Attending SEO conferences worldwide is essential for staying current with the latest trends, strategies, and algorithms shaping the internet. 

These conferences are also where ideas are shared, projects are developed, and partnerships are formed. 

These events provide priceless chances for you to

• gain essential knowledge
• network with people in the industry
• learn from well-known experts in SEO
• acquire the hottest info on the latest technology
• hone your strategies by discussing with other SEOs
• learn how search engines evolve.
• learning additional tips later at the bar or after-event meet-ups
• expanding one’s personal brand or the brand of the company you represent

Below is my attempt at listing the top industry conferences and events in SEO.

International Search Summit (ISS) 2026

Conference name – International Search Summit

Event dates – November 14, 2026

Location – World Trade Center Barcelona

Event URL – https://webcertain.com/international-search-summit/barcelona/

Event Description:

The International Search Summit in Barcelona is a distinguished gathering for anyone interested in growing their business globally. If you are into international and multilingual Search, then this is your number one event that you cannot miss—at least it is for me.

Before this one-day event, there was an opportunity to network at the pre-event party, often held by the beach near Barceloneta in Barcelona. No doubt, you will meet exciting industry SEOs at this event, learn innovative strategies, and gain tremendous insights into international search.

Every speaking pitch must include an international search angle before it is considered, so the concept of ‘International search’ at this conference is guaranteed.

Chiang Mai SEO

Conference name – Chiang Mai SEO

Event dates – November 09 – 13, 2026

Location – Chiang Mai, Thailand

Event URL – https://chiangmaiseoconference.com/

Event Description:

The Chiang Mai SEO conference occurs at the exotic city of Chiang Mai.

This event gathers hundreds of the world’s leading SEO professionals but focuses on performance and affiliate SEO. Many attendees are self-taught SEOs who run their own agencies or are into flipping websites for a profit.

A segment also runs its own or several authority sites where it sells its products or makes money through affiliates, own products, site advertising, and lead generation.

The conference has gained a good reputation, and you should expect sessions on technical SEO, monetisation techniques, and how to win the SEO game overall.

Amaze Conference 2026

Conference name – Amaze Conference 2026

Event dates – December 10 – 12, 2026

Location – Hyatt Regency, Chandigarh

Event URL – https://amazeconference.com/

Event Description:

Amaze is a premier global conference on SEO, AI, and automation, uniting 400+ agency owners, enterprise marketers, SaaS founders, and industry leaders to shape the future of digital growth. The event focuses on the future of search, AI-driven marketing, and scalable agency growth systems.

Pubcon – PRO VIRTUAL

Conference name – 2026 Pubcon PRO VIRTUAL Conference

Event dates – January 14, 2026

Location – Virtual / Live Sessions

Event URL – https://www.pubcon.com/

Event Description:

The January 2026 Pubcon PRO VIRTUAL is scheduled Virtual / Live Sessions

Learn from the best , Your Conference Your Schedule.

Pubcon Cyber Week delivered strong attendance and engaged questions from advanced SEOs, PPC leads, and operators who are dealing with massive rapid shifts in traffic patterns over the two day intense schedule. We heard the same message across sessions and our keynotes. People want deeper material that tackles the real problems they are seeing every day. To keep that momentum moving, we are launching a focused one day virtual event for senior marketers.

Pubcon Pro Virtual 2026 will run Wednesday January 14 on StreamYard. It will be a single track program aimed at teams working through AI search disruption, traffic instability, and broken analytics signals.

Evolve Conferences by Ahrefs

Conference name – Ahrefs Evolve Singapore

Event dates – May 14, 2026

Location – Guoco Midtown Network Hub , Singapore

Event URL – https://ahrefsevolve.com/

Event Description:

The Ahrefs Evolve Singapore conference brings together five hundred SEO and digital marketing professionals from around the world in a physical space so that they can meet face to face, form genuine connections, learn from each other, and grow as a community.

• With keynotes from internationally acclaimed speakers, you can get first-hand insights into what’s working and what’s not in digital marketing in 2026.
• Meet, hang out, and build genuine connections with professionals and executives from big brands and international agencies.
• Come away, re-energised and armed with upgraded skills and new ideas to drive business plans and results for you and your clients.

Brighton SEO

Conference name – Brighton SEO

Event dates – October 8 and 9, 2026

Location – The Brighton Centre, UK

Event URL – https://brightonseo.com/

Event Description:

The BrightonSEO conference, once a free event, runs twice a year in Brighton and attracts thousands of attendees worldwide today. It has become one of the top-notch conferences, even for veteran SEOs who flock to Brighton looking to network, hook up, or enjoy this event with their peers.

BrightonSEO offers a range of activities, including discussions and networking opportunities. At this event, attendees can also develop or advance their skills by attending their popular training courses. These can provide valuable support in empowering your SEO skills across diverse aspects of SEO.

SMX Advanced

Conference name – SMX Advanced Europe 2026

Event dates – September 29 – 30, 2026

Location – Berlin

Event URL – https://smxadvanced.eu/

Event Description:

SMX Advanced 2026 is a three-day experience designed for advanced search marketers.
Two days of advanced sessions across SEO, PPC, GEO and AI — followed by a dedicated Deep Dive Day for hands-on, expert-led learning.

It’s where strategic insights meet practical implementation. You’ll leave not just inspired, but equipped.

SMX Paris ‘26

Conference name – SMX Paris ’26

Event dates – March 09 – 10, 2026

Location – Étoile Business Center

Event URL – https://smxfrance.com/

Event Description:

SMX Paris is one of my preferred SEO events because that’s where I live.

Numerous highly skilled SEO industry professionals and leaders from France, EU and International gather at this event, so you can learn about the latest search marketing practices, trends, and strategies.

It is an SEO conference aimed at in-house SEOs working for institutional enterprises in rather corporate environments that cater to attendees of any skill level, so anyone who attends will learn something.

RE:SIGNAL 

Conference name – Re:Commerce 2026

Event dates – May 15, 2026

Location – Ham Yard Hotel, London

Event URL –  https://resignal.com/ecommerce-seo-conference/

Event Description:

Re:Commerce is a conference by Kevin Gibbons that has quickly become popular with SEOs working for E-commerce brands. It’s a worthwhile event, as various industry experts gather here to share their strategies and insights into digital retail.

Through the eCommerce professionals gathering at this conference to share their knowledge on the latest strategies and tools, those attending the event will garner essential Ecommerce SEO knowledge that they can use to excel in the ever-growing digital world.

With hands-on workshops and in-depth forums focused on developing logistics and improving the customer experience, Re:Commerce is a competent conference that eCommerce specialists can attend to enhance their capabilities, grow their network, and develop their brand in the eCommerce world.

SMX Munich – SEO + PPC

Conference name – SEO + PPC = SMX

Event dates – March 10 – 11, 2026

Location – ICM – International Congress Center Munich

Event URL – https://smxmuenchen.de/en/

Event Description:

SMX Munich attracts various marketing industry professionals because it focuses on search engine optimization and its components. The event offers many opportunities to learn, network with other professionals, and discover the latest search marketing techniques and tools.

Whether you’re a marketer or an SEO specialist, this major conference is a great event to attend to learn about improving your SEO skills.

Thanks to the leading SEO experts and the top-of-the-line technologies featured in the conference, this event is an experience tailored to those who want to be the best in the SEO field.

Friends Of Search Fest

Conference name – Friends Of Search

Event dates – March 12, 2026

Location – Amsterdam, Netherlands

Event URL – https://friendsofsearch.com/nl/

Event Description:

The Friends Of Search is one of the largest SEO conferences throughout Europe as it brings together business owners, consultants, and digital marketers to mingle and share their knowledge on digital marketing and search engine optimization. Attendees will learn how to master advertising strategies and the intricate mechanisms of SEO.

The event lasts three days, and numerous sessions are carefully planned to help attendees absorb the latest industry updates from talented experts.

The Friends Of Search will help provide a platform for digital marketers and experts alike to grow their knowledge, connect with others, and stay current in the SEO industry.

SEO Mastery Summit

Conference name – SEO Mastery Summit

Event dates – March 10- 13, 2026

Location – Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Event URL – https://seomasterysummit.com/

Event Description:

The SEO Mastery Summit is an event that presents itself as better than you can imagine as it brings an immersive conference to the table that intends to launch you and your SEO capabilities and stand to a greater height than you already have.

It is a four-day event that’s kind of branded as a mastery event rather than a conference.

You’ll be able to connect with hundreds of SEO experts and form a network with other attendees. You’ll also get the chance to trade insights on the latest techniques and strategies and discover others with whom you may collaborate.

If you are an SEO based in some exotic Southeast Asian place, this great new kid-on-the-block conference will make you want to come back.

SERPConf

Conference name – Serp Conf. 2026

Event dates – 25 March, 2026

Location – Sofia, Bulgaria

Event URL – https://serpconf.com/

Event Description:

This conference brings together esteemed professionals and industry leaders from East Europe, particularly Bulgaria. Renowned SEOs from the UK and Western Europe are also invited to speak, creating a diverse and interesting atmosphere.

This will be the 4th year running as the conference started out as the SERP Light Conf.

The event served as a platform for knowledge-sharing, networking, and exploring the latest trends and strategies in search engine optimization. With its successful debut, the conference has set the stage for future editions, promising to further contribute to the growth and development of SEO practices in Europe.

If you want to meet talented SEOs from Eastern Europe, this is the conference for you.

SEO Camp’us Paris

Conference name – SEO Campus 2026

Event dates – 30 of January, 2026

Location – Palais des Congrès de Versailles, France

Event URL – https://www.seo-camp.org/evenement/seo-campus-paris/ 

Event Description:

The SEO CAMP’us event is an opportunity to interact with SEO professionals in France, whether you are curious, beginner or experienced, or simply want to meet vendors, software reps, and the like.

I find that SEO CAMP’us Paris, as opposed to SMX Paris, focuses more on tactical sessions, which manifests in the type of people who attend. More SEO entrepreneurs are at this conference, and the conversations tend to gear a bit more toward the grey/black side of SEO.

This event attracts participants from many backgrounds, from SEO heads to students seeking their first SEO role. It can be a good place to recruit.

The bonus at this conference is the location: just next to the gorgeous Palais de Versailles.

Lastly, keep in mind that the conference is held solely in French.

Digital Olympus

Conference name – Digital Olympus

Event dates – September 07, 2026

Location – High Tech Campus, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

Event URL – https://digitalolympus.net/digital-olympus-conference/

Event Description:

The Digital Olympus conference is founded and run by Alexandra Tachalova who’s widely known as an expert in outreach and link acquisition. I learned about her events when they were happening online. I believe they are now organised in a physical location, and this year’s event is in the Dutch town of Eindhoven.

Mozcon

Conference name – MozCon

Event dates – July 14, 2026 in New York  and November 13, 2026 in London

Location – Seattle

Event URL – https://moz.com/mozcon

Event Description:

The annual conference MozCon is a top event in the SEO world, giving attendees a plethora of worthwhile opportunities for learning and networking hosted by top leaders in the SEO industry.

This prestigious conference, held in Seattle every summer, has a strong reputation among SEOs in the US and around the world.

Mozcon dives into specializations like search marketing, mobile search, conversion optimization, core updates, SEO strategy, etc… I have never been to Mozcon, but most people who have talked very fondly of it.

LondonSEO XL

Conference name – LondonSEO XL

Event dates – June 18, 2026

Location – London, United Kingdom

Event URL – https://londonseomeetup.com/

Event Description:

The London SEO XL conference is an expanded version of the organization’s regular-sized London SEO Meetup. Still, it’s a full-day conference dedicated to search marketing topics. Compared to their regular meetup, there are plenty of talks, discussions, and networking opportunities in a very familiar environment, which gives attendees a better time learning about SEO.

Feedback from peers who have attended is very positive, and they remark how easy it is to network with the speakers and other rockstar SEOs at the event. There’s enough time to watch and listen to all the different workshops, discussions, and presentations, the event is a good place for any SEO specialist of any skill level to attend.

SEO on the Beach

Conference name – SEOn The Beach

Event dates – June 14 – 15, 2026

Location – Collados Beach, Manga del Mar Menor

Event URL – https://seonthebeach

Event Description:

The ‘SEOn The Beach’ event is a one-of-a-kind SEO conference that takes place by the sea in a Mediterranean Spanish resort called La Manga. The concept is great: learn and get updated with industry trends and news while having fun and relaxing.

Those attending SE On The Beach will learn more about the tactics and trends of today’s SEO landscape while also taking in the fresh ocean breeze as they relax on a scenic beach along the coast of Spain. 

The conference will include networking opportunities, fun games, and interesting talks by SEO experts in Spain and resident SEOs from the US, UK, and other lands outside Spain. However, the conference will mostly be in Spanish.

Growth Marketing Summit 2026

Conference name – Growth Marketing Summit 2026

Event dates – June 16, 2026

Location – Alte Oper – Frankfurt am Main

Event URL –  https://www.growthmarketingsummit.com/en

Event Description:

The Growth Marketing Summit is a significant conference that digital marketing specialists and growth marketers convene and mingle at, this event in Germany is chock-full of strategies, tactics, and insights that all SEO specialists could utilize.

Acclaimed speakers take the stage for discussions and talks, sharing their knowledge of solutions for excelling in digital marketing. This gives attendees the push they need to climb the digital ladder while also gaining newfound knowledge to help in the long run.

With priceless opportunities for networking and techniques only leading experts know, the Growth Marketing Summit is an event that helps SEO professionals stay ahead of the digital marketing market.

SEO Estonia 2026 

Conference name – SEO Estonia 2026

Event dates – July 09-11, 2026

Location – The Creative Hub, Tallinn, Estonia

Event URL – https://seoestonia.com/

Event Description:

Held in Tallinn’s creative hub, the SeoEstonia.com conference is a vibrant gathering of SEO innovators, growth hackers, agency SEOs, and digital entrepreneurs. Over three days, speakers share deeply practical talks—from AI-powered content strategies to technical SEO and automation. Mastermind rounds spark collaboration, and small-group workshops let you put ideas into practice.

