The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the world. Many small- and medium-sized businesses are suffering right now and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
However, this is a great time to work on your global digital marketing, multilingual and international SEO efforts to reach your global audiences, because when the market rebounds, and it will, you’ll be ready for a new wave of customers.
I recently had the pleasure of co-presented a webinar entitled Global Digital Marketing and International SEO Strategies to Implement During A Time of Crisis.
The webinar was hosted in partnership with London-based Bubbl. Our international SEO agency has formed a strategic alliance with Bubbl to better serve customers around the globe.
During this webinar, we discussed several best practices that businesses can implement. In this blog post, I’ll share three of those best practices that you can work on during this coronavirus time of uncertainty.
I also invite you to playback of the 75-minute webinar at your convenience:
Why Should You Implement an International SEO Strategy?
The fact is that many local markets are saturated, and it might be time to look elsewhere. For example, the internet used to consist of almost all English pages. However, the internet has changed: over time, other languages have exploded, other countries have faster internet connections than the US and a higher percentage of people on the internet, so there’s a massive market out there besides your local market. You can address these markets with international SEO best practices.
According to InternetWorldStats, the below represent the number of Internet users by language as of March 31, 2020:
Image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_used_on_the_Internet
If you want to grow your business on a global scale, you have to implement a multilingual SEO strategy.
So what does this look like? What I’ve found is that many companies who want to take their business global haven’t researched to see what the demand is outside of their local market for what they have to offer. If you take a look at your Google Analytics, you can quickly check if your site is already generating organic search traffic from outside of your home market.
Here’s an example. This US-based company is already selling into the UK, so we’d want to implement an international SEO strategy for UK English speakers.
Implementing a UK-focused SEO strategy is a low-hanging fruit strategy since it’s a minimal effort to adapt US English for UK English. I’d recommend that you think about what you can do for these low-hanging fruit markets.
Here’s another example of how implementing an international SEO strategy for English speakers can help your business. “Shapewear for Women” is a highly trending eCommerce keyword.
As you can see here, 6600 people in the US alone are searching for this keyword monthly. You can see that the global search volume has nearly doubled. If your eCommerce business can sell this product to a worldwide audience of English speakers, you’ll be able to boost sales dramatically. By implementing an international SEO strategy that targets other English speakers, you’re doubling your market. There’s much money to be made by merely implementing basic global SEO strategies.
Search Engine Optimization Keywords: What’s the Intent?
Another thing you can do for your global digital marketing strategy is to take a more in-depth look at your keywords. Over time, Google has made longer search terms more relevant. For example, looking for “shoes” is extremely broad, whereas looking for “red Converse for girls” is a much more specific search term. The longer the search term, which is called a long-tail keyword, the more intention a person has for what they’re searching for.
If you haven’t looked into long-tail keywords yet, it may be a good idea. It can be quite hard to optimize for short-tail keywords unless you’re a significant player in your industry.
Let’s take an example that pertains to my business. The keyword “Denver SEO” is pretty broad. Does someone who is searching for this term honestly know what they want?
Now someone who searches for “SEO Training Denver” is pretty specific and targeted. While it’d be nice to rank at the top of Google for the search term “Denver SEO,” I know that someone searching for “SEO Training Denver” is a great candidate for one of the SEO courses offered through our Boulder SEO Marketing website.
It’s always a good idea to review your keywords on a regular business. If you’re not ranking as high as you’d like to, perhaps it’s time to try some long-tail keywords.
In the webinar, I’m also discussing that special attention needs to be paid to the keyword transcreation process. You can learn more about this process and find step-by-step instructions by reading a guide called An Introduction to International SEO Keyword Research and the Transcreation Process.
Convert Your Customers: Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
Getting people to your website through SEO and international SEO is one thing, keep them there, get them to engage with your content, and ultimately, convert to a customer, is another thing.
Naturally, you’ll need to have valuable, engaging content on your site to keep your audience engaged. The website also needs to be optimized from a technical and functional standpoint. Otherwise, a visitor will leave your website, leading to an increase in the site’s bounce rate.
Once you have a potential customer on your website, you want them to take some action, whether that’s downloading a white paper, purchasing a product, or signing up for your newsletter. The process of getting a website visitor to take action is called conversion rate optimization (CRO).
Let’s take a look at how increasing CRO and reducing bounce rate work. Here’s some data for an existing website:
- 10,000 visitors a month
- The bounce rate is 60%
- Of the 40% (4000) who stay on the site, 40 take some action
- The conversion rate is 1%
After implementing CRO best practices to the site, the updated data shows:
- 10,000 visitors a month
- The bounce rate has been reduced to 50%
- Of the 50% (5000) who stay on the site, 75 take some action
- The conversion rate has increased to 1.5%
Without optimizing the website, you’d need to obtain 19,000 visitors a month, which is almost double the current visitors, to get 75 people to take action. It’s much easier to improve the conversion rate of the site than to increase the traffic. CRO can make a big difference in the number of leads.
A great way to get started with CRO is by analyzing data from Google Analytics. You’ll also want to deploy a heat mapping tool such as Lucky Orange to see what pages are causing the highest bounce rates.
From there, determine your goals. Do you want to focus on getting visitors to convert or engage at this point? Try to figure out what’s not working. Maybe your website copy or design isn’t compelling, or you don’t have a strong call to action. Make some changes and run tests with your target audience to determine if your changes lead to a higher conversion rate.
Conclusion
There is so much more to what I just discussed in this blog post and the webinar. However, I hope that the information here encourages you to implement or improve your global digital marketing strategy. You’ll be in a better position once the economy starts returning to normal.
And if you need help with any of the strategies described above, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
About the Author
Hi- My name is Chris Raulf am I’m the founder of CR Global Digital Marketing. Our full-service digital marketing agency assists local, national, and international customers with all of their search engine optimization, pay-per-click, social media, content marketing, web design, and video marketing needs. I enjoy speaking about online marketing around the globe, and my international background makes me one of the few professionals in the industry who truly live and breathe multilingual search engine optimization daily.
I invite you to connect with me on LinkedIn and to follow me on Twitter if you’d like to keep in touch.