Have you taken steps to expand your website or online store internationally, but the expected results are not forthcoming? This can have various causes, related to different components and aspects of your website, such as content, user experience, and more.
An international SEO audit helps identify optimization opportunities for the international market by thoroughly analyzing specific sections of your site targeted at different countries. This helps you discover where the greatest opportunities lie to strengthen your online presence abroad.
What is an International SEO Audit?
An international SEO audit is similar in many ways to a standard SEO audit but is specifically tailored to websites targeting multiple countries outside the Netherlands. The purpose of such an audit is to accurately examine how a specific part of the site, aimed at a particular country, performs in search engines.
This includes an in-depth analysis of content, technical aspects, and backlinks, all with the aim of identifying optimization opportunities. By taking into account local factors such as language, cultural nuances, and search behavior, an international SEO audit provides valuable insights that help you better align your website with the specific needs and expectations of international audiences.
Why Conduct an International SEO Audit?
Conducting an audit for international SEO is crucial for businesses wanting to expand their online presence and be successful in the international market.
This audit enables you to identify specific issues and opportunities within your website that may affect your ability to rank internationally in search engines. Some of the main reasons to conduct an international audit include:
- Improved Visibility: An SEO audit helps identify opportunities to improve the visibility of your website in different countries by ensuring that your site complies with local search engine algorithms and preferences.
- Competitive Advantage: By gaining insights into how your website performs compared to local competitors, you can develop strategies to increase your distinctiveness and gain an edge.
- User Experience: The audit can reveal issues affecting the user experience for international visitors, such as loading times, mobile compatibility, and language barriers.
- Local Relevance: It ensures that your content, meta-tags, and other SEO elements are optimized for the specific cultural and linguistic context of each target area, increasing the relevance and appeal for those markets.
In short, conducting an international SEO audit is an essential step for any business looking to expand its digital footprint to new international markets. It provides a detailed overview of how your website performs in different countries and guides how to improve your SEO strategy for better results.
What Aspects are Examined in an International SEO Audit?
An international SEO audit examines a wide range of components of your website, with special attention to those aspects that affect the SEO performance of your site on international markets.
These components include both the content and technical aspects of your website, as well as external factors such as backlinks. Here is an overview of the main areas assessed during an international SEO audit:
- Technical SEO
- On-page SEO
- Off-page SEO
By thoroughly analyzing these elements, an international SEO audit can reveal which areas of your website need improvement to perform better on international markets. This enables you to make targeted optimizations that can increase your visibility, traffic, and conversions on these markets.
Technical SEO Audit
A technical SEO audit is crucial for international and multilingual websites and focuses on the underlying international infrastructure of your site. This audit helps identify technical barriers that may affect the indexing, performance, and visibility of your website on international search engines. Key aspects examined include:
- Loading Times: Fast loading times are essential for a good user experience and SEO performance. Slow websites are ranked lower by search engines because they are harder to crawl.
- Mobile Optimization: With an increasing number of users browsing via mobile devices, it’s crucial that your website is responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Page Structure and Sitemaps: A logical structure and clear sitemaps improve the crawlability of your site by search engines and choosing the right subfolder or subdomains.
- Redirects and Internal Links: Properly implemented redirects and a solid internal link network enhance navigation and the distribution of page value (link equity).
- Integration of Images and Videos: Optimized media contribute to faster loading times and increase engagement, but must be correctly integrated to avoid performance issues.
The results of a technical SEO audit provide valuable insights that enable you to improve the performance of your website, not only in the eyes of international search engines but also from a user perspective.
On-page SEO Audit
An on-page SEO audit focuses on the elements within your website that directly contribute to SEO performance, with special attention to how these elements are optimized for international and multilingual audiences.
The goal is to ensure that the international keyword research, content and structure of your website are optimally arranged for both users and search engines. The following components are assessed:
- Titles and Meta Descriptions: These should be unique, relevant, and engaging, with correct use of targeted keywords to increase click-through rate (CTR).
- Use of Headings (H1, H2, etc.): A clear hierarchy and structure in the content improve readability and help search engines understand the main topics of your pages.
- Alt Tags for Images: Using descriptive alt tags helps search engines understand what the images represent, which is essential for both SEO and the accessibility of your website.
- Content Quality and Relevance: High-quality, relevant content that matches the search intent of your audience is crucial for good SEO performance.
- Internal Link Structure: A strong internal link structure helps in the distribution of link equity throughout your site and enhances navigation for both users and Google crawlers.
By optimizing these and other on-page factors, you not only improve the findability and ranking of your website in international search engines but also provide a better user experience for visitors from around the world.
Off-page SEO Audit
An off-page SEO audit examines the external factors that impact the authority and visibility of your website on international search engines. This audit focuses on elements outside your website that contribute to your online reputation and findability. Key areas of an off-page SEO audit include:
- Backlinks: The quality, quantity, and relevance of links pointing to your website are crucial. High-quality backlinks from reliable and relevant sites increase your site’s authority.
- Social Media Signals: Presence and activity on social media can enhance visibility and engagement with your audience. This includes managing profiles and interacting with users.
- Content Marketing: Publishing valuable and relevant content on external platforms can help build backlinks and increase brand awareness.
- Mentions and Reviews: Mentions of your brand or website on other sites, including customer reviews, can contribute to your site’s reputation and reliability.
The findings of an off-page SEO audit provide valuable insights into how you can improve the external aspects of your SEO strategy.
Conducting an International SEO Audit is Not a One-Time Task
The digital world is always in motion, with regular updates to search engine algorithms, changes in user behavior, and the continual development of your own website. Therefore, it’s essential to conduct regular SEO audits.
As your website grows, you add new content and may expand into new international markets. Each addition or change to your site requires attention to ensure that it meets the best standards for SEO. This also applies to technological developments.
Additionally, it’s important to be aware of the changing competitive landscape. What works today to get your website to the top of the search results may be outdated tomorrow due to the actions of your competitors. By regularly conducting an SEO audit, you can adjust and improve your strategies to stay competitive.
Regular SEO audits not only enable you to keep up with these changes but also provide opportunities to proactively make improvements that can increase your online visibility and engagement. It is a crucial part of maintaining a strong and effective presence in the international market.
International SEO Audit as the Basis for an International SEO Strategy
Conducting an international SEO audit is not just an essential step in identifying improvement areas for your website; it also lays the foundations for a strong international SEO strategy.
Without a thorough audit, you risk your strategy not being fully aligned with the specific requirements and opportunities of each market you target. This can lead to missed opportunities in terms of visibility, traffic, and conversion.
An international SEO audit provides in-depth insights into various critical aspects of your website, including technical SEO, on-page and off-page elements, and user experience. These insights are indispensable in forming or strengthening your international SEO strategy.
They help identify specific action points, such as optimizing content for local searches, improving the technical performance of the site for users worldwide, and building a stronger backlink profile with international authority.
Not regularly conducting international SEO audits can result in an outdated strategy that no longer meets the latest SEO practices and guidelines. This can significantly reduce your website’s ability to compete in the international market, resulting in lower rankings, reduced traffic, and ultimately lost revenue.