As Jamie IF put it, “Definitely the best event I’ve been to”, while Vladimir Ghilien praised the “constant flow of high-level useful information”.

I attended this conference in june 2025 and left not just inspired but armed with revenue-driving SEO and AI tactics to apply immediately.

Search SEOul 2026

Conference name – SEARCH SEOUL 2026

Event dates – September 1-4, 2026

Location – Seoul, South Korea (TBD)

Event URL – https://search-seoul.com/

Event Description:

Search SEOul is designed to help international and Asian professionals learn from each other.

With speakers and attendees from both backgrounds, you’ll gain practical insights into cross-border SEO, local market realities, and global strategies that actually translate across regions.

Spend two days learning from 15+ global SEO experts, connecting with 200+ professionals, and meeting teams from over 10 countries.

ANDALU SEO 2026

Conference name – The Most SEO Event Advanced 2026

Event dates – May 30, 2026

Location – Faculty of Business Sciences, Cartagena (Spain)

Event URL – https://andalu-seo.es/

Event Description:

Explore the frontiers of web positioning and technical SEO at this advanced SEO conference, where innovation and experience converge. Connect with industry leaders and broaden your horizons in a learning and networking environment.

The post Top SEO Conferences around the world in 2026 appeared first on David Carralon.

As you have probably realized by now, ReactJS is the talk of town.

It all started with the arrival of Javascript frameworks about 10 years ago. Angular led the way into adoption but quickly got overtaken by other more SEO-friendly JavaScript frameworks, like React JS.

At the time of writing, React-powered single-page applications (SPAs) are the preferred development environment for front-end web tech teams.

About 70% of all client projects I have audited or consulted on in the last 5-6 years were based on React JS.

Javascript-powered websites have already established a path in the industry and are here to stay so, if you are an SEO you’d better start upscaling your skills in this area.

This guide aims to provide helpful advice to make React javascript SEO-friendly.

What is React JavaScript?

Definition: React JS is an open-source, front-end development platform made by Facebook to create user interfaces.

React is the most popular JavaScript library today, with over 150 million monthly downloads, and the foundation for many popular frameworks and libraries, such as Gatsby, Next.js, and Redux.

Why is it powerful? for several reasons:

• It can enable developers to create web applications with a rich user experience using components and reusable code.

• It allows developers to quickly create complex user interfaces and web applications without writing much code.

• It can allow developers to build complex UIs from individual components quickly.

• It’s supposed to be fast ( caveats exist)

Developers love ReactJS

In the last five years, I have learned a lot from React developers through my involvement in supporting and auditing large-scale React-based web projects.

Developers employ reusable chunks of code, called components, to construct complex UIs in React.

The components make React so powerful and why developers turn to it for most large-scale web applications. These can be:

• Breadcrumbs

• global links

• boilerplate content areas

• CTA buttons

• Topnav links

The basic building blocks for creating UIs in React include HTML files and elements such as divs, spans, lists, etc., and custom attributes called “props,” which provide additional information about how those elements should behave or look on screen.

The platform is componentized in nature, and virtual DOM (VDOM) simplifies updating parts of an application without reloading the entire page. The library responsible for that is ReactDOM.

The DOM (Document Object Model) in question is a tree-like representation of a web page and its content, which React updates to create faster, smoother user experiences.

To sum up, React JS is a revolutionary library that can help developers create user interfaces more efficiently and quickly. There is no doubt that React JS is a great library, but optimizing React JS websites for SEO is much more difficult than working on other non-javascript platforms based on LAMP, Ruby on Rails, etc.

If you want your React JS app to be visible in SERPs and stand a good chance to be crawled and indexed, then following some SEO best practices is very important, because ReactJS ‘out-of-the-box’, is not SEO-friendly.

Steps to making React JS SEO-Friendly

Search engine optimization for React JavaScript websites requires a combination of technical and content-oriented approaches.

It includes :

• ensuring the server delivers rendered HTML, aka SSR (server-side rendering)

• ensuring all code is valid and properly formatted

• establishing basic URL rules from project day 1, eg: URLs in lowercase, word separation by hyphens, non trailing forward slash urls

• correctly using semantic HTML tags such as H1s and H2s, image HTML

  (alt txt, captions, clean URLs)
• implementing all the common best practice onpage optimisations

• minimizing any HTML file, element, and attributes.

• internal links coded in HTML

• optimising speed performance overall

Upgrade to Server-Side Rendering (SSR)

This one is probably the most important functionality.

Server-side rendering (SSR) is a process whereby the rendering of HTML is done on the server before it is sent to the user’s browser. It can help search engine bots better understand what content is on your website and how it is structured, including Googlebot.

Most React developers use one of a few React frameworks to enable SSR. The most common framework and the preferred one for this purpose is Next.js but there are a few others: Gatsby, Grommet, React Bootstrap.

The NextJS framework supports ‘server-side rendering’ (SSR) and enables faster load times. It basically converts well javascript code onto HTML which is key for SEO. So if you are considering building your next site using Reach JS and want it to be SEO-friendly, consider Next JS!

If Next JS is not an option for you, perhaps because your React SPA is already developed, you then have the pre-rendering option: Prerender.io and Rendertron

Produce semantic HTML

SEO-friendly code on React sites is about using as much semantic HTML as possible.

ReactJS facilitates the use of semantic HTML through JSX. See below an example

React enables the construction and composition of any form of valid HTML elements, whether they are semantic or otherwise.

Enabling accessibility in website development is considered good practice, so you need to decide what sorts of semantic elements you bring into each of the React components.The following provides a brief illustration for a React app + the HTML rendered:

This would be the semantic HTML output delivered :

This is how it happens in the scenario above:

• a React component named ‘App’ was defined which represents the structure of the provided HTML.
• The “renderPage” function uses “renderToString” from “react-dom/server” to render the “App” component to a string, which can be sent as the server response.
• Finally, it exports the “renderPage” function, which can be used in your server-side code to render the React component to HTML. You would integrate this all with your server setup to handle requests and serve the rendered HTML to the client.

And this is how the actual content would display on the front-end web page:

SEO Basics: Optimize all critical SEO tags

From title tags to image alt tags, going through meta descriptions and rel canonical, you must check all of those and ensure there is a system for users to edit those areas and for the front end to pick it up correctly. This is a basic SEO task but one that cannot be missed.

In React, these needs can be met through the react-helmet library, so I recommend you to become familiar with it and discuss it with your developers.

Implement Structured Data Markup

Implementing structured data markup (reviews, events, sector-specific, open graph, content type) on ReactJs websites is good advice and highly recommended.

Structured data markup can help SEO and web page crawlers better understand your website content. It might also influence how and where your content appears Googlegle search results. Structured data markup can be applied to various types of content, such as products, articles, and events.

You can use the Schema.org vocabulary to implement structured data markup on your React JS website. For instance, by adding structured data markup to the page, you can help web crawlers understand that your website is about a specific retail store.

On the social media front, Open graph protocols, such as Facebook’s Open Graph Protocol, and Twitter cards can also help improve Google’s and user’s understanding of your website content.

Create HMTL and XML sitemaps

Creating both XML and HTML sitemaps will help because they will enable more avenues for your content to be found. Even if things like SSR are in place, it is a good idea to give Google a comprehensive picture of your site architecture via sitemaps.

A sitemap can help search engines understand the content on your React JS website, how it is structured and organized, and how often it is updated.

If the website is large and complex, I recommend you to build a multi-sitemap where the main index sitemap would contain references to other individual child sitemaps. These child sitemaps in turn will cover each of the silos or segments across the website. The split can be done by topics, categories, content types or any other form of logically structured content.

It is important to ensure that the sitemap is up-to-date and includes all the URLs on your website. You can then submit the sitemap to major search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. You can also identify static HTML pages on your React JS website and submit them to search engines directly.

Optimize Images

React SEO can involve optimizing images on your website, which helps with SEO and improves page loading times. It is important to ensure that the images on your website are properly compressed and scaled down to an appropriate size.

You should also use descriptive alt text for images. This can help search engines understand what the image is about and make it easier for visually impaired users to interpret your website. Javascript code can also generate and add alt text for images.

With regard to images, some important things to take into account are image size and dimension specifications, and not using lazy loading for images visible ‘above-the-fold’, as that can slow down performance.

Creating Internal Links using HTML

Web pages with strong internal links are easier for search engines to crawl and index. Internal linking can help search engine bots understand the structure of your website and how pages are related to each other.

For React SEO, it is important to ensure the web pages on your website link to each other and that the anchor text reflects the content on the linked page. Avoid internal links made with javascript. It is best to stick to the usual SEO-friendly <A hrefs=”……> </A> model.

Improve Speed Performance

Creating an SEO-friendly React app involves improving performance and security. Ensuring pages load quickly for users can help improve your website’s SEO. You should also ensure your app is secure using encryption, HTTPS, and other measures.

You can also use tools such as Lighthouse to measure the performance and security of your website. It can also provide suggestions on how to improve the SEO of your React application.

Consider installing the Webpack Bundle Analyzer module in NextJS. Developers can get a lot out of this tool as it will allow them to optimize the chunking of javascript files, amongst other things. That will certainly have an impact on performance at client level. Their UI looks a bit like this:

Another area where there is scope for improvement is the delay or differing JS front. Run Lighthouse and Webpagetest or other similar tools, or follow your Web Core Vitals reports and conclude after analyzing all the data.

Use a Content Delivery Network

A content delivery network (CDN) is a group of servers located in different parts of the world that serve content to users based on their geographic locations. A CDN can help improve page loading times and reduce lag for users worldwide.

Using a CDN for React SEO can also help reduce network traffic, as it caches HTML static content and distributes it to users from servers close to them. Javascript code can also set up a CDN on your React JS website through third-party services such as Cloudflare.

Benefits of making React JS SEO-Friendly

Here is a comprehensive analysis of how React SEO can help improve your website’s search engine rankings and visibility:

• Optimal accessibility and overall better crawling of your website
• Giving to Google and other search engines additional context of the website content
• Improved user experience (UX) making the website faster, therefore facilitating engagement
• Increased visibility in the SERPs (Search engine results pages)

Conclusion

Making React JavaScript SEO-friendly will, in turn, make your website more accessible and, therefore, rank better and increase your chances of getting relevant traffic. It can also help improve the user experience, as faster page loading times and a better website structure make it easier for users to find what they want.

Several SEO best practices should be followed to ensure that your React-powered website remains SEO-friendly, such as implementing server-side rendering via the NextJS framework.

NextJS boasts many ‘out-of-the-box’ SEO features. The real challenge will be making gradual improvements in JS optimization that will help speed up your website.

What are your experiences with React so far? feel free to comment if something should be added to this post.

FAQs

As React Js becomes more popular, numerous questions arise about this technology. It is because it requires high understanding, and each case requires special attention. Below are some of the frequently asked questions:

The post How to make React SEO-friendly appeared first on David Carralon.

Here you can find a comprehensive list and how to implement them avoiding common mistakes and achieving precise targeting and better user experience.

These powerful HTML attributes can vastly improve the way search engines understand and serve your multilingual web content.

But what is a Hreflang Tag?

The hreflang tag is an HTML attribute that specifies the language and geographic targeting of a webpage.

They are pivotal in guiding search engines to comprehend a webpage’s language and regional targeting, because the HTML annotation directs search engine bots and users to display the correct language or regional URL in search results.

CORRECT hreflang implementation

INCORRECT hreflang implementation

This ensures convenient access to the desired content for users worldwide who speak different languages. To achieve this, it is essential to include the rel alternate hreflang attribute:

<link rel=”alternate” href=”https://miweb.com/” hreflang=”es-ES” />

However, sometimes, a webpage might not be tailored to any specific region or language. For such situations, the hreflang=”x-default” attribute can be used to indicate a default page that should be served to users when no other language or regional variant is applicable.

These tags are composed of :

• the html tag: link rel=”alternate”
• reference to the target site href=”http://miweb.com”
• the hreflang tag and its attribute : hreflang=” “

These tags are composed of one of these three:

• a language code
• a country code
• both

When combined, it provides search engines with the necessary information to serve the most relevant content to users based on their language and location preferences.

For example, if you have a multilingual website with content primarily in Spanish targetting Spain, then content in Spanish targeting users in Mexico and also targeting users in the United States in English, you would use hreflang tags to specify the different language-country combinations.

Note that if the main and dominant language is Spanish, the hreflang implementation should be like this :

<link rel=”alternate” href=”https://miweb.com/” hreflang=”es-ES” />

<link rel=”alternate” href=”https://miweb.com/es-mx/” hreflang=”es-MX” />

<link rel=”alternate” href=”https://miweb.com/us/” hreflang=”en-US” />

Those annotations ensure that search engines display the correct version of the homepage to users respectively in each country, greatly enhancing the user experience and improving SEO performance.

Comprehensive List of Hreflang Language Codes

Knowing the correct language codes based on the ISO 639-1 standard is key for effective use of hreflang tags. This standard provides a two-letter code system used to represent languages, which is integral to the hreflang attribute and its ability to target specific languages and regions.

For a complete list of hreflang language codes, refer to section 2.

ISO 639-1 Language Codes

ISO 639-1 language codes are two-letter codes employed to denote languages in hreflang tags, such as ‘lo’ to target Lao speakers in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, or ‘da’ to target Danish speakers.

These codes are essential for specifying the language of a webpage, allowing search engines to better understand and serve your content to the right audience.

When applying hreflang tags, using lowercase for language codes is crucial, conforming to the ISO 3166 convention. This ensures that your implementation adheres to global standards and improves your website’s compatibility with various search engines and platforms.

Comprehensive List of Hreflang Country Codes

Knowing the correct country codes based on the ISO 3166-1 standard is as crucial as understanding language codes. This standard provides a set of two-letter codes used to represent countries, dependent territories, and special areas of geographical interest.

