International and Multilingual SEO Strategies

Increasing visibility beyond your own market: this is what an international SEO strategy is all about. An action plan that aims to identify the unexpressed potential of your site and your project. At ByTek, we study the possibility of expansion through an International SEO strategy based on a rigorous data analysis guided by proprietary technologies and methodologies, thanks to which we provide the customer with a concrete plan of growth.

How International SEO works

By international SEO strategy, we mean an organic plan of intervention that starts from the evaluation of the sector in which the client operates and, through the analysis of keywords, developed in different countries and in different languages, identifies the possibilities of development.

ByTek elaborates strategic plans supported by concrete data: for this reason, the international SEO starts with keyword research that examines in detail the needs and requests of users and potential development markets.

These are the two initial steps:

Analysis of the products and services offered to verify which international markets are already interested and to identify potential ones.
Analysis of users’ research intentions and emerging trends.

An example of keyword analysis is our wine research in G7 countries.

International SEO and positioning: how it works

With our analysis on the wine industry we carried out a study on the research volumes in certain markets (in this case the G7 countries were chosen), which were then compared with the historical interest in the reference sector. In this way, it was possible to understand, for example, the interest overtime of the keywords wine and Italian wine.

A similar keyword mapping analysis could be done for any other sector and for any market and, within the framework of an international SEO strategy, would allow to identify user/consumer trends over time and therefore to study the best expansion strategy.

In order to achieve an international SEO positioning, it is, therefore, necessary to implement a strategy that includes a comprehensive keyword analysis in the countries identified as potential markets of interest, then actions that include the drafting and optimization of multilingual content in an SEO perspective, plus other activities such as link building and advertising to be evaluated as needed.

The use of the Hreflang attribute

In the context of an international SEO, the hreflang attribute proves to be of fundamental importance, since it allows the content to be localized even for multilingual variants. This prevents Google from considering multilingual content as a duplicate content.

The hreflang attribute is generally present in all pages that have a translation into other languages and must be included in one of these options:

In the HTML page markup
In the header HTTP
In the sitemap.xml.

This is a signal sent to search engines to help them position the page version in the language and country-specific to the user doing the search.

Multilingual SEO: best practices

In order to take advantage of the opportunities that an international SEO strategy offers, it is also important to plan optimized multilingual content.

At ByTek we have proposed international SEO strategies with multilingual sites to various clients in markets other than Italy. We have carried out keyword analysis differentiated by language by studying the search intentions of each one, structuring different URLs for each language version.

We collaborate with companies also active in very technical sectors operating all over the world as a leading company in the production of cooker hoods that currently has plants in Italy, Poland, Mexico, India and China interested in an excellent SEO positioning at the international level.

For a world-leading company in the clinical sector that offers innovative products and services for professionals operating in the medical and dental field, we carried out an SEO Audit that highlighted some critical issues, so indications were given to overcome them. For this brand that currently has more than 10 domains and a worldwide target, an international SEO strategy has been structured improving the sitemap and the use of the hreflang attribute. In an increasingly global economy, having an international SEO means having an incredibly large showcase and getting your project to everyone who might be interested.