How To Get Ranked On International Search Engines

If you are only doing business in the U.S., you have probably not dealt with this issue. But, for businesses that conduct business on an international level, this is a big issue. Let’s say you own a financial site and want it to get ranked on Google.fr as well as it does on Google.com. What should you do? It’s not that simple. I have seen authority sites smashing through all barriers with their aggressive link building campaigns and lack of competition in international markets. But if your market is highly competitive abroad, you may have to do more than just building links.

Getting ranked on International search engines doesn’t need to be hard. With Google, it’s easy to guess what’s important and what’s not. Here is how you should go about getting ranked on international engines:

• Geo-target your website: Google Webmasters tools enables you to geo-target your site. This won’t be the only thing you need to do, but it helps.
• META Information: META tags won’t help you get ranked higher but they still help. If you are trying to get ranked for credit cards in France, add geo-keywords to your META keywords and description (e.g. France Credit cards).
• Domains: treat your international business as a separate entity. You may be able to getaway with a .com domain for markets that speak English, but it’s always better to register international domains for different markets (e.g. CreditCard.fr).
• IP: if your host is located in the U.S, and you are trying to get ranked higher on Google.FR, you should consider moving your host local. If your host is an international business as well, you can ask them to give you a local IP.
• Google Maps: register your business on Google by taking advantage of Google Local Business Center.
• Links: the more links you get the better, right? Not necessarily. You want to make sure you get links from local sites (e.g. French financial sites) to help search engines figure out the nature of your website and your target locations.
• Local Info: if you have an office in a foreign country, make sure you include your address information on your website. That helps Google figure your site out better.
• Language: it’s OK to have an English site that targets British folks. But French folks will probably have trouble understanding your English website. So if you want to get ranked higher on Google FR, write your content in french or use a translator to do it for you.

There you have it. If you follow the above steps, you should be OK with international engines. It’s not really that different from what we do for the U.S. market. It just looks more complicated.