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International SEO is a Huge Opportunity For Marketers: Interview With Eli Schwartz

Eli Schwartz of SurveyMonkey explains the importance of international SEO, and how you can optimize your content for it.

International SEO is a Huge Opportunity For Marketers: Interview With Eli Schwartz

As part of our coverage from the sold-out Searchmetrics x Search Engine Journal conference in San Francisco on SEO, content marketing, and analytics, I caught up with Eli Schwartz of SurveyMonkey to discuss the opportunities marketers are missing out on with international SEO.

In the video below Eli explains the importance of international SEO, and how you can easily optimize your content for international audiences to increase traffic and conversions:

Here are some key takeaways from the video:

  • There there is a massive opportunity to get traffic and conversions internationally — even if you don’t really have global products.
  • You can do this by recognizing there is a huge global audience you can take advantage of. Internet users in the United States make up only 10% of your potential traffic. You’re missing out on 90% of the entire world if you only market to the US.
  • Only 13% of the world speaks or has a moderate understanding of the English language. So if your content is only in English, you’re missing out on 87% of people who don’t understand what you’re talking about.
  • Only 30% of e-commerce in the world is done in the US, that means 70% is done outside of the US.
  • Take advantage of these opportunities by optimizing your keywords for what people will actually type into the search bar.
  • Next, understand culture and nuances. Content that works in the US might not work elsewhere. Use Google Trends and YouTube to find out what kind of content clicks with international audiences.
  • Iterate on your processes. Keep checking your data, and keep optimizing and perfecting what you’re putting out there.
  • Do not rely on machine translations. Eli recommends going on Craigslist and looking for people who can translate content into the language of the country you’re trying to target.
  • When it comes to organizing the multi-language content on your site, a good place to start is by creating a category on your website called “International”, and within that category create sub-categories for various languages. This is the easiest way to optimize your site for international SEO, which yields the best results with the least amount of effort.

For more video interviews, please visit SEJ’s YouTube page.

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Murray Newlands CEO at Murray Newlands

Murray Newlands FRSA is an entrepreneur, investor, business advisor and speaker. Newlands is also an adviser to the Draper Nexus ...

International SEO is a Huge Opportunity For Marketers: Interview With Eli Schwartz

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