SEO at the best of times is daunting.
With so many experts, blogs, articles & conversations on the internet, how do you cut through the noise and get straight to the nitty gritty that’s actually going to help your ranking?
And what happens when you decide to take your ecommerce business outside the UK?
Here’s 5 easy to use tools to help your SEO strategy to get you exporting internationally.
Google Global Market Finder
With 3 million internet users in the world, how do you find your ideal target market? What country do you even start to do your market research in?
The Google Global Market Finder will let you discover statistics like whether people are searching for your product, or something similar, and where they are in the world.
Don’t know what your product is called in most languages? No problem, Google translates the word when you are using the tool.
Let’s say my business is an online clothes company and my niche is men’s shirts. At first glance, it looks like there is a market for my products in Mexico because whilst there are 9000 searches a month for my search term, the competition is very low.
Google Consumer Barometer
If you are thinking of operating in countries where Google is the market leader for search, get to grips with the Google Consumer Barometer, which has been recently updated to help you improve your search engine results in these countries.
The Insights part of the barometer lets you chose a country and find out key facts about the search priorities of consumers in that country.
Let’s have a look at Brazil, which was the 2nd market opportunity for my men’s shirt business according to the Google Global Market Finder. 41% of Brazilians consider international purchases at least once a year, if not more.
The graph builder is the other service in the Google Consumer Barometer, which lets users compare search habits across 46 countries. For each country, you can find out where and how consumers are making their purchases and how they are deciding to buy. Using this vital research, you can tailor your e-exporting strategy to fit each market.
One other important factor the Google Consumer Barometer can tell you is how influenced consumers are by online videos in their purchase decision – could international video marketing be your next step to successful exporting?
Ubersuggest
It’s common to assume, whilst considering your export strategy, that your website can be translated directly from English into the local languages of the countries you export to. Wrong. Cultural differences mean that when someone searches for a shirt in the UK, for exmaple, they may not be searching for a “camisa” in Brazil.
Using a tool such as Ubbersuggest will help you find other words to use in your keyword directory. It’s important not to just translate your website; make sure you localise and adapt. The more local your language appears to the visitor, the more likely you will get those all important sales.
Keyword Tools: Google, Baidu and Yandex
Whilst Google is the market leader for search in the majority of countries and indeed the world, there are two other search engines that are used widely.
Yandex is a Russian search engine with a market share of 60%, serving 8.2% of the world’s searches, according to comScore.
The Chinese equivalent, Baidu, services 531 million users as mobile search growth has increased exponentially in the last 2 years.
Already set using Google keywords effectively? If you are exporting to Russia and China, then using the keyword tools that Baidu and Yandex provide is essential.
Link Prospector
If you understand SEO, you will know that link building is currently one of the best ways to increase your search ranking, both locally and internationally.
You may be pretty pleased with your external links on your website at the moment, but if they are all from UK based websites, then it’s time to get started on country-specific link building.
Link Prospector will allow you to find local influencers who can help with your link building, and it indentifies what works best in each country.
You can do this manually, but Link Prospector will cut down on that precious time that you need to spend elsewhere, and you can even search for guest bloggers, content promoters, expert interviewers and topical bloggers who can talk about your site.
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