For instance, the British VG Virgin Islands have their own unique country code, as do the Caicos Islands, the island and McDonald Islands, Malta MT Marshall Islands, and minor outlying islands.

ISO 3166-1 Country Codes

ISO 3166-1 country codes are two-letter codes utilized to denote countries in hreflang tags, allowing for more precise targeting of specific regions and audiences. These codes are crucial for accurately specifying the country that a webpage is targeting, ensuring that your content is served to the right location.

When implementing hreflang tags, it’s essential to use the ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2 code format for country codes (in capital letters). This ensures that your implementation adheres to global standards, improving your website’s compatibility with various search engines and platforms.

Combining both Language and Country Codes

When targeting specific countries and languages using hreflang tags, it’s crucial to use the appropriate language and country codes in combination, as per the ISO standards. For example, if you want to target Spanish speakers in Spain, you would use the combiner hreflang attribute “es-ES”.

Accurate combination of language and country codes is necessary to achieve precise targeting with hreflang tags. By doing so, you can better specify the language variant used in a particular country or region, allowing for more precise language targeting and localization within numerous applications and systems.

Here’s detailed guidance to combine language and country codes:

By specifying both language and country codes correctly, you ensure that search engines serve the most relevant content to your users, based on their same language and location preferences.

To avoid common mistakes when combining language and country codes, always double-check the codes you’re using and ensure that they adhere to the ISO standards.

The above table is not comprehensive and can get more sophisticated than that, eg:

ca-ES-valencia for Catalan (Valencian)

Hreflang Implementation

There are three main methods for implementing hreflang tags :

• via HTML (using the HTML link element)
• HTTP headers
• XML sitemap,

HTTP Headers Implementation

Using HTTP headers to implement hreflang tags is ideal for non-HTML files, such as PDFs or images, that still need to be targeted based on language and region.

To implement hreflang tags using HTTP headers, you’ll need to include the hreflang attribute in the HTTP header of your website, specifying the language and country codes in the ‘hreflang’ header field.

Though this method is more technical than implementing hreflang tags within your HTML code, it offers the advantage of targeting non-HTML files with language and country-specific content.

XML Sitemap Implementation

Adding hreflang tags to your XML sitemap is a great way to organize and manage your hreflang implementation on websites with large number of pages or multiple language-country combinations.

To add hreflang tags to your XML sitemap, you’ll need to include a xhtml:link> element for each language and country combination, with the hreflang attribute specifying the language and country code for the page.

Implementing hreflang tags in your XML sitemap offers the advantage of better organization and management, allowing you to easily update or modify your hreflang implementation as needed.

Hreflang Testing and Validation

It’s essential to test and validate your implementation using various hreflang testing tools and techniques to ensure that your tags are accurately set up and correctly targeting the desired regions and audiences:

• Google Search Console (not available any more)
• Hreflang Tags Generator
• Hreflang Validators

These tools analyze your website’s code for hreflang tags and verify if the tags are accurately implemented and performing as expected. They can detect any mistakes or problems with your hreflang tags, such as missing or incorrect language or country codes.

By using hreflang testing tools, you can:

• Ensure that your implementation is accurate and compliant with global standards
• Improve your website’s compatibility with various search engines and platforms
• Detect and fix any common errors or issues with your hreflang tags
• Ensure that your content is served to the right audience in the right locations.

Common Validation Issues and Solutions

When combining language and country codes in hreflang tags, it’s common to make errors, such as using incorrect codes, not taking into account different language lengths, or mixing language and country codes incorrectly.

Example: UK instead of GB for the United Kingdom

To prevent these issues, it’s essential to utilize the appropriate ISO codes and ensure that your implementation is accurate and compliant with global standards.

Common validation issues with hreflang tags include incorrect language codes, incorrect country codes, and incorrect URLs. To fix these issues, double-check the language and country codes you’re using, and ensure that they adhere to the ISO standards.

Additionally, verify that the URLs in your hreflang tags are correct and functioning as intended.

Here’s some of the common mistakes:

1. Putting Country code before Language code – should be other way round
2. Using a dash (–) instead of a hyphen (-)
3. Using wrong quotation marks (“ ”) instead of (” “)
4. Using a relative URL e.g. /usa/ instead of showing a full URL
5. Using country code only: language code is mandatory, country code is optional
6. Missing self-referencing Hreflang: there should be only one Hreflang tag pointing to the page you’re on
7. Multiple Hreflang tags for a single page
8. Hreflang and Canonical tags in conflict: Hreflang and Canonicals are not supposed to be combined

By addressing common validation issues and troubleshooting your hreflang implementation to ensure it is accurate and compliant you will, no doubt, boost your website’s SEO for international exposure.

Furthermore, this will ensure that your content is served to the right audience in the right locations, ultimately enhancing the user experience and boosting your site’s SEO performance.

Conclusion

In conclusion, hreflang tags play a crucial role in improving the user experience and search engine optimization of your multilingual website.

By combining language and country codes accurately, implementing hreflang tags using the appropriate method, and testing and validating your implementation, you can ensure that your website’s content is served to the right users in the right locations.

Don’t underestimate how easy it is to set up hreflang incorrectly, by mistake. You need a proper implementation and validation method in place to ensure 100% compliance. If you would like your hreflang implementation to be audited, feel free to contact me for a quote.

In a nutshell:

• Hreflang tags are essential for search engines to identify language and region, leading to improved SEO & user experience.
• Combining language & country codes is essential for accurate targeting with hreflang tags, following ISO 639-1 and 3166 standards.
• To ensure accuracy in targeting desired regions & audiences, use appropriate ISO codes and test/validate the implementation of hreflang tags on your website.

Frequently Asked Questions

The post An Up-To-Date List of Hreflang Language and Country Codes appeared first on David Carralon.

The underlying SEO question: Is CTR a ranking factor?

For the first time in over a decade, SEOs can be more confident than ever to respond “yes, click-through rate (CTR) is indeed a Google ranking factor”.

The information got leaked by Eric Lehman, an ex-Google software engineer who released the kraken at a Court hearing.

Eric Lehman is an ex-Google software engineer that used to work in the Search Quality team.

Basically Lehman confirmed before a judge what many SEOs suspected: that Google does indeed use CTR and other user click data for rankings, adding weight to the argument that CTR is a ranking factor.

These revelations in turn confirm that Google considers user engagement data, such as clicks, when determining rankings, making it safe to say that CTR plays a role in search rankings.

This revelation also makes it evident that CTR should be a crucial metric for your SEO strategies and that optimizing your titles and meta descriptions, using structured data and rich snippets, and aiming for SERP features could enhance your organic CTR and search rankings.

The Controversial History of CTR

Click-through rate (CTR) has been a hotly debated topic in the SEO world, with conflicting information on its role as a “CTR ranking factor”.

Google has always emphatically declared that organic click-through rate is not a ranking factor, leaving us all scratching our heads. Meanwhile, SEO experts had differing opinions on CTR’s impact on search rankings, with some believing it played a significant role while others arguing it was too susceptible to manipulation.

Although Google’s official stance on CTR as a ranking factor was dismissive, conflicting and often concluding information and correlation seem to indicate that there, the majority of veteran SEOs believe that user engagement data, such as clicks, influenced Google’s search algorithms, and ultimately, organic search rankings.

I’ve personally, always, defended the position that CTR is used as a ranking factor in some way. For this, I have at times been laughed at by other SEOs (in a good way, i hope 🙂 during industry meet-ups. So I am writing this post in their honour! 🙂

Their response was often :

Furthermore, I once had the chance to speak to Gary Illyes after one of the meetings at ‘We Love SEO’ conference in Paris, and threw the question at him. He replied something like : “no, no, we do not take click data into account, it would be prone and subject to so many inaccuracies…”

I am not blaming Googlers for trying to hide “algo secrets” from SEOs, many of whom, no doubt, will go hard at trying to find a way to hack SERPs clickthrough by either focusing more on rich snippets, trying SERP fake click software, going hard for CTA on title tags or meta descriptions, and overall going after whichever possible method to artifically inflate clickthrough rate.

As a result Google may stop using CTR as part of the ranking algo.

The Role of CTR in Organic Search

Now that we know CTR does play a role in search rankings, let’s explore ways in which you could improve it:

• crafting compelling and captivating titles and meta descriptions, 
• leveraging structured data and rich snippets, and optimizing for SERP features.
• trending topics and recency
• Core Web Vitals
• Content quality and relevance
• Optimizing for SERP features

Implementing these strategies can elevate your CTR and potentially enhance your search rankings.

Crafting Compelling Titles and Meta Descriptions

Creating engaging and relevant titles and meta descriptions is a critical aspect of improving your CTR. Crafting enticing titles and descriptions that draw users to click on your search results can boost your CTR and potentially enhance your search rankings. Some strategies to make your titles irresistible include:

• Using digits or bullet points

• Posing a puzzling question

• Incorporating relevant keywords

• Having fun with punctuation

• Evoking emotion

Remember, the goal is to make your titles and descriptions relevant and engaging to users searching for your target keywords. By doing so, you can capture their attention and drive in more clicks-throughs.

Leveraging Structured Data and Rich Snippets

Structured data and rich snippets can enhance your search result listing, making it more visually appealing and informative, and ultimately leading to higher CTR.

Structured data is formatted and organized in a standardized way, making it easy for search engines to understand and process. By implementing structured data on your website, you can provide additional information about your content, such as:

• reviews

• ratings

• pricing

• availability

• events

• recipes

• FAQs

• and more

This additional information can improve your search result listing on search engine land and make it more enticing for users to click on when they see it on the search engine results page.

You can use Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper or Schema.org to implement structured data, and HTML microdata or JSON-LD for rich snippets, to take advantage of structured data and rich snippets. This approach can enhance the appeal and informativeness of your search results, thereby increasing your CTR and potentially enhancing your search rankings.

Trending Topics and Recency

Trending topics and recency can also impact CTR, as Google may temporarily boost the rankings of webpages with a surge in searches and clicks. As user engagement data influences rankings, a high CTR indicates that the topic is popular and resonates with users, potentially resulting in a temporary ranking boost.

Conversely, a low CTR may signal that the topic is not as engaging, and it may not become a trending topic anytime soon.

Take advantage of trending topics and recency by optimizing your titles and meta descriptions with popular keywords, using structured data and rich snippets, and maintaining up-to-date, relevant content. These steps can enhance your CTR and potentially uplift your rankings in Google’s search algorithms.

Grasping these additional factors allows you to devise a holistic SEO strategy that targets not only CTR but also other elements affecting your website’s search performance.

Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are a set of performance metrics that Google uses to evaluate user experience on a website. These metrics measure loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability, and are essential for a great user experience according to Google.

Although Google has recently confirmed that website load speed is not a ranking factor, websites with a poor performance in Core Web Vitals may see their search rankings affected indirectly IF CTR diminishes on the SERPs.

Monitor and enhance your Core Web Vitals using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, Chrome User Experience Report, and Lighthouse. These resources can help pinpoint areas for improvement and guarantee a superior user experience on your website.

Content Quality and Relevance

Content quality and relevance are essential factors in Google’s search algorithms, as high-quality, relevant content is more likely to rank higher in search results. Google evaluates various aspects of content, including its usefulness, relevance, and trustworthiness, to determine its ranking in search results. Thus, ensuring your content is not only relevant and up-to-date but also of the highest quality is crucial for success in search rankings.

Creating high-quality, relevant content involves looking at every aspect of content creation.

Optimizing for SERP Features

Optimizing for SERP features, such as “People Also Asked” and featured snippets, can help increase your visibility and CTR in search results. By targeting specific SERP features and tailoring your content to suit these features, you can improve your chances of appearing in these special search results and ultimately boost your CTR.

Focus on creating pertinent, high-quality content that responds to user queries and includes your target keywords to optimize for SERP features. Furthermore, ensure your titles and meta descriptions are engaging and compelling to users, as this can boost your chances of being featured in SERP features.

How to Measure and Monitor CTR Performance

Evaluating and tracking CTR performance is critical to comprehend the effectiveness of your SEO strategies and pinpoint areas for enhancement. Here are some steps to follow:

1. Pinpoint low-performing pages.

2. Conduct A/B testing for iterative CTR improvement.

3. Maintain high user engagement on your website.

4. Ensure optimal search ranking performance.

Identifying Low-Performing Pages

Identifying pages with low CTR can help prioritize optimization efforts, focusing on areas with the most significant potential for improvement. By analyzing the click-through rate of each page on your website, you can determine which ones are not performing as well as they should be.

After identifying the low-performing pages, concentrate your optimization efforts on enhancing the titles, meta descriptions, and content quality of these pages. This will not only lift your CTR but could also potentially uplift your search rankings.

A/B Testing and Iterative Improvement

A/B testing different title and meta description variations can provide valuable insights into what resonates with users, allowing for data-driven decisions to improve CTR. Testing different versions of a page or ad can reveal the most effective elements in generating clicks and boosting CTR.

Continuous monitoring of CTR performance, identifying low-performing pages, and conducting A/B testing can gradually enhance your CTR and keep your website engaging and relevant to users, leading to improved search rankings.

Summary

It is almost 10 years since this CTR commenced to be suspected as a Google ranking factor, by Industry professionals. Some believed that CTR could boost organic rankings, while others argued that it was too noisy and easily manipulated, just as Google claimed.

As it happened, former Google software engineer, Eric Lehman openly confirmed that user click data is used in the ranking algorithms. This wont change the game but it is insightful and educational to have official confirmation for this.

Focus on improving content quality and relevance, core web vitals, employing techniques such as crafting compelling titles and meta descriptions, leveraging structured data and rich snippets, and optimizing for SERP features to improve your organic CTR and potentially boost your search rankings.

Frequently Asked Questions

A good click-through rate (CTR) for SEO is considered to be above 3%. This means that out of 100 people who come across your page in the search engine results pages, 3 would click on it. However, CTR can vary depending on the industry and what products or services are being offered.

