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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is increasingly important and fast becoming an absolute necessity in U.S. business. Competition is constantly on the rise, and U.S. companies are fighting tooth and nail for the top spots in the major search engines as they realize the immense value of good search engine rankings.
But what about sites outside the U.S.? Regardless where the business may exist, when targeting multiple country markets, it becomes even more important to ensure that a site ranks in the top ten for regionalized search engines.
As an example, we'll use a travel guide website to Coban Alta Verapaz, an ecotourism destination in Guatemala, Central America. This website provides a wealth of information to potential tourists that are planning to travel to Guatemala, and specifically attempts to entice them into Coban and the Verapaces - an ecotourism hub of Central America.
Visitors to Coban come from all over the world - Europe, North America, other countries in Central America, as well as from all over the Latin American world. When optimizing this website and increasing search engine exposure, a few things become extremely important.
First, internationalization of the website is important to retain visitors to the site and present information in a way that they are used to. Where an American may be looking for information about a Coban Guatemala trip, a visitor from London may be looking for a Coban Guatemala holiday. More obviously, when targeting a country that speaks a different language entirely, the appropriate search terms should be targeted in that language and landing pages should be translated.
It also becomes important to know the demographics and trends of a target market. For example, when providing a list of things to do in Coban, it may be important to understand how a particular culture is used to receiving this information. Would you be better off providing an alphabetical list of attractions? Ranked by a system of 1-5 stars? Or maybe even presented according to how much time a visitor is planning to spend in the area? All of these answers may be "correct," but one will likely be more effective than the others given a target country.
When optimizing for multiple countries and cultures, it is important to note that often some components of a website can transcend geographic and cultural gaps. As an example, regardless where a tourist may be visiting Coban from, they'll want to know how to get around, and a Coban Guatemala map will be useful regardless what language is spoken! It's true that often maps are customized with text and conventions may vary from country to country or language to language, but often in a map pictures and symbols may be used that are understood universally.
Lastly (at least for this article!), in effectively optimizing a traveler's guide to Coban website for a multiple target country audience, it's important to remember the goals of the website itself. Are you trying to gain affiliate sales? Augment a mailing list by increasing website traffic? It's also possible that the sale of tourist guides or travel products is the primary goal of the website, or perhaps it's pure information dissemination. Whatever the purpose of the site is, it's crucial to keep that goal at the forefront of any optimization campaign.
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