If you’ve ever traveled somewhere people speak a different language than your own, then you know from experience how challenging it can be to navigate everyday things like getting around or ordering food. And behind languages are cultures with unique histories that ultimately culminate into what we witness as observers.
SEO may seem so fairly uniform and standardized. While this is true to an extent, you’ll find the need to adapt your strategies when your web presence transcends geographic borders. To shed some light on international SEO, Search Engine Journal is sharing strategies for non-dominant language audiences.
Create Content in the Target Language
No surprise here; to communicate with your target audience, you’ll need to make sure you’re speaking their language (literally). If your site is already built out for English speakers in the US, you can easily use the same site to target American expats living in France.
Use Hreflang Tags to Help Content to Be Discovered by Your Audience
A little fuzzy on Hreflang tags? These tags tell Google which language and country a specific page is intended for. For example, “en-us” is an Hreflang tag indicating the English language in the United States. There are a few ways you can use these tags to fit your needs.
- Target English speakers in France. If your Hreflang tag is currently “en-us”, you can just use “en” to target English speakers everywhere, including France. But if you have a specific site or page just intended for English speakers in France, you could use “en-fr”.
- Target French speakers in the US. The Hreflang tag follows the same language-country format, so in this case, we would use an “fr-us” tag.
- Exclude French speakers outside of France and the US. Hreflang tags don’t offer exclusions, but you can achieve this by excluding IP addresses outside the locations you’re trying to reach.
Read on about localizing the language for your audience.
