Is your business represented in multiple countries? Do you need to be indexed and featured in ads? Is it a service or an online store? This is a challenging task, as having offices in different regions can lead to numerous pitfalls in website promotion.
Here are some of them:
👉 Google by default assigns a website domain to a specific region;
👉 Sites without a regional assignment are poorly indexed in specific countries;
👉 Managing multiple websites significantly increases marketing costs;
👉 Subdomains are a solution, but they are already quite outdated;
👉 One site can only be registered in one Merchant Center, and this is a problem.
Once your website is present in more than one country, it's considered international, which requires completely different promotion processes and algorithms.
So, let's go through the steps for promoting an international website.
➊ Choosing a domain
For an international website, register a domain name only outside of regional zones. This could be com, travel, shop, shoes, gifts, cruises, delivery, finance, energy, and so on.
The purpose of a neutral domain zone is to prevent Google from automatically assigning your website to a specific region.
➋ Structure of the international website
One of the main elements in organizing an international website is structure.
The success of its promotion depends entirely on its structure. There are two types of international website structure.
2.1 Conservative structure
👉 Subdomains for each region.
region.domain.com
In this case, search engines will perceive the subdomain as a new domain, in which you can specify the region in the contacts or footer of the site, and search engines will ultimately assign it to a specific region.
👉 A separate website for each region.
You purchase domains for each region separately, for example, es for Spain, de for Germany, and pl for Poland, and enter your contact information in each.
Although this method is conservative, some countries trust national websites more, for example, Germany and Poland, so it's still used today.
In both cases, you'll have to administer each website separately. This process is quite labor-intensive, which is why we called this solution conservative, meaning outdated.
2.2 Modern structure
For online stores
👉 Multilingual website with regional folders.
Site/Language folder/Region
Depending on your region, you can upload your own prices taking into account logistics, taxes, inventory, exchange rates, and so on.
For each option, you specify your own “hreflang” tag combination, which allows you to indicate to search engines which website folder belongs to which region. This ensures proper indexing in a specific region for SEO purposes.
What about contextual advertising, you ask?
What about the Merchant Center for an international website?
If your online store sells in multiple countries, then:
- Register Merchant Center;
- Go through moderation;
- Create feeds for each region separately;
- Set up delivery;
- Launch sales.
This has been tested and works. Just be sure to consider the feed specifications for each market separately, taxes, and shipping terms.
For the service site
Since a service website consists of unique content pages, not product cards, and in some countries the languages may be the same, this significantly complicates the process in this case.
There are two possible scenarios:
👉 A multilingual website in which you target each language version to a specific region using the "hreflang" tag - for example, German for Germany, Polish for Poland, and Italian for Italy.
👉 A multilingual website with regional folders. In this case, the content of each regional folder must be unique for each region, otherwise the presence of the same language in different regions will create duplicate content on your site.
You either move the blog of an international services website to a subdomain, a separate domain, or register a separate "hreflang" for it, and do not duplicate it in different regional folders, that is, do not link it to a specific region. Otherwise, you'll create duplicates.
Each case of website promotion in different countries is unique.
We have experience promoting international websites with 5,000,000 pages, online stores with a presence in the EU, or those selling in multiple countries simultaneously, so we can provide any consultation and assistance in this matter. For more information, please contact the agency.
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