How to Use SEO for an International Audience

Keeping your website’s ranking on search engine results is already a constant challenge, but what happens when you want to sell your products in other countries? The problem becomes more complex. Your English keywords and tags won’t help you rank on, say, Google.fr, so you have to start from scratch with your SEO efforts.
But is it really necessary to translate all your web copy and SEO info into the local language? You bet it is. Using the local language helps you connect with another audience through words, behaviors, and cultures. It goes beyond simply having content translated verbatim.
By creating a multi-language website, you can optimize each version for the audience (and language) you’re trying to reach.
First, Start with Your Audience
While it’s important to understand your American audience, it is critical to understand your audience in another country. After all, they have different customs and culture than you’re used to, and you will need to factor that into your web copy (and marketing in general).
If you yourself don’t intimately know this international audience, find a marketing or SEO expert who does. It’s not worth skimping here; you need someone who knows the words that will tug at this new audience’s hearts, and how to avoid insulting or offending them.
How might you offend your audience? A simple way is relying on machine translation, which can’t account for local dialect or idiomatic expressions. What could be more insulting than reading poorly translated copy, as in this example?
Also, you risk offending your audience if, for instance, you are trying to reach a very conservative market, but your marketing copy is very casual. Word choice and tone are key considerations in this process.