Yes, CTR is an important factor in technical SEO as it provides insight into how well your website is performing and can help you optimize for more organic traffic.

The average CTR for position 1 can be anywhere from 30-40% depending on topic/niche, more than double the click-through rate of other positions and nearly 4x the click-through rate of 3rd position.

CTR plays a crucial role in personalized search results, as it helps identify which of them are most likely to be engaging to individual users.

A high click-through rate can signal that a topic is popular and trending, which may contribute to a temporary ranking boost for pages associated with the topic.

The post CTR as a Ranking Factor officially unlocked appeared first on David Carralon.

Maximize your website’s reach with hreflang! 🌍💼🔎 Optimize language targeting based on your audience’s location for a personalized experience. Boost your international SEO game! #InternationalSEO #Hreflang #Localization

Frequently Asked Questions

If you still have questions about hreflang x-default tags, the list below may help. Or you may leave your own specific question as a comment and I will surely reply.

The post Hreflang x-Default for International SEO appeared first on David Carralon.

When it comes to expanding your business globally, implementing international SEO best practices can make all the difference to success. However, implementing a successful global SEO strategy is not as easy as it seems, and it’s not as simple as just translating your website.

It requires a deep understanding of different cultures, languages, and search behaviors.

Let’s dive into the “international SEO do and don’ts” of mastering international SEO that will help you avoid common pitfalls and succeed in your global expansion efforts.

What is International SEO?

International SEO is all about search engine optimization for different countries and languages, which involves optimizing your website to show up in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Given the impressive annual growth rate of 18.7% in the global e-commerce market, optimizing your website for international search engines has never been more critical.

International SEO is all about optimizing a website for audiences and search engines from different countries and languages. It requires extensive research on the target market, including language preference, cultural differences, and search engine behavior.

Without proper planning and execution, your multilingual SEO campaign may not deliver the desired results. Therefore, it’s crucial to prepare thoroughly before launch.

Now let’s dive into do’s and don’ts of international SEO:

International SEO Don’ts

While proficiency in the do’s of international SEO is vital, recognizing and avoiding common pitfalls in global SEO campaigns is equally significant.

Do not translate your keywords

The No. 1 rule is the ‘Don’t talk about FightClub’ for International SEO: Do not translate your target keywords.

This is a widespread mistake that global companies make when deploying their search marketing strategies in translating keywords into different languages.  This is a terrible practice. Every language needs to be treated separately, and location-based specific keyword research needs to be carried out.

Do not use machine translation or AI-generated content on its own

Machine translations can be way off the mark and result in a lousy user experience, negatively affecting your website’s SEO performance. Investing in professional translation or transcreation services is smarter than relying on machine translations, as it ensures accurate translations tailored to the target audience.

The bottom line is that machine translations via things like Google Translate APIs are a no-no for international SEO, as they can harm user experience and search engine rankings.

Likewise, AI copywriting tools are great to help build content at scale, and it has got tremendously sophisticated in 2023, but it is still not infallible and can often mislead the user if you don’t keep an aye on quality and manually check all the copy ai-generated/translated.

Investing in professional translation or transcreation services ensures that your content is accurate and engaging, leading to better results in global markets.

Or, if you are definitely focused on machine translation, do it with an element of human review if you are responsible for enterprise-level content production.

Do not use IP address detection to redirect website visitors

Don’t use IP address country detection methods to redirect users to specific language versions of your site. Your website could mistakenly take a search engine crawler onto the wrong language version, with your other versions of your site never getting crawled.

There are countless reasons why this can be a bad idea.

Do not overcomplicate your semantics

Don’t get tangled up with accented or plural versions of a term; treat them as separate keywords. Except for some exceptions, that’s now history.

Google has moved on semantics, and since the Google Hummingbird algo update, it is now a sophisticated enough search engine to understand an article’s central topic and tie it to a search intent.

Do not ignore cultural nuances or make assumptions about your target audience.

Avoid making assumptions about your international target audience. Cultural nuances in SEO are all about understanding how culture affects search behavior and tailoring SEO strategies to fit.

A good grasp of the culture is critical for successful multilingual SEO and local digital marketing, as it helps businesses craft content and design tailored to the local culture and preferences, enhancing user experience and brand perception.

To tailor SEO strategies to specific cultures, businesses must consider linguistic differences, common sayings, and local preferences when creating content and marketing strategies. Recognizing and respecting cultural nuances can result in improved search engine rankings, increased traffic, and a favorable brand image in target markets that speak the same language.

So, for example, you need to research Dutch culture and society properly if you plan to bring your product to the Netherlands. Doing keyword research would just not be enough.

Do not assume the same terminology can be used across countries sharing the same language.

Even countries with the same language may refer to the same products or services with different terms. You would fail if you assumed the same keyword could refer to a specific product and target audience across Spanish-speaking America. The same applies to French in France vs. Canada or other French-speaking countries.

Depending on the context, traditional Spanish spoken in Spain differs from that spoken in Latin America, so many of your target keywords will vary.

Every country in the Iberoamerica boasts its specific terminology in many aspects of life. Eg: ‘Rent a car’ is ‘renta autos’ in Mexico vs. ‘alquiler autos’ in Argentina. Car is ‘coche‘ in Spain, but ‘carro‘ in Mexico, ‘auto‘ in Argentina and Chile, and ‘maquina‘ in Cuba.

Do not overlook local link-building

Regional links originating within the targeted country contribute to the excellent evolvement of a global SEO strategy, signaling to search engines the website’s value to users. Establishing a robust link-building system is essential for acquiring worthwhile local links and boosting your website’s presence in search results.

However, gaining local backlinks can be challenging, as searching, contacting, and acquiring incoming links requires manual work and knowledge of the local culture, especially for a new website.

Without enough links from the target country, it might be difficult for a new site, whether a ccTLD or using a subdirectory to target country users, to rank well in search results.

Do not ignore other search engines

In certain countries, Google is not the dominant search engine.

If you are targeting Japan or Taiwan, Yahoo is still a large player together with Google, and if you plan to enter China, Baidu is still the dominant search engine player. Similarly, in Korea the main one is Naver and in Russia, they have Yandex as the predominant search engine with a 53% market share.

None of those search engines may be of concern if your business of the organization where you work has no intentions to do business in those countries. That is becoming a reality, given the geopolitical situation in 2023.

But even so, a good argument exists to keep an eye on the emergent search engines in Europe and the West. Browsers focused on privacy like ‘Brave’, or ‘Duck-duck-go’ do boast their own search engines, and they are growing slowly bu steadily.

Do not fail to research and comply with local laws

Don’t Neglect Mobile Responsiveness:

Mobile responsiveness is crucial for search rankings and user experience in international SEO. To ensure your website works well on all devices, optimize it for mobile, tablet, and desktop by using a responsive design, which automatically adjusts the website to the device’s size.

Neglecting mobile responsiveness can cause subpar search rankings and a compromised user experience, harming your international SEO efforts.

International SEO Do’s

Having realized the significance of international SEO and localization, let’s look at some essential practices that can propel your success in global SEO campaigns.

Market research is fundamental in identifying potential buyer personas and understanding their needs, laying the foundation for a successful international SEO strategy.

Your URL structure significantly influences your global SEO rankings, making it paramount to select the optimal structure for your website.

However, it’s not just about choosing the proper URL structure and conducting market research. Other key practices in international SEO include:

Keyword Research

Keyword research is indispensable for international SEO as it aids in determining the ideal keywords for each market.

To conduct keyword research effectively, various factors affecting keyword rankings in different countries, such as traffic, relevance, and how users search, must be considered. Adapting keywords for each target market, a process known as transcreation, is crucial, rather than just translating them.

Technical Optimization

Language declaration

Use language declaration via html tags using the ISO 639-1 language codes, eg: <html lang =”de”> for German  or <html lang =”en-gb”> for English from the United Kingdom

Correctly implementing Hreflang

Make sure your hreflang is correctly implemented across your multilingual websites if your content is available in various languages targeting different geographies.

This is particularly important when your website serves different geographical areas with the same language, eg: English for the US, English for the UK or English for Malaysia.

Competition and market research

Gain an insight into your competitor’s backlink portfolio using specialised software such as SEranking, Ahrefs or Majestic. These can be good sources to grab new link opportunities.

Use neutral Spanish to target Latam countries if you only have the resources to have a single websites

Resource allocation and budgeting

Ensure you have the marketing budget to promote your content in different regions, specifically link-building budget because acquiring country/language-specific backlinks will help you localize and rank your content more effectively.

Digital PR is key to international SEO

Digital PR is critical to success

Build centrally managed resources to digital PR and localize it adequately before you distribute it via different channels in each region. If done correctly, this can be a tremendous source of local links.

Summary

In conclusion, proficiency in international SEO best practices and pitfalls is critical for businesses aiming to broaden their online footprint in global markets.

From understanding international SEO and localization to implementing technical optimizations and avoiding common pitfalls, this list of do’s and don’ts has covered the essential practices and mistakes to watch out for in global SEO campaigns.

For more comprehensive information, check out my International SEO guide.

The post International SEO dos and don’ts appeared first on David Carralon.

In this article, I aim to highlight specific areas that, in my opinion, should get a bit more attention.

These areas or checkpoints can be less common yet essential to avoid SEO disasters, particularly for websites targetting International markets:

1. Inconsistent url casing
2. Inconsistent encoding on url formations
3. Incorrectly formatted robots.txt files
4. Assessing TTFB (Time to First Byte)
5. CDN optimization
6. Chain redirects or Redirect Loops
7. Multi XML sitemaps
8. Semantic mark-up

While some technical SEO audits I’ve been able to see and review were pretty decent and well researched, some others, despite them being expensive and carried out by sizeable known SEO agencies, lacking in depth or focus.

This happens as frequently SEO audits are carried out based on the same usual checklist template rather than being tailored to the needs of the client.

The list below is an attempt at identifying uncommon points covered on templated SEO audits, yet essential to complex large websites:

1. Inconsistent url casing

How often do you hear the term ‘canonicalization’. It’s a common term used by SEOs in SEO and can be applied to many different contexts, most revolving around the idea of ‘duplicate content and how to avoid it’.

This is where establishing a strategy to define urls is critical, and in particular, deciding on the casing is very important. In doing so, you will avoid having to patch things up with rel canonicals, 301 redirects, and other hacks in the future.

Let’s take a look at these two scenarios for urls:

1. /this-type-of-url

and

2. /this-Type-Of-Url

Both are valid, and both do exist. But you need to set foot on one and make it law. Having both approaches and allowing URLs to be displayed simultaneously is not the best practice.

In fact, forcing lowercase is becoming more the ‘defacto standard’ these days.

So long as the rules for the url formations are established from the beginning and make it set in stone, it’s fine.

For example, some teams establish that only nouns in urls would have first letter capitalised, while others may have decided to capitalise every initial letter in a word, and yet others go with ‘all lowercase as a rule with no exceptions‘.

I personally prefer the latter and that’s the option I always go with and recommend. If you are working on an SEO inhouse role, you need to set of rules that would define how the URLs will be set up.

Why is this so important?

Because if you don’t establish the url strategy, the problem starts to get out of hand when:

• Inbound links start pouring with the wrong syntax on urls, eg: capital letters everywhere instead of just the first letter
• internal linking point, due to some flaw, to the URL with incorrect syntax

This then starts becoming a duplicate content realm.

All this can be avoided by strictly defining how the system should deal with incorrect url formations.

For example, a typical url syntax plan that I’m keen on and almost always push for can be:

1. all urls in lowercase
2. No trailing forward slashes allowed
3. dash ( – ) symbol will replace the white space in between words

From those three rules, you could create what I have always called internally as:  the URL Golden Rule of 3 when I worked as an in-house SEO. Still today I call it that way when I build SEO guidelines and internal SEO policy documentation for clients. 

But that’s not enough. If we want to avoid deviations from the above rules, we should specify stability-driven code rules :

• Lowercase urls as a must
• Programmatically, the platform reverses any instance of capital url onto lowercase.

Eg, url: /rainy-days-are-over   if you try typing it as : /rainy-days-are-Over

the system will automatically revert onto:  /rainy-days-are-over   via 301 redirect

This unique feature works as a shield against duplicate content, as it minimizes the chances that someone may link to use with the wrong syntax. So this means if someone links to the site with a capital letter by mistake, the system automatically reverts to lowercase.

See where I’m going? Unless these prevention systems are implemented to help minimize potential misuse of the URLs, their integrity will always be on the line. I rarely see advice like this on SEO audit reports in the form of actionable recommendations.

2. Inconsistent Encoding on url formations

When the website deals with non-Latin characters or special characters, it is essential to decide on the right strategy for url encoding. Is the whole product name going to be encoded, even spaces? or will space be replaced by a dash as an exception or by an underscore like Wikipedia does? Does the rel canonical url need encoding, too? Are there inconsistencies in the way encoding has been performed?

This is quite a technical topic that’s often a must to review as part of an audit exercise on multilingual websites displaying names with accentuations, non-Latin characters (eg: Cyrillic) or special characters.

This is a matter that understandably requires thought, consultation, and patience to get right, so I can see why it is often just superficially mentioned throughout audits, but it does deserve due consideration and assessment. The decision should be documented and if possible, included in a more overarching strategy document such as the ‘URL strategy’, or ‘URL Policy’ document, or ‘SEO Strategy’ for the matter.

The right questions to ask in the framework of an audit are:

• What parts of a url are we going to encode (full url or just the database-powered part of it)?
• Is there also transliteration to do?
• What encoding system are we going to use?

For example:

• The ampersand character (“&”) should be encoded as “&amp;” as it’s a special character. The same should go for the rel canonical url, it should appear encoded.
• The accented “é” in some European languages like Spanish or French should be encoded as “%C3%A9”. Eg: “développement” in French

This encoding is critical for websites that display database-powered products or services. For example, E-commerce websites deal with listing categories that show products in different languages. Or Job board websites are boasting jobs containing technical names with special characters.

