Taking your brand global
While many of us start small and want simply to be found locally, over time our desire to be found on the global stage increases.
And even if we’re not directly targeting other countries, of course it’s likely that a fair share of your website visitors come from different countries and speak different languages, so it might be time to consider making your site more international.
But if you’re looking to create an international website, what do you need to consider?
In this episode we’ll focus on the three big tasks:
- International friendly URLS – or country targeting
- Language tags – language targeting
- Ranking in the different countries.
As well as discussing a bundle of other tips and tactics.
So if you’re ready to take your brand global, this is the episode for you.
Tune in to learn
- How to choose an internationally-friendly brand name
- Which is best moving from local to global: Top level domains, sub domains or subdirectories
- How to avoid duplicate content issues across multiple sites
- Best practices for language targeting.
- What to consider across different cultures when writing content
- Best ways to handle keyword research and backlinks for international variations of your site
- Top tips for using Google Analytics and Google search console
- How important it is to host your international sites on a local hosting site
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And big thanks to Myles Garner from Australia for their lovely review:
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“Informative. I look forward to listening to these and seem to go back and listen to the older ones again to remind myself on some great tips.”
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Connect with Julia-Carolin Zeng
Useful Resources
- The Guide to International SEO – Just getting acquainted with international SEO? Start here.
- The International SEO Checklist – Aleyda Solis walks you through everything you need to know to get started with international SEO.
- International SEO – Google Technical Support
[Tweet “Podcast: Smart decisions for your international SEO strategy with Julia-Carolin Zeng @JuleCaro #SEO #SEOPODCAST”]
About Julia-Carolin Zeng
Julia started her career in SEO 5 years ago in the online gambling industry working for an affiliate company. She has since worked in different industries and is a freelance SEO consultant for 3 years.
Her educational background is in linguistics and cultural anthropology, and she can communicate in French, Spanish and Italian, in addition to her mother tongue German. Julia is usually based in London, but she loves travelling and the digital nomad lifestyle.
Fun fact: Julia was born in a country and in a city that you won’t find on any current map.
Transcript
Kate Toon:
While many of us start small and want simply to be found locally over time, our desire to be found on the global stage increases. And even if we’re not directly targeting other countries, of course it’s likely that a fair share of our website visitors come from different countries and speak different languages. So it might be time to consider making your site a little bit more international.
But if you’re looking to create an international website, what do you need to consider? In this episode we’ll focus on the three big tasks, internationally friendly URLs or country targeting, language tags and language targeting, and ranking in different countries, as well as discussing a bundle of other tips and tactics. So if you’re ready to take your brand global, this is the episode for you.
Hello, my name is Kate Toon and I’m the head chef at the Recipe for SEO Success, an online teaching hub for all things related to search engine optimization and digital marketing. And today I’m talking with Julia-Carolin Zeng. [German 00:01:19], Julia.
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
[German 00:01:21], Kate. For me, it’s evening.
Kate Toon:
True. It’s great to have you here. Julia just explained that she’s originally from German, and I did German at A level, so I’m going to try and throw in a bit of German in this episode. It’s going to be pretty bad, but we’ll try. Let me tell you a bit more about Julia. Julia started her career in SEO five years ago in the online gambling industry working for an affiliate company. She has since worked in different industries and is a freelance SEO consultant for the last three years. Her educational background is in linguistics and cultural anthropology. That’s cool. And she can communicate in French [French 00:01:57]. Spanish, I’ll stop, and Italian, in addition to her mother tongue, German. Julia is usually based in London, but she loves travelling and the digital nomad lifestyle. Fun fact. Julia was born in a country and in a city that you won’t find on any current map. Oh my God. Were you born in the underworld? Where? Tell me.
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
I was born in Eastern Germany, and so the GDR, obviously does not exist anymore. And also the city where I was born has been renamed after the reunification.
Kate Toon:
Oh my gosh.
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
So that’s why it’s a fun fact. If you open a map today, you won’t find neither the city nor the country.
Kate Toon:
You don’t look old enough to be around since the fall of the wall. See when I was doing [German 00:02:41], that was when the wall came down. When was it, 1989 or something?
