International Link Building
-
Can anyone weigh in on their own efforts to build links into international TLDs?
Which tactics have been successful? Which have failed? Have you engaged any agencies to manage this for you and if so, how did they perform and who are they?
We have nine ccTLDs plus our .com site to manage so it's a bit overwhelming! Fortunately, we have teams dedicated to managing day-to-day operations of each site. Each team is comprised of managers who speak the targeted language as their first language and have intimate knowledge of the targeted culture. I want to leverage them to help my SEO efforts, but I'm not sure how my advice should be different than what we do for our .com site.
-
Thanks for the input, Barry. I like the idea of sharing exclusive content. We have considered that, but haven't ever moved on it.
-
Well, the biggest protip is that international version search algorithms are a bit behind the .com
Ultimately there's not too much difference, but be aware of location specific sites. For example if you're in Brazil get on Orkut rather than (or actually as well as) Facebook. Be prepared to switch off your anglo-centric brain, the sites we all know and love could be completely different to the big sites in other countries. This should be discovered through analysis of competitors and any real engagement with customers though.
Ultimately the same metrics are used to evaluate ranking, so getting quality editorial links from ccTLD specific sites is the long term way to go.
The way you approach people in each country is generally a little different though (and with your local knowledge you should be well placed to adapt to this), for example in the Scandinavian countries they are all very web savvy, know the value of a link and don't respond well to straight up link requests.
In these countries it's best to avoid buying links (were you to do such a thing anyway) as you'll very quickly burn through your budget and instead focus on offering people you want links from exclusive access to something. In your case, maybe an exclusive gameplay video or could even go as far as giving them a code for their site that if people put in game will unlock an exclusive costume, that kind of thing.
Other countries have their own particular idioms but it's hard to just give you a overview of what people are like in each
-
Thanks for the reply. Are you able to weigh in on actual tactics you've employed (or heard about) that have been successful internationally? What I'm getting at is...are there link building methods that are specific to the international market that differ from the domestic market? The answer here might be "no" and that would be fine (in fact, I think that might be what you are saying with "Apart from that it's not much different to normal link building.").
Yes, we do have a great setup - thanks for mentioning it! We've been dedicated to the international market for years and we invest heavily in it. Every game we publish on our international sites has been localized by hand by someone who speaks the language as a first language and knows the culture well. Much of this work happens in our office in Cork, Ireland.
Thanks again for your feedback.
-
Building links from same ccTLDs, sites hosted in those countries and sites in the same language are all preferred links when dealing with country specific sites (with preference to the first two). Apart from that it's not much different to normal link building.
You've got a great set up if you have managers who can speak the language and know the culture, teach them how to build relationships and evalutate sites for links. Get them to run independant social media channels as well if possible (as mixed languages in a single account really doesn't work) and don't be afraid to give each language it's own, slightly different, identity.
And don't discount normal .com links entirely, if it's more relevant to get a link to the ccTLD do that.
Agency wise you just need to make sure they have somebody in the country you're targeting and this was kind of discussed here - http://www.seomoz.org/q/would-you-hire-several-local-seo-company-s-if-your-targeting-multiple-countries
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
International SEO & Duplicate Content: ccTLD, hreflang, and relcanonical tags
Hi Everyone, I have a client that has two sites (example.com & example.co.uk) each have the same English content, but no hreflang or rel="canonical" tags in place. Would this be interpreted as duplicate content? They haven't changed the copy to speak to specific regions, but have tried targeting the UK with a ccTLD. I've taken a look at some other comparable question on MOZ like this post - > https://moz.com/community/q/international-hreflang-will-this-handle-duplicate-content where one of the answers says **"If no translation is happening within a geo-targeted site, HREFLANG is not necessary." **If hreflang tags are not necessary, then would I need rel="canonical" to avoid duplicate content? Thanks for taking the time to help a fellow SEO out.
