Keyword research is vital to any good search engine optimization plan. Whether you’re starting a paid search campaign or relying on organic traffic, knowing which keywords you’re targeting can dramatically increase the visits and lead generation on your site.
Once you’ve made sure you’re not making the basic SEO mistakes a lot of websites make, keyword research for your own country is pretty straightforward – open up an Excel spreadsheet and start noting down key phrases—but what if you’re targeting your site internationally? Recently we helped California Closets with a geo-targeted campaign in Canada – international keyword research alongside web design and development was a large part of the project. Here are a few tips for conducting keyword research with international sites that can save you time and bring in results.
There are some great keyword tools out there that can automate most of the process and give you enhanced stats, while offering you an international perspective. A lot of them are free to use or have free trials. No keyword planning session is complete for us without checking these. Using multiple tools means you can piece together an accurate picture of the keyword landscape.
Most of the above tools in some way or another allow you to examine different versions of the search engines based on the IP address of the search term. Use this! If your target market is in another country ensure you’re checked that country’s specific search volume for keywords. If you’re marketing to more than one international location, make sure you’re compiling separate lists for these markets. Your buyer personas (semi-fictional profiles of potential customers) should be different for each and every country you target (you might even have several separate personas within countries too) anyway so it should feel natural to separate them out.
Make sure you think about language as well as location. You’re going to want to find a fluent speaker of the languages you’re targeting to get this right. Don’t just directly translate keyword phrases – this is where mistakes are made! You’ll need to be aware of cultural sensitivities and slang in other languages too. Even across English-speaking countries, there are words that mean different things to different people. One of the nuances of international marketing is grasping this concept and ensuring your site is properly optimized for your specific audience.
Need help with your ecommerce site search engine optimization? As a proud Magento Business Solution Partner and HubSpot Partner Agency, we have teams of dedicated developers, designers, and marketers who are passionate about ecommerce and content marketing. We can help increase your conversion rates and more effectively reach your audience. We also love SEO!