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
Yeah.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. And I was desperate to go over there and see it all at the time. It was such an exciting time. Gosh, you’re a young
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
Yeah, I was young.
Kate Toon:
Awesome. That’s exciting. Cool. Well look, well you’re such an international person. I’m so impressed by the French, Spanish and Italian. I’m learning Thai at the moment, which I’m quite enjoying. I think obviously that lends us very well into international SEO. We’ll start with the absolute basics. We have done a previous episode on international SEO. You can check it out in the previous episodes, it was fantastic with Nitin, but I wanted to revisit it because I think as … COVID has had a big impact on SEO, and also people’s attitude to the global stage. And sometimes I think smaller businesses think international SEO is not for them. It’s for big brands, it’s not for small brands. But there are considerations that impact us even if we’re not actively going to conquer America and get British customers, we always still need to be considering other markets.
So let’s get stuck in. International SEO is a process of optimising your website so that search engines can easily identify which countries you want to target and which languages you use for business. So today Julia’s going to run us through some best practise tips on how to make this happen. And I thought all we’d do is kind of go through them one by one, because people love numbers. So I think let’s start right with the basis. I’m just about to start a business and I’m thinking about my brand name, I’m thinking about my domain name and my URL. Oh, I see so many mistakes when people are doing this. What would do you think people need to consider when coming up with their brand name, which will of course end up being their domain name?
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
I mean, apart from the general things about branding, you want it to match with what you’re offering and all these things. Check that it’s not already used somewhere else in the world or maybe even trademarked, because when you register a trademark, you specify in which geographic or region in the world it should be trademarked. So double check that it’s not already existing. And then when it comes to choosing a domain, I mean price obviously is a big factor in there that many young businesses will face sooner or later if you put in the domain name you want. And if I know the costs of your brand, like oh, maybe choose something else.
Kate Toon:
Have a rethink. It amazes me how few brands actually Googled the name that they thought of before they started. It seems like the most obvious thing in the world. I’m going to admit, for one of my brands I didn’t. And then ended up with a clever copyrighting school is the most reused copywriting kind of brand name you can have. Joanna Weave uses it, Bernadette over here uses it and it’s like, “Oh, what an idiot.”
Googling is so important and I think as well as you said, relevancy, availability and memorability. I always go with those. I think they’re super important. The thing I always find a worry is names that sound fun. Especially if you go for something a little bit odd, a bit gobbledygooky, like your Legos and your Ikea’s and things like that that mean something in your country. But they can mean something completely different in another country. We’re always seeing those packages of chocolate called things like plop. How do you know that the beautiful name that you’ve come up with doesn’t mean like bum in a foreign language? It’s a hard one, isn’t it?
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
It’s a really hard one. I actually have some examples. For example, the word gift in English, very positive. You might have a business about gifts. In German, it means poison. And speaking about recipes, if you think about a cooking website, you might be tempted to use the word bite, which in French refers to male genitalia.
Kate Toon:
There we go.
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
They’re the same spelling. It’s obviously pronounced differently, but the spelling. But with these things it is really difficult to find out.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, it is. You’ve got to have lots of international friends. A friend of mine was thinking of calling this Zib Zib, which sounds really cool, I loved it. But in Arabic it is penis, which I don’t necessarily think is a bad thing. Depends on what you’re selling.
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
Anyways, if you consider international and other markets, you would anyways do your market research to also find out is your product really a good fit for that market, and then it becomes even more important that you look at what do these words mean in that language. So in that case, you have a specific market in mind that you might want to go into. But yeah, it does happen that there’s no secret rule how to prevent it. But yeah, Googling for the term, this is a good recommendation.
Kate Toon:
There’s a tool that someone can develop, a name checker that checks that your name that you’re coming up with isn’t a rude word in other languages. That would be amazing. That could be me and you, Julia. That’s the app we’re going to launch. All right? So yes, thinking about relevancy, availability and memorability and thinking about global strategy right from the get go. Of course, most people don’t do that. What generally happens is you start in your own country, off you pop, get maybe the country extension and the dot com, which kind of feels like the global extension these days.
And as you said, often you Google and you find it’s gone. And so you have to find something a bit more obscure until you can get something you can afford. And I would always recommend brands to keep going rather than going, oh, the dot com’s gone and the dot com dot AU’s gone. So I’m going to go with the dot net, the dot Sydney, the whatever. I would keep changing until I can find something.
