SEO to Target an International Audience

To attract customers in a particular area or territory, you would normally create content specific to that territory and implement search engine optimization strategies to attract local traffic and induce more conversions. However, if you are targeting customers at a global scale, you would need to use other optimization tactics, especially with regard to the way you structure your URL and your domain name. Here are some important tips offered by SEO experts to target a country:

• Top Level Domains - Top level domain or TLD is nothing but an extension of your registered domain name. For example, the registered name of the popular search engine Google is google.com where its TLD is ".com". TLD is used by most organizations to attract international traffic. When you target a specific region or country, you use that country's TLD or ccTLD such as .us for the US and .uk for UK. A full list of TLDs is available at the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority website. 


• Using Subdomains - When you are performing SEO to attract a global traffic, you can use subdomains (such as usa.yourdomain.com). Some years ago, Google started to treat search results from all subdomains as part of the root domain instead of treating them as if they were from separate domains. Subdomains are beneficial when your website is hosted in separate locations and in separate languages. If not, use subdirectories.


• Subdirectories - You can use domain directories or subdirectories instead of using different domains per country, for instance, xyz.com/in for India and abc.com/cn for China. This is a useful strategy for small businesses that do not have a big website and many inbound links. Domain directories provide such companies with a larger link profile for their root domain while distinguishing between locations and languages.

If your business needs to reach out to an international audience, find a professional SEO company offering advanced SEO services.  This would help ensure effective techniques and strategies for long-term benefits in leading search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing, and greater visibility before a global audience.