original research and data;
Case studies and white papers;
Interactive content like calculators and quizzes.

To discover good backlink prospects, you can use the Semrush Link Building Tool ^[15]. Here’s how to use it in five simple steps:

Step #1: Open the Semrush Link Building Tool and click on “+ Create a project.” Enter your domain and click “Create project.”
Step #2: Add your local keywords and set the country to your new target market. Then, input the competitors you identified earlier and click “Start Link Building.”
Step #3: Once your project is set up, navigate to the “Prospects” tab. Here, you’ll find a list of potential websites to reach out to for backlinks to your content.
Step #4: Review the list and add the most promising prospects to your “In progress” list by clicking the button to the left of each prospect.
Step #5: From your “In progress” list, you can create and send outreach messages directly within the tool.

While social media won’t DIRECTLY contribute to your ranking, it will surely increase the reach of your brand.

Again – we have to keep on stressing this – you need to understand who your target audience is, what they want, and where they spend their time online. As explained in our SaaS social media marketing article, picking the right social medial platforms is crucial.

Here’s a quick overview of the biggest social platforms on the Internet:

LinkedIn: Best for B2B marketing, lead generation.
X (Formerly Twitter): Good for brand awareness and engagement.
Facebook: Versatile, better for B2C SaaS.
Instagram: Ideal for visual storytelling, B2C SaaS.
YouTube: Excellent for product demonstrations and education.
Reddit: Effective for niche marketing and community building.

Look at the regions you’re catering to, what are the popular social media platforms there? How many users are there? Do they interact with brands in your niche?

These are just a couple of questions you need to answer. And remember, you have to be proactive on these social media platforms. That means, responding to users, interacting with other brands, and obviously, posting regularly.

10. Set Up Tracking for Global SEO Performance

If you can’t track your performance, you won’t be able to improve it.

You need clear, outlined goals. Why? Studies have shown that writing down goals and sharing them with others helps keep us accountable and increases our chances of achieving them^[14].

The same principle applies to your strategy. You measure the performance of your keywords, content, and website through a number of metrics. Here are a couple of basic metrics you need to track – and don’t worry – we’re going to list the tools you need to keep track of them, too.

Metric	Why Monitor It?	Tools for Monitoring
Organic Traffic	Organic traffic shows whether or not your SEO strategy is attracting users from different region. Finding patterns in organic traffic allows you to further optimize your content to attract consumers in high-performing markets.	Google Search Console, GA4
Keyword Rankings	Keywords show you just how well your content is performing compared to local competitors. By monitoring how targeted keywords perform in different regions, you can refine your content strategy to improve search visibility.	Ahrefs, Ubersuggest, Semrush
Country-Specific Backlinks	To rank high in SERP results, you need backlinks. And if you want to rank in specific markets, you need country-specific domains. You need to continuously track and analyze backlinks to gauge the authority and relevance of your website in regions you’re targeting.	Ahrefs, Moz, SEMrush
Bounce Rates	A high bounce rate may indicate that your content is not resonating with visitors from specific regions. Optimizing your content and UC based on bounce rates and time spent on website will lead to better visitor retention and conversion rates.	Google Search Console, GA4
Localization Effectiveness	Evaluating the effectiveness of localization efforts involves assessing how well your content resonates with users in different countries. This includes analyzing user interactions with localized content, the implementation of language tags, and hreflang attributes to ensure precise targeting.	Screaming Frog, Google Search Console, GA4

Grow Your Global SEO Reach With NUOPTIMA

Thanks to the Internet, small businesses don’t have to be at the mercy of their local consumers.

Yes, that hasn’t exactly been a secret for… At least two decades… But going global, marketing your product, and capitalizing on a newfound market has never been easier.

We at NUOPTIMA know a thing or two about it, actually.

We’re a data-driven agency that specializes in SEO for SaaS. If you want to start locally – we can get you in front of the eyes of local consumers. And if, at a certain point, you want to expand to other markets around the world, we can do that too.

We excel in targeting keywords with high traction intent, helping businesses connect with customers at important decision-making stages of the buyer’s journey. Here’s what NUOPTIMA can do for you:

We’ll come up with a tailored strategy for your business.
Implement it and continuously monitor the results.
Transparently share reports about the campaign’s performance.

NUOPTIMA helps businesses just like yours achieve sustainable, long-term growth no matter the market or industry. Are you ready to expand your reach?

Book a call with NUOPTIMA today, talk to one of our experts, and let us help you grow.

Conclusion

Remember more about building a brand. And once you build an authoritative brand image in multiple markets, you need to maintain it too.

Content you create needs to cater to the needs of your global audience. Get familiar with them. Research them on social media. Visit their online communities. If possible, hire people in each country you’re targeting to interact with possible customers.

Remember, there’s a huge market out there and global SEO can help you tap into it.

FAQ

What is global SEO?

A global SEO strategy refers to the approach and tactics used to optimize a website’s content for search engines in multiple countries and languages.

What is the difference between global SEO and local SEO?

The key difference is how they each focus on attracting their target audiences. Local SEO hones in on a specific geographic location, while global SEO seeks to engage a much wider international audience.

What is the global rank in SEO?

Global ranks are typically determined by a website’s overall popularity, including the number of visitors it receives, the number of pages viewed, how often it is shared on social media, and how well it ranks in search engine results pages.

How do you do international SEO?

International or global SEO takes a lot of planning:

First you need to select the international markets you want to target
Then, you need to consider all the languages spoken in these markets
Doing keyword research for each of your foreign markets, should be your next move
After that, you must create content that works in multiple languages
Building your backlink profile in each of your target countries is the final step

Global SEO Tips to Enhance Your Website’s Global Reach

What Is Global SEO?