But most people haven’t done that. And instead what they do is they have their core domain and then they go, “Ooh, I’d like to launch in France and I’d like to launch in Germany, and so what I’m going to do is I’m going to think about how I’m going to structure my domain now. Am I going to get a new extension? Am I going to go and get dot FR? Am I going to do subdomain, I’m going to put it in a little Germany.KateToon.com. Or am I going to put it in a sub directory and have KateToon.com/directory?” So when you’re coming up with these subsites, the best way of doing that?
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
So there is a standard answer in SEO, it depends.
Kate Toon:
Oh, I love it.
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
So first of all, your market is really important and if you already know that you’re going to target different markets, and then what are you offering? For example, in France, people still prefer to see a dot FR domain because it just makes it more familiar. I have the same when I’m googling for something in German and I come across a domain that is dot AT for Austria or dot CH Switzerland, I think, “Maybe I find something that’s dot DE, I kind of trust it more.”
And especially when it comes to, for example, legal topics because these things are so different in every country and just because they speak the same language legislation is completely different. So there I would always recommend get the top level domain for that country.
For other things, especially when we are talking about software products that where everybody anyways communicates mostly in English about them, a dot com is fine. And when you’re trying to shorten something, also double check what this TLD really means. If somebody might go for a dot CO because that’s available and it’s similar to dot com, but that might actually be another country. So in this case I think dot CO is Colombia. And then you’ll still have that negative impact kind of for SEO that the search engine thinks, “Oh, your website targets Colombia,” but it doesn’t. And that could be a bit of a confusing signal for the algorithm. It’s not necessarily a big problem, but I would avoid it.
Kate Toon:
We want to avoid confusing people. And I love your point there about the perception, because I do think in Australia we’re quite a long way from everything. And so I will actively look for dot com dot AUs, especially for eCommerce sites because I’m concerned about shipping. I don’t want to buy from a site that’s pretending it’s in Australia or is .com/Australia when I know it’s really an American site. Yes, they ship to Australia, fantastic, but it’s going to take three weeks. So I think that brand perception’s really important.
I think what’s really interesting there as well is what you said about dot Austria, you often get confused here in Australia, Austria and Germany. We have a similar issue over here with New Zealand and Australia, completely different country, different vibe, very similar, but there is a different vibe, different culture. The problem we get there and we’re going to come onto this when we get some language, is it worth having a dot NZ site when it’s so close? It’s so close. And that would be the same thing with Austria and Germany. But you are saying that you think there is a perception difference and people will make a choice, and it’s better to get that top level domain if you can. Do you think that’s … yeah, okay.
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
Yeah, yeah. Especially for those topics where it really makes a difference where the information comes from.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, so financial and legal and things like that. And even shopping, as we said for the shipping thing-
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
Yeah, exactly.
Kate Toon:
Because Australia is like seven weeks, and I’m just … it’s not that bad. So with the domains and the sub directories, what do you prefer? Do you prefer the subdomain or the sub directory? It depends.
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
Yeah, again, it depends. But the sub directory, I always say it is a bit easier SEO-wise, because it is just one website and the back links for example that you get to your dot com domain, they spread the link-juice, in lack of a better word, across all domains. Whereas if you have sub-domains or even different top level domains, you basically have completely different websites and you need to do the SEO and everything separately for them. So sub directories if possible, I always prefer them.
Kate Toon:
Yes, me too. It’s a lot less work and it means that … I don’t think people realise that subdomains actually make a separate website with a separate entity to a degree. So yes, sub directories. And another strategy of course is you can have buy the domain name with a dot FR whatever and redirect it to a sub directory. So visually it looks right. I mean, people like you and me are always looking at the browser and see where we’re we are, but a lot of people don’t. If they see dot FR and then it redirects, they’re not aware of that. And that might be a sort of partway solution if you’re not ready to build out a new site for dot FR and you just want to send it to a sub directory in the short term.