Take for example, the C# developer jobs results on this French jobboard website: www.lesjeudis.com.

https://www.lesjeudis.com/metiers/backend/d%C3%A9veloppeur-c%23

The actual jobtitle for those results is ‘Développeur C#’ where the symbol # is encoded as ‘%23‘ and the accented French letter ‘é‘is encoded as ‘%C3%A9‘

Why delve into this kind of hassle?

Well, they have had to encode the sharp symbol that accompanies the letter ‘C’; otherwise, the results would display job offers for Developers in C programming language instead of C sharp (#) .

https://www.lesjeudis.com/metiers/backend/d%C3%A9veloppeur-c

The actual job results would be different as those two programming languages (C vs C#) are different too.

It is essential to get involved in this kind of discussion with the development team as the decisions will impact your onsite SEO plans and the offsite SEO too.

Url encoding, for certain websites where the key content types are database-generated dynamic results, is vital as it will help you avoid a whole host of issues in the future.

Unicode or UTF-8 encodings are safe choices since you can use a single encoding to handle almost any character you will likely encounter.  This greatly simplifies things. Deciding on a system for url encoding can help avoid a whole host of issues in the future.

Read more about url encoding here:

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/06/all-about-unicode-utf8-character-sets/

http://www.unicode.org/standard/standard.html

http://www.utf-8.com/

3. Incorrectly formatted Robots.txt files

The robots.txt file is a text file intended for search engine bots or any bots visiting the site. In principle, bots start exploring websites by looking for the robots.txt file at the site’s root.

By looking at the directives in the robots.txt file, search engine robots can specify which pages or content paths can or cannot be indexed. Bots do not always obey those directives, but there is still value in defining the structure of a robot’s file.

For an SEO consultant performing a technical audit, auditing and assessing whether a robots.txt file contains the proper directives is not easy. It should be carefully carried out, allowing sufficient time to consider every aspect of the site architecture.

The way I usually advise on the setup and configuration of the robot’s file is by

1. making small annotations of the different website paths throughout the audit.
2. Noting down parameters, filters, and fractions that should not be crawled
3. I should have added enough intel to be able to advise as to the most suitable config for the robots.txt file.

One needs to have first-hand experience of the website structure and its features, such as faceted navigation, pagination, etc, before one can advise on a suitable configuration for the robots.txt file.

Technical SEO audits are often delivered without much input on the robots.txt file other than general syntax corrections.  grab image too

While it is good correcting the syntax and ensure that UTF-8 is used, advising on the correct configuration for the robot’s file is critical to help maximize crawlability on the site in question. Don’t let robots crawl more than they should.

I have seen audits where great advice is given as to the need to deindex content deemed as duplicated or thin (eg: e-commerce urls boasting appended parameters), but then no advice is provided to help declutter the robots file or even set it up properly with an eye on the taxonomy of the website.

3. Assessing TTFB (Time to First Byte)

Google recommends a Server response time under 200 milliseconds. People want fast websites, and they get frustrated when waiting until the page is downloaded. Therefore should TTFB be a must to cover in technical seo audits?

I do not intend to cover entirely the subject of Website speed touching all server/client side factors. But I feel that TTFB has a lot of weight in the overall paradigm of Website speed.

The question would be: how long does the browser wait before receiving its first byte of data from the server? That critical ‘wait’ state should ideally be optimized below 200 ms. I’m not proud of that score of 662.4 on my website.

So, where is the bottleneck in there?

Let’s summarise how TTFB takes place in three easy steps:

A. Request to server processing: on every website visit, the client(browser) has to request the server. This request can be fast or slow based on several factors. One of them is the speed of the DNS lookup. Are you using the DNS service provided by your domain name or a premium one? this can make a big difference in delivering a faster request to the server.

You can dramatically improve DNS lookups and load time by moving as many resources as possible to the CDN provider. Yet this is rarely mentioned/covered on technical SEO audits, despite seeing large counts of resources, eg: multimedia content often hosted by the website server itself.

B. Server processing: This is the part where the server has to deal with things like database calls, caching, parsing of 3rd party scripts, and code quality. Server resources play a role here: server processing power, memory, and ability to perform compression (eg: gzip).

This is where having a good solid host can really make a difference. Some hosts claim to have high-speed servers, but they don’t. At some point, moving one of my affiliate sites from WPEngine onto Kinsta saw a speed increase of over 125%.

If your site is running WordPress there are plenty of good options today. Even if you are on a budget, you should be able to find good WordPress hosts.

I see websites backed up by solid well-established businesses running even with VC help, but being hosted in unresponsive or less-than-ideal hosting solutions.

C. Server response to client: again in here having a good host counts too as the network used by the server to send the response has to be fast. This is not to mix with the client’s internet connexion, wifi issues, etc, which would also affect the TTFB, but it’s out of scope here.

In short, assessing how robust the server is, the CDN set up and the effectiveness of the DNS lookup are key things that can dramatically affect overall website speed. These areas should genuinely be included in a technical SEO audit.

4. CDN optimisation

Content delivery networks have a lot to do with the site’s overall performance in search, especially if we are looking at a website with an international reach. Yet, CDN auditing is rarely covered in SEO audits.

CDNs (Content delivery networks) boast the ability to improve SEO in many ways:

• Accelerating page webpage load time across the globe. Webpage Loading time is an essential criterion for SEO. CDNs decrease the webpage’s response time and therefore improve their loading speed
• Decrease the image size sent to the user whenever needed depending on the device.
• Keep stability at times of heavy traffic to the website.
• help reduce the number of server calls

In short, CDNs can be highly beneficial to websites with high traffic levels or sites with geographically dispersed traffic.

However, there are risks associated with CDNs too.

• 1. Misconfigurations of CDN But be careful when installing your CDN: do it cautiously or seek the help of a professional. If you do not install it correctly, it will damage your SEO and your user experience.
• 2. The CDN provider may not have servers in some of your company’s locations. Your customers will then experience Latency and more extended downtime and user experience will be affected.

CDN setup and configuration, as well as possible interference with other aspects of the web architecture, should be audited in the same way as other elements.

5. Chain redirects or redirect loops

This often is often more visible in SEO audits, it’s a must, but I have still seen audits that did not address adequately the different types of chain redirects, or perhaps chain redirects were acknowledged but redirect loops were left aside.

They are two other things, and both contribute primarily to wasting crawl time on site.

Chain redirects can be caused by development changes made to the internal link structure, or by renaming urls or perhaps platform migrations. It is worth assessing properly how severe the matter of chain redirect is throughout the technical SEO audit and advising on prioritization accordingly in the list of recommendations via an audit report.

6. XML Multi-sitemaps

What can be better than a sitemap that acknowledges the taxonomy of the website?  A cluster of xml sitemaps comprised of identifiable child sitemaps that represent each of the critical categories or sections of a large website is like a treasure map to indexation success.

XML multi-sitemaps act as a roadmap for diagnosing indexation issues, bloated sections or even bloating in the index itself. Using xml sitemaps and matching them against content already in the index presents a phenomenal tool to help troubleshoot or optimize crawlability and indexation.

Let me clarify: I do agree that sitemaps will not give you an SEO boost, but they will help you get indexation visibility across the horizon to improve your technical SEO strategies. These xml files in combination with crawling data and log file data, can massively inform your SEO to help you establish the next big move.

XML sitemaps get a lot of criticism, often unfairly called ‘useless’, yet they are a handy SEO tool, in my opinion. I have used them to good effect in my career as an SEO, and today I still use them to diagnose, test and improve technical SEO.

More often than not, if the website being audited is over 5K-6K urls, I think there is already enough justification to recommend splitting the xml sitemaps logically into sensible topics, sections or categories.  But instead, audits usually just kind of recommendations to have an xml sitemap, or if one is present, this is ticked as if nothing else is to be done.

6. Semantic mark-up

Despite industry-available advice to prioritize structured markup and search engines like Google encouraging webmasters to embrace it, there is still little adoption of structured data today, especially by big brands.

The main goal for structured data is to declare specific elements in the websites’ HTML to help the search engines better understand the content: video, images, ratings, events information, recipes, organization information, job offers.

Read Google’s guidelines for use of Schema structured data  and 3rd party resources like Moz’s series on structure data for seo to start getting acquainted with it.

There are three different types of search structured data as part of the Schema.org protocol :

•  JSon-LD
• Microdata
• RDFa

However, other types of structured mark-up exist, such as the DublinCore initiative, Facebook Opengraph, and Twitter cards.

In some verticals, this is huge, to the point that unless you implement structured data effectively, you will lose out big in the race to be visible. For example, to rank on the ‘Google for Jobs’ boxes, every individual job posting needs to follow strict Schema parameters either with Json-ld or microdata.

Here’s an example:

Pop over to Merkle to get your schema code automatically generated.

The benefits of implementing marketing up at scale on large website networks are clear. However, this is still today something not fully embraced by large organizations, either due to a lack of internal knowledge, resources, clumsy old CMS, or other corporate SEO impediments.

Here are some tools that you can use to help validate your markup data:

1. Google’s Structured Data Testing tool: https://search.google.com/structured-data/ testing-tool/u/0/

2. Rich result test (Google): https://search.google.com/test/rich-results

3. Validation tool  for Bing: https://www.bing.com/toolbox/markup-validator

Researching structure markup feasibility and making recommendations for its implementation if scope exists, should be included in technical SEO audits.

Conclusions

Sometimes though, critical insights on an audit report can be missed as the auditor hasn’t really spent enough time understanding how the business works and how the website delivers against the business objectives. Internal knowledge about the company can really help formulate better recommendations upon the technical SEO audit exercise.

Whatever use you make of the report and the recommendations, it is advised to find an SEO Consultant that can work with your technical teams to implement the recommendations in a way that’s efficient and always looking at the 20/80 rule: trying to achieve 80% of the results investing 20% of time & resource.

you may want to read one of my best pieces on technical audits: “How to do a technical audit effectively in 10 steps“.

Updated: 5 April 2023

The post Common gaps in technical SEO audits appeared first on David Carralon.

Conducting a technical SEO audit is essential to any successful SEO strategy. By regularly assessing and improving the technical elements of your website, you can increase visibility in search engine results and drive more organic traffic to your site.

Businesses need to pay more attention to regularly auditing their online presence.

In this guide, I cover how to do a technical SEO audit in just ten steps effectively. I’ll discuss how to analyze your website, identify technical issues, and develop solutions or recommendations.

What Is an SEO Audit?

SEO audits are periodic reviews of a website to assess its search engine rankings’ overall health and performance. 

During an SEO audit, experts analyze the website’s architecture, content quality, technical elements, and other factors to identify opportunities for improvement.

SEO audits are a necessary part of any well-rounded SEO strategy. Without it, website owners may miss opportunities to increase their organic search visibility and performance.

The three main aspects of an SEO audit are technical, content, and links.

So what is a technical SEO Audit, then?

A technical SEO audit identifies and prioritizes the technical issues holding your website back from achieving its desired ranking in search engine results. Addressing and optimizing these areas can improve your SEO performance and drive more organic traffic to your website. The concept of ‘technical’ can be interpreted in many different ways.

I do not consider title tags, content optimization, or meta descriptions part of a technical SEO audit. Still, the client often requests these, so I add them to my study.

Regarding offsite factors, I do not consider backlinks analysis as part of a technical SEO audit either. However, if the client requests a backlink audit on suspicion of some manual penalty, I also bring in the link portfolio audit as part of the technical SEO audit.

It really depends!

Moreover, a technical SEO audit should focus on the technical elements of a website, even if some aspects overlap with On-page or off-page SEO.

Before You Begin

Before you begin your technical SEO audit, let’s look at what you need to have in place.

Search and Traffic Analytics

If you plan to perform a paid audit for a client or do it in-house, at the bare minimum, you will need access to Google Search Console but, ideally, Google Analytics too.

I rarely accept requests to perform a technical SEO audit without having access to GSC first. I like to explain to the client why the data in GSC is critical to validate the diagnosis of errors, problems, and even manual penalties.

Keyword rankings/positioning reports

Rankings can be obtained via Google Search consoles, however,, having access to your client’s search engine ranking history is a bonus.

This is often a luxury when you do get it as many businesses do not track search engine rankings at all.

You can use tools to assess drastic fluctuations in target keyword positions, such as SEMrush, SE Ranking, or Sistrix.

I always ask for information on redirects as it helps get access to how these critical tasks may have been handled in the case of migration that has gone wrong and the expected subsequent traffic drop.

Link building lists

If you are conducting an audit that includes checking out the backlink portfolio and building up a disavow file to submit, then make sure you ask for a list of backlinks they may have been sourcing in recent months or whichever period applies.

You may be surprised how many people who have been buying links do have these backlink lists. This makes the process much easier as a possible manual action or algorithmic penalty can be traced more easily. It makes the cost of the SEO audit cheaper too.

Website client brief

When you get contacted by a potential client, there are so many pieces of information you need to perform technical SEO audits effectively. You must set up a system to collect all this information properly to save time.

I suggest you create a project brief document that you can hand out to the client to collect essential information from the client easily. If you are reading this as an inhouse SEO then this shouldn’t apply much to you as you are supposed to know the strategy, moves and goals behind the website you manage.

This brief should include questions such as:

• website’s history
• current performance
• recent website migrations or rebranding
• close competitors
• target market
• website goals for SEO or overall website goals
• recent changes effected on the website
• recent issues, drops, or tech having gone wrong
• possible upgrades pushed out by other teams, eg: UX, CRO
• Any specific areas to focus the technical audit on.

Once you have all this information, you have an excellent baseline to perform the audit efficiently.

How to do the Technical SEO Audit, step by step

Now, let’s look at the ten steps to help you conduct a successful technical SEO audit.