International SEO | | ccox10 -
Targeting International Markets on the Web
Hello Moz community, I have a popular news website that we are looking to target multiple countries (all English first). So I know (1) a hosting provided (ip address) in that country and (2) a target extension (.co.uk) will help us. Am I missing anything else that can help when targeting international markets? What I'm struggling with is the duplicate content. I can't copy the content over to the extension because of the bad practice of duplicate content. Is it possible to have the same content on both websites and let Google know that it lives at the .com extension? If so, would those websites containing duplicate content still rank? And we would want to target different languages later (for example Spanish). This would be different content because it is in a different language, correct? Thanks for your help Moz community! Cole
International SEO | | ColeLusby0 -
Wordpress international SEO Plugin - recommendations needed
Hi Mozzers, I am designing the web architecture for a international website and will be using Wordpress. Can anyone recommend a plugin that lets me SEO for all countries? I have used Yoast many times but it does not seem to work for International Web SEO Architectures. Thanks Carla Here is an idea of what I was thinking of doing Homepage.com Irish-homepage.ie or Homepage.com/ie Irish-Subpages.ie or Homepage.com/ie/subpage Irish-Subpages.ie or Homepage.com/ie/subpage Irish-Subpages.ie or Homepage.com/ie/subpage UK homepage.co.uk or Homepage.com/uk UK-subpages.co.uk or Homepage.com/uk/subpage UK-subpages.co.uk or Homepage.com/uk/subpage
International SEO | | Carla_Dawson0 -
Links metrics & rel="alternate" hreflang="x"
Bonjour! If with rel="alternate" hreflang="x" we can indicate to Google that an URL have translated equivalents of a page, are the links metrics splited between all pages or Google considers all the pages as only one? Thanks! Maxime
International SEO | | Maxoulala0 -
International Landing Page Strategy
Hello, I'm looking for some insight in an area that I don't have much experience in - hoping the community can help! We are a healthcare staffing company serving clients in the U.S. (www.bartonassociates.com). We are interested in attracting clients in Australia and New Zealand. I'm wondering if anyone as experience with best practices for doing so (both from an SEO and PPC perspective). Would it be best to purchase .au and .nz domains for these landing pages and link back to our US site for more information (or even recreate a modified version of our US site for .au and .nz). My concern here is duplicate content issues, among other things. Or, would it be better to create Australia and New Zealand focused landing pages on our US site and drive PPC there? My concern here is that we would never get organic traffic from Australia and New Zealand to our US site, in light of the competition. Also, the messaging would be a bit mixed if targeting all three countries. Our core term is "locums" and "locum tenens". Greatly appreciate any insight from you guys. Thanks, Jason
International SEO | | ba_seomoz0 -
Subdomains vs ccTLD in International SEO
I'm interested to see if anyone has any additional thoughts or recent experience on subdomains vs ccTLD for International SEO. An article I found on this site is from March 2011, so just wanted to check if this is still relevant? http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/folders-vs-subdomains-vs-cctld-in-international-seo-an-overview
International SEO | | edwardlewis0 -
Anchor text for international SEO
HI I am looking to rank sites in multiple foreign search engines. I am thinking about the anchor text strategies I need to employ. My key phrase: golfschläger (golf club) I am targeting a German page (written in German). Would Google understand that if I use the anchor text “golf club” to my German “golfschläger” page, it is infact the same word and therefore give anchor text benefits to that page, or for anchor text benefits to pass does the anchor text have to be in the same language? thanks for any help!!!!
International SEO | | Turkey0 -
Do ".edu." links with appended ccTLD have similar value to .edu links with no ccTLD?
Just wondering if there is any evidence or data to suggest that, all things being equal, a link from a college or university with a ccTLD has more value than another ccTLD link. I have some anecdotal evidence that several URLs with the *.edu.ph ccTLD have domain authorities over 55. My expectation is that because only a TLD is ever truly a TLD: ucla_.edu_ is a true .edu link, but for a URL such as "feu.edu.ph" the Top-level domain is the ccTLD, i.e. .ph for the Philippines, and the .edu portion of the root domain will be irrelevant to the link's value. But I'm hoping I'm wrong... 🙂
International SEO | | BrianCrouch0