And again, I think when people are starting off with international SEO, or you’re going into a new market, would you build an entire brand new site? No, I’d probably start off building a cool landing page on a sub directory page with a domain name that redirects, see how that goes, and then build out from there. We don’t need to go hell for leather straight off, but we question we come to straight away then if we’re thinking about top level domains, sub domains and even sub directories is duplicate content, because obviously even if you are having this site in Austria and Germany, it’s the same site, it’s the same content. So how do you stop Google getting confused and saying, “Hey, this is duplicate content. We know it’s not a penalty, but we know it can result in kind of deranking and confusion and the wrong pages appearing in the search. So how do we stop that?
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
Yeah, so that is exactly the reason why something called href link was invented. By now you use it across all the languages, but the original purpose was if I have a website and three variations of English for example, one for the UK, one for US, one for Australia, maybe there’s another one for Canada. Of course, you also use a bit of different spelling that is also important that you do that and really localise it to the words people use in that location. But that is the purpose of href link, to then tell Google, “Hey yes, we know it looks like it’s the same but it actually isn’t because this one is for that market, this one’s for that market, this one’s for that market.” So that’s the idea there. And by now you use href link whenever you have a translated version or an equivalent in another language. So that might be German and French and Spanish, which are obviously very different languages, but it’s the best practise to have these href link text.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, that’s great. So even when you’re using Microsoft Word, it says, “Do you want American English or UK English?” And obviously we picked UK English because it’s far superior. I’m joking American people, but yes. And it’s not just the base language, is it? It’s use of idioms and pop culture references and all of that. So is the href link tag enough? Is that enough to tell Google that it’s different? Is there anything else that we need to do? I mean, we’ll be setting them up as separate if they’re different domains, setting them up as separate elements on Google Search Console. Is there anything else that we need to do to really make Google realise that they’re separate sites?
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
So there’s also the HTML lang tag, so that is higher up in the code, but where you also specify what is the language and the geo for this page, but then it really comes down to using the right words. Use the proper spelling. So if you tell somebody, “Hey, this website is in Italian,” but then the content is in Spanish, don’t do that.
Kate Toon:
That would be crazy.
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
And yeah, it’s kind of an almost common sense to say, yeah, use accurate language for all of your markets and don’t just translate what you have or even versus use a machine translation, kind of transcreate for each market so to really make it suitable, so somebody who’s reading that content should not notice that it was translated from another language.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, I find that sites are often fairly good at doing that on the homepage and the key pages, but often, especially if they have created a new domain name, they bring the blog over wholesale to the other site and it’s just the same blog and it just doesn’t make sense. And God forbid. We’ll talk about language. We’re going to move on to talking about language now. I’ve got some horror stories there for you now.
So we’ve talked about separate sites, we’ve talked about … and I guess another thing you would do is possibly host that site on a hosting platform that’s closer to your primary audience as well, which will help indicate to Google. And then as you said, it’s not just the words we use as well, it’s things like the currency, it’s going to be in New Zealand dollars and Google will see that and things like that. Anyway, we’ll come onto language a bit more now.
So we’re talking about language targeting. Obviously we’re going to use the href tag and the language meta tags. Other than that, some other things that we want to do. I’ve mentioned currency as one, so it’s pretty obvious, but you’d be surprised. What are some other key indicators that we can offer Google? Is it a case of going, “Hi, New Zealanders,” or how obvious do we need to be?
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
Again, it just comes down to just read natural for somebody in that language. So if I read something in German and there’s a distance in miles, I’m like, “Well …” as a German person you wouldn’t know how much that is. So far really is it? So you want-
Kate Toon:
You’ve lost me straight away. Yeah.
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
Exactly. So you want kilometres and so on. Cultural references. For example, there might be a reference to a comedian that’s very famous in France, but for the German equivalent of that piece of content, you need to find a German comedian where you kind of still have the same message in your content but you use another person just to tell, “Hey, yeah, I’m talking about somebody who’s funny,” and these things, music and so on. I’m still always impressed by Disney movies for example, how well they’ve done the translation work across all times, so even the early ones.
I obviously grew up with watching them in German, and now as I’ve lived a few years in the UK I’ve watched the same ones then in other languages. I even used them to study at uni and so on, and I was impressed, wowed. Even the songs, they’ve done it well.