Step 1: Perform manual checks

Manual analysis is an incredible way to get first-hand tips on what could be wrong with the website.

It does help to navigate the website as a user and become familiar with it: click over navigation items, categories, and subcategories, apply filters if it’s an e-commerce site, do internal searches, identify template flaws… make sure you take notes for anything that looks odd.

Use Chrome SEO extensions

You will continue the analysis, but this time with your auditor hat on, open up the various browser ‘developer’ extensions you may have, switch off CSS, javascript and look at what’s visible.

Do the same thing with SEO Chrome extensions. eg: SEO minion, Detailed, Link Redirect Trace…

Robots.txt configuration

Check out the robots file and see what’s disallowed, see if the sitemap is listed, then go and check if there is anything odd about it.

Manually check indexation.

Then run a manual site: operator check and see how much content Google gives you back as indexed. Don’t take this information at face value; compare it with the data in GSC, and wait for the first crawl to start drawing out various hypotheses that you will later put to the test.

Manually check mobile friendliness.

Check the website usability on your smartphone. This mobile-friendly manual review can be later contrasted with a proper mobile-friendly test. Google grants preference to mobile-friendly websites, and for a good reason.

According to Statista, one-third of United States internet users make weekly purchases from their mobile phones, so it is worth a manual check of the website on your smartphone/s.

Asses the different website templates

A manual review involves reviewing the different templates of a website and assessing it for potential SEO issues. It includes checking the page title, meta description, schema build-up, URL structure, content quality, and other factors.

This process can be highly time-consuming but can further ensure that the content gets audited rightly, and everything will make more sense once you start crawling the website and match each content type visually to each template. Take notes and even print out the most important templates. It will help you throughout the full analysis.

Manual webpage auditing is excellent for carefully assessing how the different website templates are designed or built, but of course, to properly audit and identify issues in bulk, there is nothing like a full crawl of the website.

Step 2: Crawl the website and start the analysis

The first step is to crawl your website with your preferred tool.

I usually spend the necessary time to configure these five at the bare minimum:

• Screaming frog, desktop-based crawler
• Sitebulb, desktop-based audit tool
• Oncrawl, cloud-based crawling tool
• Ahrefs, cloud-based crawling tool
• SEOcrawl.com, for GSC visualisations

These initial crawls will help you get an overall view of the website and identify any problems with your SEO.

Once the initial crawl is completed, check the data to ensure you complete the configuration. Ensure the crawls are integrating GSC, GA or Ahrefs or Majestic data via their APIs.

On the cloud-based crawling tools, you now have the chance to configure the page types and different website sections. This may feel like a lot of work, especially for small website audits, but I always do it as it saves me time later with understanding where issues stem from or where bottlenecks exist.

The actual crawl may typically run for about 30 mins, if it’s a small website, and up to 2-3 days, for large websites and depending on how fast the crawler is able to crawl without bringing down the server.

Do not go to aggressive on the crawler speed, even if you have been granted GSC permissions because the devops teams may end up blocking the robots used by different crawling tools.

Once the audit reports are ready, the challenge is to know exactly where to look to find the golden nuggets. If the client has been clear on what is wrong with the website, it is easier to prioritize the analysis. If that’s not the case, the goal is broader as all areas would need to be addressed to help you prioritize the areas of your website that could be negatively impacting your site.

I usually like to take a good look across the entire crawl reports on each crawl tool, take notes, and then narrow down the issues to the biggest ones estimated to bring the best results if they were solved.

Here are some of the things to look out for :

Duplicate Content

Duplicate content is a common issue that can negatively impact your website’s rankings. Duplicate content means that the same content is showing up on multiple pages of your website. Make sure to identify any duplicate content and fix it quickly. A great example is two blog posts about similar topics with the same points and keywords.

Crawlability Issues

Have all parts of the website been crawled? Is there any part of the website reported as ‘not crawled’ that you think it should be? watch out for nofollow content and content that’s blocked out in the robots file, eg: pagination URLs are often either canonicalised to the front of roboted out.

If there are key areas of the website that should have been crawled, but aren’t, you then have some hints and you should dig in deeper.

Crawl Errors

Crawl errors are another common issue that can affect your website’s performance. If a crawl error occurs, the website is not loading correctly or sending out the wrong HTTP, then that’s worth digging into.

Multiple 302 redirects ending in a 404 page as the final destination is a common issue I find in large website throughout my audits.

Broken Links or 404 errors

Broken links can have a significant impact on your website’s performance. Broken links can occur due to coding errors, dead pages, or website redesigns. It can be worse if you have a chained redirect that ends in a non-existing page, so the chain redirect of 301 or 302 ends in 404, 410, or the like. See a full section on this further down the page

Active vs inactive pages

This kind of insight can be an eye-opener for most business owners because everyone tends to keep content that either serves no purpose, is decommissioned but forgotten, becomes an orphan, or forgets about it.

Large sways of stale content is always detrimental for SEO.

It is not uncommon to find websites where, following a crawl, one becomes aware that only a 10% of the website content actually delivers organic traffic, and less than 2-5 % actually converts either by generating sales or leads for the company.

Missing or duplicated critical SEO Tags

Meta tags tell search engines vital information about all your pages, such as how they should display in search queries.

Ensure your website uses the correct meta tags, such as title and description. It can seriously impact your website’s performance. It is vital to make sure that they are all present and correct.

It is common to find duplicated title tags or H1s, especially on e-commerce websites.

All crawl errors flagged by SEO Tools should be manually checked on the website code source and page content or cross-checked with other tools’ reports to validate potential issues.

Step 4: Identify Problems With Crawlability and Indexation

So how are crawlability and indexation working together?

Crawlability is the process by which search engine bots succeed (or not) at finding and crawling every critical webpage within a website. Indexability, in turn, is the ability for a web page to be indexed once it has been crawled.

If a page is not accessible for whatever reason, it will not be indexed and will not appear in the search engine results. However, a webpage can be easily crawled and still not indexed by search engines. During the technical SEO audit, you must determine why crawlability and/or indexability fail.

It is essential to assess both indexation and crawlability when performing an SEO audit.

To do this, you can use Screaming Frog SEO Spider to identify any potential crawl errors. Then use Google Search Console to check for any indexation issues. Additionally, you can use specialized tools

If you find any indexation or crawlability issues, note them and determine the cause. Some of the most notorious crawlability issues involve

• numerous counts of broken links,
• solving rendering on javascript-powered websites,
• incomplete or deficient XML sitemaps
• unsuitable or patchy internal linking
• bad information architecture
• incorrect us of the robots.txt file where specific URLs are blocked from crawling

Note: if the site being audited runs on javascript, the paradigm ‘Crawling-indexation’ becomes ‘Crawling-indexation and Rendering’

How to Fix Broken Links

When it comes to technical SEO, broken links are a major issue. If search engine bots can’t access a page, they won’t be able to index it. It can drastically reduce your website’s visibility in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Set time aside to track all the internal links on the website and identify areas of the site or specific content types that may not be getting as much internal link equity as others. This is an essential on technical SEO audits as it allows you to identify and prioritize the issues hindering your website’s performance.

By now, you should have a list of broken links from your site audit and Google Console and Analytics research. Broken links result from various factors, such as outdated URLs or URLs that have gotten deleted from the website. Your options for fixing broken links are removing them entirely or replacing them with a valid link.

Audit XML Sitemaps

An XML sitemap is an essential part of a technical SEO audit. It is a special file that tells search engine bots which pages to crawl and index, making it easier for them to find your site.

To audit the XML sitemap, you can use Google Search Console. Once in your dashboard, click on sitemaps on the left sidebar and then click on ‘Add/Test Sitemap’. Enter your sitemap URL, and Google will begin to crawl it, and soon give you a report. The goal, amongst other things, is to ensure that :

every URL in your sitemap is critical to you website

only have compliant URLs in your sitemap (HTML format, 200HTTP, self-canonical URLs)

every URL is linked to the website structure

Every URL in you sitemap should therefore be crawled, indexed and ideally ranked. If one of those three conditions are not met, dig in and find out why. The journey into auditing XML sitemaps often takes you into a deep and complicated rabbit hole.

Always question why there are urls/pages that are indexed and possibly ranking but not have a present in the sitemap group. Every page critical to the business should be in the XML sitemap.

Creating Robots.txt Files

Robots.txt is a text file that commands search engine bots on which pages to avoid crawling and indexing on your website. It can be useful if you have pages you want to avoid being visible in the SERPs. For example, if you have a page with sensitive information or duplicate content, you can use a robots.txt file to block it from being indexed.

To create a robots.txt file, you will add code to a light text file that can be created in notepad. Once you have added the code, upload it to your website’s root directory.

Consider this entire step one of the most important ones in your SEO audit, as any issues with indexation and crawlability will severely limit the visibility of your website in the search engine results.

Check duplication at platform-level

Identical content under the same domain but a different domain protocol is common.

Eg: https://fastbullettrain.com/category/url1 and

http://fastbullettrain.com/category/url1 both could resolve and return HTTP 200

The same issue is common between www and non-www versions of the domain.

When that happens, content is duplicated and reused across different URL versions. This can potentially dilute link equity and confuse users and Google, who may use the wrong canonical version of your domain.

Step 6: Image Optimization

Images have become an essential part of SEO, as they can provide users with visual cues that make consuming content easier. But it’s not just the visuals that matter. Image optimization with the right size, file type, and ALT attributes can also help your search engine rankings.

Image issues will show up in your audit. The main errors you’ll see are page speed issues, incorrect image size, broken images, and missing ALT text.

Site Speed Issues

The size of images is essential when it comes to speed. If your image files are too large, they will take longer to load, affecting your website’s overall performance. They should not be too small if they want to stand a chance to rank.

Ensure all images used on your site are compressed and not too big. You can use TinyPNG or CompressJPEG for effective compression and resizing.

Incorrect Image Size

When using images on a website, it’s essential to ensure they are correctly sized. If an image is too small or too large, it will look terrible on your website. If the image size isn’t true or causes the image to be blurry or distorted, you increase the chance of losing readers.

You should also specify image size using html.

Broken Images (404s)

Broken images are another common issue when performing an SEO site audit. A broken image is an image that fails to load on the page. A dead link, broken code, or incorrect file type can cause it.

When a broken image pops up, the skeleton of the photo will show up, but it won’t load the picture. Your goal is is to look for patterns that help you work out what has broken up specific groups of images, eg: a recent website migration where images were not taken into account and adequately redirected, much like pages urls.

Missing ALT Text

ALT text or alternative text is a way to provide search engine bots with additional information about an image. ALT text should be descriptive and contain the target keyword. It will help search engine bots better understand the content on your page and increase its relevance to users’ queries.

File Types and Free Images

Finally, ensure you’re using suitable file types for your images. JPGs and PNGs generally work the best for photos, as they have smaller file sizes than other formats. PNG is recommended for logos and other sharp graphics, while JPEG is best for photos and other pictures with great detail.

As you optimize and compress all images, your website’s performance will improve too.

Ae you wondering why a specific segment within a client website is performing poorly and hardly getting any organic traffic? check out the internal linking report on your favorite SEO tool and you may be surprised with the findings:

Step 10: Run a parallel Javascript-enabled crawl

This step will only be needed if you deal with javascript-powered websites such as NextJS, AngularJS, or others.

You may have asked the site owner if the site runs on javascript, and you may have been told that server-side rendering is running for every webpage, but experience tells me never to take that as a confirmation of a fact.

Running a 2nd crawl with javascript enabled may reveal some valuable points.

Quite often, part of the website is not rendered on the server, or perhaps the site navigation only fires up at the user request level, meaning that the robots may not see the top navigation and may only be finding the website content via HTML or XML sitemaps and internal linking routes.

Compare the n. of total pages of the two crawls: text-only and javascript. If they do not coincide then you have an area to dig in deeper, trying to find out if the part of the website not rendered at the server is appropriately indexed and without render issues. For this, the Inspect tool on GSC is invaluable.

There are many good tools in the market at the moment. Some are premium, but other ones, like Website Auditor, from SEO Powersuite, are very affordable.

The post How to Do a Technical SEO Audit Effectively in 10 Steps appeared first on David Carralon.

However, traffic ultimately amounts to nothing if you don’t call website visitors to a desired action on your site.

One way of getting the most out of your website traffic for your online business is by converting them into leads.

This way, you can still connect with them even after they leave your site, if not turn them into clients!

In this post, I will discuss with you the top 10 ways to effectively generate leads from your site.

1. Create a ‘subscribe to my list’ page on your website

Email marketing remains one of the best ways to generate large numbers of leads and turn them into paying customers of your product or service.

The personal nature of email and the fact that it goes straight to the inbox of subscribers with their permission make email an attractive choice to grow your business.

But before you can get there, you must build a landing page where you can funnel all visitors to sign up to your email list.

The page should not only have a lead capture form where people will enter their name and email address. It must also have information highlighting the benefits to signing up to your list.

Creating one should be a breeze if you have access to a landing page builder. Most of these tools have templates with high-converting web design that you can use and edit to create a personalized one on your website.

2. Develop a content marketing strategy

The key to successful lead generation from your website is by driving more traffic to it.

Acquiring leads for your business is a numbers game – the more people that visit your site, the more prospects you can gather.

Therefore, you need to roll out a content marketing plan that will reach hundreds and thousands of website visitors.

What’s important in content marketing is identifying a clear buyer persona of your brand.

By developing the ideal person who will visit your site, you can then create content that resonates with his or her wants and needs.

3. Add pop-up forms to your best performing pages

Over time, with help from the content marketing strategy you developed, your site would have increased traffic.

Now, this is where a pop-up form comes in handy.

You can make them on your blog posts in eye-catching ways. As a result, you can hike up your email sign-ups even more!

If you’re using an email software, most of them offer this feature that you can show on certain pages of your site, if not site-wide.

Now, it’s one thing to set up the forms. It’s another to pick your spots where you must set up these forms.

