How to Create a Global SEO Strategy

Source: Neil Patel

As a child, I did everything that most kids did. I played outside with friends, I watched a lot of TV, I loved eating cereal for breakfast, and I went to school.

My childhood wasn’t too much different than yours. But there was one thing that was a bit unique.

I grew up watching Bloomberg before I went to school.

Now, I don’t want you to think I was some child prodigy because I wasn’t. The only reason I watched Bloomberg in the morning is that my dad dabbled in the stock market and wanted to know if his stocks were going up or down.

Plus, we only had one TV… so I didn’t really have a choice.

But from all of those years of watching Bloomberg, it wasn’t too hard for me to spot trends. And one of the big ones is globalization.

See, as a kid, most of the financial news channels discussed how things were progressing in America.

But now, due to technological advances, companies no longer see themselves as regional or even national. Things like headquarters no longer matter.

Companies look at themselves from a global perspective. And every big company out there has done well because they focus on attracting customers from all over the world as it’s a much bigger pool and opens up more potential revenue.

And it’s not just businesses, it’s people too. When children go to school these days, their parents think about how they are going to stack up against kids in other countries versus kids just from their own classroom.

So, with everyone thinking from a global perspective, why do you think of your SEO from a national or regional perspective?

Don’t beat yourself up just yet, I used to think about SEO from a national perspective until a Google employee opened up my eyes.

And once I cracked the nut of international SEO, my traffic exploded…

So how much traffic do I get?

Here’s how many visitors NeilPatel.com received over the last 7 days.

In the last 7 days, there were 972,026 sessions on my site that generated 1,501,672 pageviews. And of those visitors, 584,294 where unique people. Hopefully, you were one of those unique people. ?

But this is where it gets interesting…

The United States only makes up 22.35% of my traffic.

The rest is coming from other countries and, in many of them, English isn’t their primary language. Just look at the chart above… Brazil, India, Germany, Spain, and France are all examples where I am generated a lot of traffic from.

Of course, there are people all around the world that speak English, but the big reason for the growth is that I started to expand internationally by doing things like translating my content.

Just click on the language selector next to my logo and you’ll see some of the regions I am going after.

So how does one go after organic traffic from different countries?

The simple answer is to translate your content. If you translate your content into different languages, in theory, you should get more traffic.

Just look at the most popular languages all across the globe:

1. Mandarin Chinese (1.1 billion speakers)
2. English (983 million speakers)
3. Hindustani (544 million speakers)
4. Spanish (527 million speakers)
5. Arabic (422 million speakers)
6. Malay (281 million speakers)
7. Russian (267 million speakers)
8. Bengali (261 million speakers)
9. Portuguese (229 million speakers)
10. French (229 million speakers)

But what most people won’t tell you (because they haven’t done it enough times) is that translating your content isn’t enough. Even if you translate it and adapt it to a specific country, it doesn’t guarantee success.

I had to learn this the hard way.

Case in point, here are the traffic stats during the last 7 days for the Portuguese version of my blog:

And here are my traffic stats during the last 7 days for Spanish:

I get a whopping 238% more traffic on the Portuguese version of NeilPatel.com than I do on the Spanish version.

Here’s what’s interesting…

1. There are 298 million more Spanish speakers than Portuguese speakers.
2. My team doesn’t just translate articles for both of those regions, we optimize them and make sure they are adapted to the local markets.
3. We do keyword research to make sure we are going after popular terms.
4. And I have more backlinks to the Spanish version of the site than I do to the Portuguese version.

Here’s the backlink profile to the Spanish version:

And here is the backlink profile of the Portuguese version:

As you can see, the Spanish version has 52% more backlinks.

Are you puzzled why the Spanish version of my blog isn’t as popular? There is a reason and I’ll give you a hint. Here’s a quote from Eric Schmidt who used to be the CEO of Google:

Brands are the solution, not the problem. Brands are how you sort out the cesspool.

Need another hint?

Here’s how many people land on my site from branded queries (people searching for my domain name or variations of it) in Spanish speaking countries:

And here’s how many people land on my site from brand queries in Portuguese speaking countries:

That’s why I get so much more traffic from Portuguese speaking regions like Brazil. I have 104% more brand queries.

It’s something Google values so much that most people ignore.

And it’s not just me. I have analytics access to 18 other companies that have a global strategy due to my ad agency. I obviously can’t share their stats, but it just shows the power of brand queries from a global perspective.

So, what’s the real secret to ranking well globally?

Based on my site and helping 18 other sites go global, I’ve learned what works and what doesn’t. Sadly, I made one too many mistakes, but you won’t as long as you follow the advice below.

Localizing

You have to translate and adjust your content to each region you want to target. You can do so by hiring translators on sites like Upwork, but the quality may be low.

Now, this doesn’t mean Upwork is bad, more so you should consider getting an editor who…

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