Kate Toon:
It’s amazing. Yeah, we used to use the-
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
Yeah, it’s really impressive.
Kate Toon:
We used to use those, because my ex-partner’s French and so we used to make my poor son watch all the Disney movies and everything in French. And so when he was little, if he was unconsciously singing the song, “Let it Go, Let it Go,” he’d be singing it in French and it is very cute and they are amazing.
I love your reference about the comedian because there’s a French comedian called Gad Elmaleh, I’m probably saying his name wrong. And he is huge in France. There’s actually a movie about him trying to make it big in America and no one knows who he is. And French humour is very different. German humour is … German people love people falling over and stuff, don’t they? They love it. English love that too. There’s nothing funnier than someone falling over. Whereas other humour might be a bit more sophisticated, and that kind of knowingness of your own culture.
And the thing I find as well is that people who haven’t … this sounds very snobby I guess, but people who haven’t lived in another country, maybe they’ve travelled, they haven’t lived there, you don’t get how irrelevant your celebrities and pop culture is.
I’m in Australia, in England, we’re all about EastEnders, Coronation Street, Radio 4. You would know the name of the Education Minister and you know everybody, right? Over here, it’s like England doesn’t exist. None of those people, never heard of anybody. The only person who’s managed to translate is maybe Kylie Minogue. She’s the only person who’d probably be known in both. It’s really bizarre. So I love that reference and that’s super important.
I think you had also mentioned machine translations, and obviously everybody is getting their knickers in a twist right now about ChatGPT. Ugh, if I see one more post on LinkedIn, I’m literally going to claw my eyes from my face. It’s still definitely not there. I’m learning Thai and I’m using Google Translate at the moment a lot, which is amazing. It’s magic, isn’t it? But it’s still not great. And I remember my partner who was French, got a job to translate loads and loads of copy and he thought he would take a shortcut and pop it through Google Translate and what he got out, he was like, it’s like it’s written by a mad person. All the words are there. It kind of makes sense, but it makes no sense of all. What are your thoughts on machine translation?
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
It’s a nice starting point, but just don’t use them. It’s good if you, for example, wanted to read a news article that’s written in Portuguese-
Kate Toon:
You get the gist.
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
You don’t speak Portuguese. Exactly. You run it through machine translation for you to get an idea of what is this article about, but to put it on your website could actually really hurt your reputation as well. For one example, I worked for a company that was in the cryptocurrency industry, and in crypto mining is obviously a thing, but mining also means in the traditional sense of mining, somebody going inside a mountain.
Kate Toon:
And they picked the wrong one.
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
Exactly. And in the German translation, they were literally saying the other word. I read over this and I was like, “Oh my god, we’re losing all credibility here if we published this on the website because that’s obviously the terminology translated incorrectly.” And so I would say the more sophisticated the topic is, the harder it is.
I mean, even translators. For certain industries, you need a specialised translator who really knows that topic very well. Then there are other topics that might work. But also speaking from the point of view as a linguist, I’ve studied language change, I’ve studied how people adopt another person’s language and create their own form of language out of it. So I’ve seen how language evolves and on your website you’re using words as compelling copy, you want somebody to buy your products. And I don’t think a machine can do that. And I’m not entirely sure. I know this is very biassed what I’m saying right now. I’m not sure a machine can ever do it at the same level how I can play with words or use certain phrases that just don’t translate in another language where you kind of need to rewrite a whole paragraph to give the same message because the word might not exist. So yeah, these things.
Kate Toon:
Again, it’s so interesting because it’s also about cadence and metre of how the words flow. In this language is a short sentence better than a long sentence? Is this an appropriate use here of bullet points or does this not make sense? That that is going to be very hard, and all the kind of exclamations that we make, the throwaway comment that makes copy conversational, right? I’m a big copy person, and yeah, you can write a really decent paragraph but it really is a little bit swear. It’s like afterwards, so what do you think? Or let’s get started, or shall we get stuck in? Shall we get stuck in would not mean the same in Thai as it does in … it just they would, “What? Get stuck? What? I’m stuck?” You wouldn’t do it. So I think you’re right. And that’s heartening for us copywriters and linguists, and translators that we still have a way to go yet.