To maximize the performance of your forms, make sure to head on to Google Analytics and check the pages generating the most traffic.

Now that you have a list, embed the form on these pages so you can squeeze out more leads from your website with the least effort!

4. Diversify your opt-in forms

Opt-in forms come in different shapes and sizes. So, placing just one form on a page probably won’t be enough to generate prospects for your business.

It’s best practice to include a variety of opt-in forms in a page to make sure that visitors don’t miss them.

Below are the different forms available for you to use:

• Lightbox – Appears on the screen front and center
• Welcome mat – Similar to lightbox but covers the entire screen so visitors don’t miss it
• Slide-in – Glides up the screen on the side
• Floating bar – Shows on top or bottom of the page in the shape of a small, thin bar
• Sidebar – Positions itself on the sidebar section of your blog posts alongside your other widgets to not disrupt visitor’s experience
• Inline – Appears within the content so readers of your page can spot them

Use a combination of the forms in a page to help you generate more leads from them.

At the same time, you don’t want to use all types in your page and spoil the user experience. You need to find the balance that works for you and your visitors.

5. Control how you want to show your forms

By default, the forms appear on your screen immediately after the website loads.

And since there’s no established relationship between you and visitors, they will most likely leave your site once they’re bombarded with your forms.

Therefore, you want your forms to appear once your visitors get settled in your website.

For example, make the lightbox appear after users scroll past half of the page.

The fact that visitors are scrolling your page means that they are engaged with your content. Now, once the lightbox appears, there’s a good chance that visitors will submit their email address to your list.

But, arguably the best way to generate more leads from your forms is by using exit intent.

For example, if a visitor tries to leave your page, the pop-up form appears just before they close this window or open a new one.

This is a great way to get their attention with a mind-blowing offer to keep them on your website.

6. Use content upgrades to incentivize your opt-in forms

Most forms simply state that they’ll share update and exclusive news to subscribers.

That’s not an appealing proposition for visitors because it doesn’t offer an immediate benefit to people. This results to a low conversion rate of the forms.

Hence, you need to offer something of value to people that will encourage them to sign up to your email list.

One of the best incentives you can use to encourage sign-ups to your email list are content upgrades. Upon joining your list, new subscribers will receive the content upgrade as a way of thanking people for signing up.

There are many forms of content upgrades that you can use to entice visitors to join your list:

• cheatsheets
• resources list
• audio-recording
• whitepaper
• templates
• ebooks.

The key to using content upgrades is providing a solution to their problems.

For example, with the checklist, it can be a checklist of on-page SEO factors for a website that’s about SEO. This can be a great way to generate more leads from your site.

7. Split-test your forms

Don’t settle with just one version of the form on your website.

Through A/B testing, you can create different versions of the same form and test them at the same time.

What it does is display the variations at random intervals. Over time, you can see which versions landed the most subscribers.

From here, you can create another version of the winning form to further test and maximize your conversion rates.

When putting these variables to the test, be sure to test them one at the time. This way, you can isolate the factors and see how each of them affect the overall performance of the form.

8. Feature testimonials

Even if you have a good content upgrade, don’t expect all of your visitors to become your subscribers.

Aside from providing people with value, you also need to earn their trust.

The easiest way to do that is by using testimonials from customers or influencers.

Include them in the form or landing page where you’re gathering their contact information.

It would be great if you could get glowing recommendations from people whom your audience respects.

Because if the people they trust trust you, then they’ll also pay you the same respect by becoming your subscribers!

9. Use a live chat widget

Moving away from opt-in forms, you can also use live chat to generate more leads to your website.

This widget is normally found at the bottom right of the screen. If visitors click on it, it opens a dialog box that helps people with their questions and concerns.

The advantage of live chat is people can reach out to you and expect a reply in minutes, if not earlier.

There are tools you can use to help you set up a live chat widget on your site. Most of them work the same way – it’s just a matter of choosing one that you’re comfortable using.

10. Use call tracking

Some people prefer reaching out to you via phone, which is why call tracking as a lead generation tactic exists.

Using a call tracking software, you can create a toll-free phone number to feature on your website.

When people use the phone number to call you, the software tracks the calls and breaks them down into metrics – think Google Analytics, but for phone calls.

Aside from singling out calls that come from your website, call tracking gives you a better understanding on how callers interact with your support.

This way, you can improve your interaction with callers and close them into becoming prospects of your business, if not clients.

Conclusion

Building an email list of leads for your business can be a long and draining process. But if you want to expedite the process, then make sure you following the quick wins above.

The idea behind the aforementioned tips is to leverage your existing website traffic and convert them into prospects.

So, if your online business is attracting tons of traffic, then expect to acquire tons of name, email, and phone number information as well!

The post 10 Quick Wins to Get More Leads From Your Website appeared first on David Carralon.

As part of this task, you are set with the task of designing a global SEO strategy set for success.

Some of the questions you may ask yourself at this point are:

• How do I promote my website internationally
• What is International targetting?
• How do I apply my SEO strategy to multiple countries?

It would be bad advice to lay out here a kind of template for strategy definition since every business is different, and the right strategy will be based on the precise characteristics, requirements, and capabilities of the company.  

The right strategy will also depend on 

• the business’s ability to be agile (or accommodating to reqs)
• available resources
• business ambition
• Overall budget for the project
• Dependencies and stakeholders
• Technical infrastructure (feasibility/flexibility)
• and multiple other factors and requirements, both technical and operational.

The above factors will be critical to help you formulate the right type of international SEO strategy.

Oftentimes, such strategy may be far from being the one you would ideally have. You have to fit in with the constraints of the environment you work in. Things like company business goals, resources and existing technology may determine how ambitious you can get. 

Nevertheless, it is certainly possible to give a framework of fundamental areas that should not be missed or left out of consideration when designing an SEO strategy for multi-language or multiregional expansion. 

Let us examine some of these areas that will play a critical role to the success of your international SEO strategy.

Table of Contents

Global Strategic Business Plan

What does the business truly want to achieve? 

How fast do they want to do it

…and how ambitious they really are? 

Your international SEO efforts should begin with a clear assessment of your business goals for expansion. Your primary goal here is to evaluate your organization’s plans, project ambition, and existing resources. 

Based on your assessment, identify your strengths, weaknesses, and find areas where your opportunities are most substantial then direct your attention and resources in that direction.

Assess how your online business model works and define your online goals.  How do you deliver services/products to your clients, and what do you want to achieve with global SEO? Do you have the capacity to deliver the same goods/services globally?  What are your current business constraints, and how do you plan to deal with them?  

Keep in mind that it is how you lay your global strategic business plan that will guide your international SEO strategy. It will serve as a roadmap going forward. Assess the skills and competencies of your staff members to establish what they can and cannot do.

Offer training if need be to make sure that everyone is on the same page before you move into the next step that involves market research. Trying to understand the implications of going international with your SEO right from the beginning may save you a lot of time and resources in the long run. 

2.   The Research Phase

Once you have defined your global strategic business plan, the next thing you need to do is conduct thorough market research to establish the magnitude of the task ahead of you.

In this step, you are expected to conduct international keyword research, competitor research, and establish a clear approach to how you will handle language and cultural differences in different regions.

International Keyword Research

It is paramount to get your keyword research right while performing multilingual SEO. Aiming for the wrong keywords could easily affect your rankings, visibility, and authority hence derailing your effort. This is where linguistic understanding and prowess becomes crucial.

Keep in mind that effective keyword research isn’t just about translating your English keywords into other languages. The most important thing to remember here is that localisation is critical. Find a way of reflecting and understanding how native people perform their web searches and the exact terms they use.

The same thing applies even in markets that speak the same language.  For instance, while British consumers may search for the phrase “football boots,” an American looking for the same product may search for “soccer cleats.” Therefore, you need to do everything possible to ensure that your target keywords reflect the local market.  

To accomplish this, find native speakers for each market you are targeting to guide you. Apart from understanding the local language, native speakers will also appreciate the regional nuances of that particular language and the local consumer behaviour that may help you accomplish your goals.

Do not be tempted to just translate your keywords!

Competitor Research

The primary purpose of competitor research is to know who you are fighting against in the new digital market that you are targeting. Competition research helps you to gauge your potential competitor’s performance when it comes to paid advertising, SEO, and content marketing.

Take time to know your competitors well and what makes them stand out. Consider this as a way of benchmarking to spot opportunities.

What are their main sources of traffic? Which keywords are providing them with the bulk of their traffic? What edge do you have over them?  Can you offer some products/services that they don’t?  

You should also take time to analyze their backlinks and websites for strengths and weaknesses.  Gather as much information about your competitors as possible because you will need it to outrank them.  Analyse their overall online strategy to unearth the approaches they are following to obtain successful ranking in your target country. 

While doing your competitor research, don’t focus only on Google. Try to find out the most popular search engine in the country you are targeting and focus on that search engine. For instance, Baidu has a 75% market share in China, while Yandex commands a significant market share in Russia.

3. Language Considerations

You need to understand the nuances of your target audience to succeed.  You must strive to understand the countries they are from and the languages they speak.

A detailed market and keyword research is essential to identify the unique vocabulary that users from a specific location use while searching for products/services online. 

Learning the vocabulary of your target audience will help you speak to them in a way they expect to be spoken to. 

For instance, targetting the entire region of LATAM with Castilian Spanish (from Spain) may not be effective as you initially thought. You should consider that people in Mexico, Argentina, or Chile speak Spanish with quite distinct vocabulary depending on the niche market.

For a sizable international project, you must resist the temptation of generically targeting languages. Whereas for a humble startup project with an initial incursion into targeting non-English speakers, language targeting vs country language may suffice. It all depends on the complexity of the product, amongst other things!

For certain projects involving diverse demographics as the target audience, in-depth research is needed in order to ascertain if a single language to target a specific country is enough.

As an example, simply targeting Belgium with a site done in French does not reflect the multilanguage reality of the country as they . For example, the main foreign languages spoken in France are English, German, Italian, and Portuguese.

To complicate things each of those three official languages boasts several dialects being ‘Flemish’ a popular Dutch one and ‘Walloon’ a French main.

Furthermore, a piece of market research for Belgium wouldn’t be complete without addressing the English speaking segment of the population which is a 38%

Every nation will always have its own unique language/vocabulary considerations and variations to be aware of. There will always be variations to the language structure as well as a few words to consider.

Strive to understand how your target audience in a particular country read and digest content in their language. Keep in mind that if the language that you are serving to a target user isn’t truly talking to them, then you lose their trust and potential conversion opportunities.

4. Cultural Considerations

There are also lots of search implications usually driven by a culture which might affect the balance of search intent of people across different countries. For instance, seasonality plays a critical role in user behaviour, especially when thinking about holiday months and the overall buying behaviour over the year.

A summer promotion for Australia may not apply to the United States who will be experiencing winter. There are lots of other cultural complexities that you need to take into consideration given the different languages spoken across the globe.

For example if your company decides to target France and the UK with a single product format, eg: men’s grooming, it will be essential to take time and try to establish the number of people in those countries from a variety of cultural backgrounds and ethnicities in order to guide your strategy.

Always remember the fact that an individual’s physical location may not reflect their culture and identity. Therefore, blanket regional targeting may not yield desirable results.

5. Assess existing International Traffic and sales

Before you dive deep into implementing your SEO strategy, you need to establish your current visibility in the country that you are targeting.  This will guide your next steps.

If you don’t have any current visitors from that particular country, then it means that your highest priority should be conducting brand awareness. Focus on creating top of the funnel content that will educate your target audience about your products /services.

On the other hand, if you have been receiving a significant number of visitors from the country, then it means you may be looking at people waiting to be converted. In such a case, your focus should be getting your site live, encouraging conversions, and focusing on other bottom-funnel actions.

Each one of these situations presents its own unique set of opportunities and challenges that you will have to deal with. However, beginning the journey with a crystal clear understanding of what is expected of you will set your business up for long-term success.

6.   Domain and URL Geo-targeting 

There are different URL structures that you can employ to target specific countries with your site. You can use country code top-level domain (ccTLD), a subdirectory, subdomain, or a generic top-level domain (gTLD) with language parameters. Each URL structure has its own pros and cons.

The options are: 

• cctlds : local country domains. For example: yourgreatsite.jp for Singapore
• TLD (top level domain) subdirectories to target regions, languages or both! For example:
• yourgreatsite.com/jp  or yourgreatsite.com/ja
• TLD (top level domain) Subdomains. For example: jp.yourgreatsite.com
• URL parameters. For example: yourgreatsite.com/pagetop1240?country=japan 

Every model is endorsed by Google except the last one (url parameters). Very rarely an SEO professional recommends that one these days. 

We will not look at domain geo-targetting here in detail, but it is certainly one of the aspects of International SEO that you don’t want to get wrong. It is also one of the most complex as it involves UX, technical input, marketing, content, development. For very large companies an exercise like this can get very very political. 

As an SEO your role will be to do as much research as you can inside and outside the boundaries of the company’s online presence before you put forward a compelling domain geo-targeting plan, ideally clearly flagging advantages and disadvantages for every option.  

Additional geo-targeting methods

You can use different geo-targeting methods to strengthen your content’s local signals seen by search engines. There are several ways to geo-target your sites and pages apart from just the domain name itself. Some of them are not even mentioned by Google because we all know they are used in determining your content’s suitability for a specific region. The most popular ones include:

• Geo-location assignment in Google Search Console:  Access your GSC dashboard and click on “legacy tools and reports.” You should see the international targeting option that takes you to the language and country targeting page. From here, you can set the specific country that you are targeting.

The bad news is that Google has announced that the legacy tools in Search Console will be going away before the end of the year. It is unclear if there will be a replacement for International Targeting in the Search Console. 

Bing Webmaster tools also let you define your region preferences. You can do this on a domain, subdomain, subdirectory, or even page level. However, you should only set your region preferences if the search engine is having problems trying to rank the right page for the right audience.

