Managing Multi-regional Website & Multilingual Keyword

When your business target more than one region, whether the audiences speak the same or different languages, you will need a working SEO strategy that covers both regions. It is not an easy job to manage your valuable keywords and track their performance in all regions.

Tracking a huge number of targeted keywords can be overwhelming if you do it manually. We suggest you have a good strategy for managing your keywords using an SEO tool based on your target region. In this article, we will uncover the multiregional SEO best practices for your business.

What is Multiregional & Multilingual SEO?

Multiregional and multilingual SEO involves optimizing your website to rank well in multiple regions and languages. This strategy includes using region-specific keywords, creating localized content, and ensuring your site is technically optimized for different regions and languages.

In short, multiregional and multilingual SEO helps businesses reach a broader, global audience by catering to local search behaviors and preferences.

Because these SEO strategies often overlap, we'll be exploring them both in this post.

Multiregional SEO Best Practice

Imagine your business has had a good reach and profit in your region and it has the potential to grow bigger. What would you do as the first step? If we were you, we would think to take the SEO game to the next level. This is because you might deal with a larger and more complex site management that requires expertise. A multi-regional website demands an effective strategy that covers multiple regions, not just one.

Here we list the multiregional SEO Best Practices that you might need the most to start your multiregional website.

Choosing Regions

First of all, you need to choose where you will spread your business’s wings. In this stage, you will need to do in-depth research. Make sure that you see a big opportunity for your business to pin a certain region. Invest your time to make decisions. Here is some research checklist you need to consider:

Create an initial target list: You can list the target customers, their behavior, the device they prefer, language use, and so on.
Research on country attractiveness: This metric is the combination of countries' general economic performance, competitive landscape, and market size for your niche. It will help you to rate which country you should prioritize above others.
Figure out market opportunity: This is a tricky step to do. Since you need data to calculate the market opportunity, you have to make sure where you can get reliable data from a certain country without violating the laws. That way, you will be able to see the opportunity for your business.
Mapping the competitive landscape: The last step in researching your target country is to take a hard look at the competitors, complementary businesses in the same region, and the business strategy you will set including price, channels, payments, and so on.

After you conduct deep research on the target country, you will need to set everything up to prepare for the multiregional website. This is where you will need an expert that fully understands website enhancements for international targeting.

Choose Domain and URL Structure

After you know your next target region and the language, you have to choose your domain and URL structure for your website. This is part of building a multiregional website strategy.

According to Google's blog, it is difficult to determine geotargeting on a website by page basis. So, consider using a URL structure that makes the search engine easy to see the segment of website geotargeting. Google also recommends using different URLs for each language version rather than using cookies to adjust the language of the users.

For the domain, you need to also localize it to fit the user's preferences and behavior. That is why deep research is very important because your website might be the best performing in your region, but not in the other regions.

Here is some option on how to choose and organize your domain in the multiregional website by URL structure.

Subdirectories

This is the way to make URLs unique within your sitemap, while also being able to serve different target markets and languages. Subdirectories are the extension of your domain. This URL structure is easy to set up with low maintenance. But, users might not notice the geotargeting, and also harder in the site separation. Here is the example of subdirectories

example.com/de/
example.com/fr/

Subdomain

A subdomain can be the way to manage your page to make different content types separate from the root domain. Compared to the Subdirectories option, the Subdomain is easier for site separation. It also allows other server locations, yet is easy to set up. Here is an example:

de.example.com
fr.example.com

Country-specific Domain

This structure uses the top-level domain for targeting each country and audience. This strategy allows greater control, but not all stakeholders have the authority across all domains. However, this way has the pros and cons such as clear geotargeting but it is expensive and limited availability. Here is an example:

example.de
example.id

Analyzing Local Keywords

Multiregional and multilingual SEO requires localized contents. Localized contents need not only to be written in each local language, but also local keywords.

Local keywords are researched based on the country you are targeting. Usually it contains the place/region you're researching. Keywords like "summer date ideas in Manchester" will go well for travel companies targeting Manchester city in the UK, rather than the generic "summer date ideas".

Here is the multiregional keywords research checklist:

Consider the search volume
Assess the keywords competition
Analyze your brand capability in targeting those keywords
Research what people want to know in every region
Pick relevant long-tail keywords
Target local-based keywords

Tracking Keywords Performance Using Sequence Stats

After you have the keywords to target in a certain region, you will need to analyze and track its performance regularly. Remember, you are targeting more than a country, that is why you will analyze the keywords performance in each country with a different approach.

This job can be done quicker by having Sequence Stats as your SEO automation tool. It allows you to input keywords based on the target region, language, devices, and even the time zone. Now, retrieving the keywords' daily performance data is not a problem.

Sequence Stats is also capable of displaying tracking data based on the category you have set. In the View feature, you can group your keywords based on the category you want to see. Imagine if your brand target a big number of keywords, it would be difficult to track it manually without grouping the keywords based on the region.

Creating Multiple Language Versions of Content

If you have the domain ready, it is time to create multiple language versions of your worthy content. Google has stated that they prefer on-page links that allow users to switch the language based on their preference. It offers a better user experience and better accessibility.

From the previous multiregional keyword research, you can implement it in your content since every country has different keyword potential. Even if it is not your native language, make sure that it is understandable and does not sound robotic to the users. You also need to avoid using mixed language on one page, it will confuse the reader.

By doing this, you can capture more organic traffic through your content in the SERP. Localize your content so that it can fulfill the users’ needs in a certain region.

Using Hreflang Tags

Using hreflang tags is signaling to Google that your page is using a specific language version. That way, Google will notice and serve your page in the right country and language. Google also stated that it is imperative to make your language obvious to the search engine.

You can help Google to determine the right content for the right market by using hreflang in the tags, header, or sitemap. Here is what hreflang tags look like:

en-ID: English content for Indonesian users
id-ID: Indonesian content for Indonesian users
en-MY: English content for Malaysian users

All in all, building a multiregional website and its keyword is not an easy job. But, it does not mean impossible for your business. With proper preparation such as the above we mentioned, you will handle it right. SEO automation tools such as Sequence Stats will definitely be helpful for you to manage the multiregional keywords with ease.