Many growing businesses stall as a result of having no clearly defined strategy for moving forward in the international marketplace. In 2015, companies must focus on mastering the online marketing techniques that can help to unlock the full and unparalleled potential of their business. In this blog, we’ll review five steps for creating your 2015 multinational SEO strategy.
1) Think Beyond Google
While Google is the dominant player in the North American and European search marketplaces, other search engines are far more prominent across Asia. For example, Chinese search users favour Baidu and Japanese users prefer to use Yahoo for their search needs. In moving forward with their multinational search campaigns, companies must target audiences on all search platforms, instead of a Google-only strategy.
2) Create the Campaign Foundation with Clear Objectives
In creating their multinational SEO campaign plan, campaign organizers must begin by determining the resources available to them. They can then allocate these resources in a way that helps them move toward their campaign objectives. For example, if the company has the resources, they might consider setting up a virtual office and hiring professional translators to help communicate with their target audiences across the globe.
3) Use Global Market Finder to Find Worldwide Audiences
Google’s Global Market Finder has become a trusted tool for many growing companies in recent years. It provides a basis for establishing which global audiences would be most interested in a particular product or service by showing how many times users have searched for that product or service in a particular country. Global Market Finder provides users actionable data to help them determine the estimated cost of acquiring a new customer within a particular international market.
4) Create Optimized Site Architecture
Sub-domains, sub-directories and CCTLDs (Country Code Top Level Domain Names) each have their advantages while building a site structure for multinational marketing campaigns. CCTLDs can decrease the importance placed on server locations in ranking. The use of sub-domains can ensure each domain is targeted separately to cover all geographic locations. And sub-directories can be easy to implement across an existing site structure. It is imperative companies examine the various types of site architecture carefully to balance their site requirements and business objectives.
5) Create a Blog with Engaging Content in All Targeted Languages
Content marketing has helped growing brands develop their presence online. To appeal to a global audience, companies can engage the minds of their visitors by creating content in their target language. Companies should hire native speakers of the language to produce their content and try to find niche market experts for guest blogs to help quickly improve the site’s SEO performance within target countries and their marketplaces.
2015 is set to bring global web users even closer together within the online marketplace. Companies can capitalize on this worldwide online business growth by focusing on the international marketplace within their SEO campaigns. Begin the planning work today to create the ideal foundation for strong international marketplace performance.