• Use of Hreflang tag: The Hreflang HTML attribute, also known to as rel= “alternate” hreflang= “x” is used to tell Google which language is being used on a specific page of your site so that it can serve the page to web users searching in that language. This tag is extremely helpful when you have created content that is specific to a local audience.

• Local hosting: Having the regional version of the website hosted in the territory the website targets can help enhance the geo-targeting signals. It is not the end of the world if this cannot be done as it is not always possible to source local hosting for every version of the website, especially in enterprise environments. But if you can, it helps a bit, not just for SEO but for things like page speed. 

If local web hosting is however not possible, then using a CDN with a hub in the target country or near will also help you deliver a better user experience for your users as your website will download faster. 

• Link building : This method can be as effective as no other… if you launch a product in a foreign market, and it fails to get traction in those markets then link building is the solution. Once local mentions of the brand start pouring in, in the form of links, your localised content will start to get visibility. 

Whether you need this or not as soon as you move into a region is dependent on factors such as market saturation, competition, and the uniqueness of the product itself. 

• Content localisation: this section deserves a heading in its own right as it’s far too important, see keep reading onto section number 6.
• Local currency: Adapting to local market and mention the local currency when it applies
• Payment methods: Display the local payment methods.
• Address: Display each local office address on the website footer. 

If possible, the overall design and experience of your site should also be developed to address the specific behaviour of your target audience better. 

Things that you should not do

Some webmasters attempt to improve geo-targeting by redirecting users based on IP address. This is bad advice and can cause your website to underperform. 

Auto-redirecting is annoying, confusing, and can even cause visitors to never find certain content.

Luckily Google has added information about this (finally!) on their guidelines: 

Do not use IP analysis to adapt your content. IP location analysis is difficult and generally not reliable. Furthermore, Google may not be able to crawl variations of your site properly. Most, but not all, Google crawls originate from the US, and we do not attempt to vary the location to detect site variations. Use one of the explicit methods shown here (hreflang, alternate URLs, and explicit links).

Google Support – Managing multi-regional and multilingual sites

If you want to let visitors know about the existence of an alternative, more suited version of a webpage, use a banner at the top or bottom of the page or a javascript-enable message informing the visitors of alternative language options. You can also add links to different localised versions of the content at the bottom of your page.

Avoid using cloaking, which refers to serving different versions of the same content to search engines and users. Some International SEO experts are tempted into cloaking as a solution to auto-redirection, but since we have said auto-redirecting users is a bad idea, cloaking only makes things worse.

7.   Translation and Localisation go hand in hand

Going international means that you will have to produce the same content in one or several other languages. Unfortunately, it can be challenging to translate a page into a local language accurately.

Translating your content into different languages is a challenge you have to deal with. How do you verify and check a translation to make sure that it’s going to be spot ? You need to make sure the translated content is useful to build trust with your target audience. Consider creating a team of native speakers to help you with the translation. 

It also means, especially for large corporations, that some content in a given language may be shared across several regions, often lacking the resources to localize it. For example content in English from the US or from the UK may be reused by their operations in Singapore, Australia, or Southafrica. 

In those scenarios SEO can suffer a lot as some regions stronger in displaying some signals will cannibalize other weaker ones. So it is important to try and localize the content in every way possible.

Note: Avoiding use of JavaScript to render translations. Though if it has to be done that way then it has to be done properly using Server side rendering of the translated content, and if possible using a pre-rendering engine. 

Don’t be tempted to put your site’s content into Google Translate and then proceed to post the translated text on your international site.

The results will not be good for your visitors who understand the language better and can cause a major blow to your multilingual SEO efforts.The truth is that most translation tools are inaccurate and confusing.

Furthermore, you are looking for something much more than just translation. You want to add elements of localization to your translated content to serve your target audience properly.

It is advised to always go beyond translating: 

• Consider working with a local professional translator who is a master of words and understands your target region’s local culture and language nuances.  
• Have your local staff read the translated content and adapt it, if needed, taking into account local language nuances. 
• Have the copy check by one additional third party to ensure it is spot on and aligned with the nuances of the local language.

For example, English copy quoting ‘beautiful city’ may be translated to Spanish as ‘esta linda ciudad’ by a translator from Colombia. Problem here is that ‘linda ciudad o ‘ciudad linda’ does not quite sound like Spanish from Spain. It should rather be: ‘bonita ciudad’ for example. It is paramount to properly localize translated content. 

• Localization of URLs, navigation, content, meta descriptions, title, headings

Lastly, having your international keyword research done professionally can help you avoid many issues in future and even lose money.

8. Technical considerations for International SEO

Technical infrastructure such as existing legacy CMS, dbases, APIs and over-engineered systems can play a big role for International SEO, to the point of constraining ambition plans.

They can also be an advantage at all times. It’s something to study carefully and bring into your plan early in the planning phase.

Content Delivery Networks

One of the thorniest aspects of global SEO is that of CDNs and load balancers. If they are public-facing and accessible that can be a problem as they can be crawled even if you have requested the bots not to. Somehow they will be found, so a plan is needed.

Duplicate content caused by technology

If there are duplicate versions of your site, be ready to deal with some cannibalization issues. Google bots are quite good about such issues. It is more about visibility.

So, make sure you verify every public-facing IP. Don’t rely on Google to try and do it for you. Make sure that you’re giving them the right thing; it’s just simple.

Server configuration or location

Working on multiple sites targeting different countries and/or different search engines is indeed a challenge so, finding ways to stay on top of it without taking too much of your time is key.

Targetting China effectively, for example, requires mirroring your website to be hosted in China, IF you truly want to stand a chance against competition and outrank them.

Another that stands a challenge is the whole paradigm about replicating code across different servers. There are various ways of doing it more or less effectively depending on resources. A slight mistake on this front can be catastrophic. 

Rolling out code across servers

Pages with a lot of JavaScript and CSS usually take time to download, parse, execute on. When you’re on mobile devices, like much of your international audience, things might be worse. Creating AMPs can help you solve the issue, but you must find a way of making them stay on the page. Think of incentives that can work to your advantage.

Encoding

This is something that you won’t have to worry if you are just dealing with English copy. But the moment you get into the multilingual context and especially if the website picks up data from a database and encodes it in order to return accurate results on the listing page, you are starting to deal with URL encoding issues.

What is URL encoding?
URL encoding stands for encoding certain characters in a URL by replacing them with one or more character triplets that consist of the percent character “%” followed by two hexadecimal digits. The two hexadecimal digits of the triplet(s) represent the numeric value of the replaced character.

The term URL encoding is a bit inexact because the encoding procedure is not limited to URLs (Uniform Resource Locators), but can also be applied to any other URIs (Uniform Resource Identifiers) such as URNs (Uniform Resource Names). Therefore, the term percent-encoding should be preferred.

There will be implementation flaws and/or oversights and if these are not caught up on time, you will soon end up with two versions per url. Sometime the encoding flaw happens on the actual url and other times in the rel canonical.

Use this tool to perform some tests and learn how the encoding/decoding process takes place

Eg: a url containing the French region: Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes would be written :

www.mytravelsite.com/regions/auvergne–rhone-alpes special characters stripped out

www.mytravelsite.com/regions/auvergne-rhône-alpes special characters left in

www.mytravelsite.com/regions/auvergne-rh%C3%B4ne-alpes special characters left in but url is encoded

Some other special characters like the “ç” is encoded in UTF-8 as two bytes C3 (hex) and A7 (hex), which are then written as the three characters “%c3” and “%a7” respectively.) making URI long (up to 9 ASCII characters for a single Unicode character).

Modern browsers however display the decoded form, and many protocols can send UTF-8 without the %HH escaping.

As an International SEO Consultant or Director of SEO inhouse, it is often up to you keep tabs on the different aspects of a websites, to ensure you can report things very quickly if your monitoring systems alert you or a fault, deficiency or issue

Make sure you verify everything in Google Search Console and communication promptly any issues you may identify. Being able to catch these things off before they cause you any real problems across the entire network, is essential to bullet-proofing your SEO.

9.  Integration

In this step, you will be expected to come up with your standard operating procedures (SOPs) for SEO integration in all of your other functional units: UX, content, product, technical development… 

You can think of this as the best practices that you need to share around with all the teams for implementation success of International SEO.

UX teams, and in particular information architects will welcome keyword research data that you may have, especially if it shows large demand for some products or services offered by the company that may have been missed through traditional UX processes such as card sorting, content inventory or user’s workgroups… 

Similarly SEO best practice guidelines for technical development can be key in rolling out Multilanguage and multiregional SEO effectively. Things like avoiding auto-redirecting visitors and/or search engines based on their browser setting or IP addresses is something better brought up before it gets implemented. 

Furthermore things like setting defining structure and multi-layer possibilities for XML sitemaps, exclusions on robots configuration, meta descriptions, and compliant use of javascript can help you avoid giant problems globally once it gets approved and goes through to the production stage. .

When it comes to Product, it is also sensible to take part in the discussion around planning product development and when the right time pops up, bring up ideas, or proposals to implement things in a way to deliver better results globally, eg: appropriate schema markup. 

Things like using a  dedicated URL for each localised content variant.

10.   Build the Case for International SEO

Once you have a blueprint of what you want to achieve with your international SEO efforts, it is essential to define how you will be managing your global SEO strategy.  Think ahead and don’t try to limit yourself to a particular strategy. It is paramount to describe clearly the benefits for the business in the long term.

Feel free to try different things to determine what is working and what isn’t working. Document every step you take and the outcome so that you have a strong foundation to make sound decisions in the future.

Executing an your plan successfully is all about building a case for your SEO strategy. With buy in and approval from top management; resources, team support and SEO integration will follow. 

Although it will still take some effort to ensure your Global SEO strategy is actually executed. Things slip often in large companies, so you may end up delving into having to use up your corporate  SEO skills. The good news is that once you get approval, chasing up parties to respect, follow and implement the plan makes it easier.

11.   Plan the Global SEO Training Plan

International SEO is a complex set of methodologies, processes and techniques, and so, you need to find a way of ensuring that your team is competent enough. This is where training comes in. 

Before you go further into implementing your strategies, get some training for your global team in how to respect different cultures and customs.

Some of the training areas you will need to think of for your team are: 

• culture training
• conducting international keyword research
• content optimization
• Outsourcing content
• Performing outreach

12. Find Champions and allies that will Support SEO

To succeed with this type of SEO, you will need to talk to the right people who have the keys to the international version of your company website and can readily authorize your changes to the site. 

You will need their support and trust moving forward to build the case for SEO internally. This is where you need to put your communication skills to use. Make sure you are sending the right message across the organization, and everybody understands what you are trying to do.

In doing so, you will ensure that your appeal for resources is backed up by voice of the community (internally).

You will sure encounter challenges in your quest to scale to international markets, but finding a way of bringing the people who matter onboard will help you make that road easier to navigate.

13. Benchmark and Monitor Success for International SEO

In simple terms, benchmarking can be defined as a standard by which something is measured. Benchmarking in international SEO is a critical aspect of the process.

Keep in mind that your global SEO effort does not begin and end with the creation of the country subfolder for each key market.

Always strive to keep everything in check even if your site has already attained the top position in the SERPs for most geographic locations. 

Benchmark your performance over a three to six month, or six to twelve period to gain valuable before-and-after perspective and insights.

Advice: do not over complicate it by building the ultimate dashboard that aims to track EVERYTHING

Gather your benchmark metrics, key performance indicators, and data points that you will use to evaluate your overall performance. These can be very different from project to project but broadly they can include:

• percentage of traffic from organic search per country
• average page load speed by regions, by content types…
• business leads generated per region
• time spent on the page, bounce rate, click-through rate,
• No. of backlinks acquired by region
• overall business performance by region upon implementation

14. Execution

This is perhaps the hardest part of the plan: finding a way to execute and track your to-do list effectively.

As a team leader, you need to find a way of integrating your SEO plans into existing processes, communicating the strategy, deliverables, and how-tos to the whole team and making sure the overall strategy fits well into existing project management efforts and methodology.

It is assumed that you have full management buy-in for your plan, costs approved and resources allocated. If this is at all unclear in anyway, then you are risking that the plan may end up bein unsuccessful. It’s very very important that you address this matter in its entirety early in the process.

If the current project management methodology within the organization is Agile, so your SEO plan will be. SEO integrates and thrives into the Agile methodology.

Structure your deadlines and milestones to adapt to this way of working where maximum impact vs. minimal effort kind of criteria needs to be taken into consideration.  

Even if the overall project management methodology is being managed in a conventional Waterfall fashion, you need to structure your plan for international success to fit in.

In most cases, it will not be SEO that determines how development, marketing, and product work together. Instead, it is the other way round. Therefore, adapting your SEO strategy to the current working environment and methods is critical to long-term success.

Congratulate and share glory upon the whole team whenever success is achieved for any milestone and encourage them when something is not implemented 100% correctly. Basically, execution is largely about good project management, communication, and good team working karma. 

Conclusion

If you have read through this guide up to this point, then you can agree with me that international SEO is much more than just translating copy. It involves understanding different cultures and trying to figure out how to localize your site to appeal before the eyes of your target audience.

When done right, international SEO goes beyond the core SEO metrics we monitor since it can help your brand establish a global brand. Remember the fact that new markets equate to new opportunities, but only the best strategies will prevail.

In my next articles, I will be digging deeper into some of the mentioned items to help you understand the concept of international SEO better. That is it for now, and good luck in your global SEO effort!

If you need help with your Internationalization plans or an SEO Audit , feel free to contact me for a quote.

>> Other Resources

• International Search Summit, the only industry conference focused on International Search
• Aleyda’s International SEO Process and Tools
• A simple Guide to International SEO, by SEO Powersuite
• Google’s Managing Multi-regional and Multi-lingual sites
• SEMrush’s How to develop your International SEO Strategy
• International SEO Best Practices , by Moz

The post International SEO – Your Guide for Success appeared first on David Carralon.