Now another thing that I find that sites do a lot of is they identify where your IP is and they automatically redirect you to a different language based on your location, which I loathe. It’s not great to force people onto the site you think is best. Give them a choice. So most of the kind of big online stores will pop up. I love Marks & Spencers. I’m a Marks & Spencers girl, did you know I built their first ever eCommerce site back in the day when I was a young pup? You go to their site, you go to the dot CO dot UK to get some knickers, and a media pops up and says, “Would you like to get your knickers from the dot com dot AU version of the site?” And you’re like, “Yes I would.” And that’s a much more intelligent way of doing it. I still see sites redirecting though, don’t you?
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
Yes, I do and I always recommend if I have a client who does that on their website, I always recommend to remove that because, A, you could have people that are just in another country but they don’t actually speak the language of the country. The US is a big example. You have a big part of the population who is Spanish speaking, and they land on this website, they don’t want to see the website in English, they want it in Spanish. And even if that might be the Mexican version of the same website, but that’s what they want and need and understand. So don’t automatically make them go somewhere else. And then also from a technical point of view, I’m never entirely sure, you might be able to answer that question. What happens when Google’s crawler comes?
Kate Toon:
Yeah, where do they send the bot? They have a look at the bot and say, “Does it this bot look French? There’s a French bot?” Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know what they do.
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
I was never able to really find out, I never got that far.
Kate Toon:
Next time I get John Mueller on the podcast, I’ll ask him. He probably won’t give me a straight answer but I’ll ask him. The other thing I think is really … we’ve talked a lot about countries and we’re talking about language. I think again, people don’t realise they’re very different things. So often people use flags to delineate language, which is such a bad idea. If you put the Swiss flag there, well hey-ho, what language are you choosing then? Is it going to be French? Is it going to be German? If you pick Belgium, you got a whole heap of problems because there’s every language there. So indicating language with flags is a bit inaccessible now, it’s a bit old school and it’s much better to give people maybe a dropdown of the languages you have rather than the country that you think people speak.
As you said, America, there’s loads of people speaking different languages in America as here in Australia. So don’t use the flags would be a big tip for me. I think that’s quite old school now. So just to be clear, if we’re targeting a specific country, we should generally go with a top level domain. That means the bit after the dot is relevant. But if we’re focusing on language and top level domain isn’t your best choice, would you recommend having one site with different languages? So say I’m in America and I’ve got my site and I’m not targeting France or Spain or Mexico, but I just want to be accessible to everybody within America. You would maybe recommend having one domain and then having multiple language versions there.
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
Yeah. That’s generally what would I go with, yeah.
Kate Toon:
Fantastic. All right, we talked about this, but I think it’s … since you’re a cultural anthropologist, I want to squeeze this out. It’s easy enough to change things like time zone, contact info, currency and spellings. But you’ve talked about a few other things. You talked about pop culture. What else can we consider to really make it feel like we are on a site that’s meant for us?
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
So again, when you speak about contact information also that might not be as easy as it seems at first. Because I had that discussion with a client a few months ago, they’re based in the US but they have a German website and I’m working on their German website. I said to them, “Well do you have at least a PO box in Germany so that you can put a German address here?” It just would look better. It doesn’t help. Yeah, your customer support is available in German, fine. But the address that you have on your website is such a big trust factor.
Kate Toon:
Massive.
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
So try and get a PO box and a telephone number that actually looks like it’s in that country, even if your whole team sits somewhere else in the world. And then, yeah, cultural references. And we already spoke about examples like music or comedians that you make reference to, and historic references. For example, the big symbol that really makes a German think, “Oh this website’s for me.” It’s like the Brandenburg Gate for example, for Germans it means something. For French people it’s the Eiffel Tower. For British people it’s Big Ben.
Kate Toon:
Well French people hate the Eiffel Tower. Most Peruvians hate the Eiffel Tower. But no, and that’s it as well.
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
If you’re somewhere else in the world-
Kate Toon:
Yes, it makes it-
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
Association, this is home.
Kate Toon:
Yes, but again, you’ve got to be so careful there to avoid cliché because when anyone thinks of Australia, they think there are kangaroos bouncing down the street. So if you’re targeting people who desire to go to Australia, that’s going to work. If you’re targeting Australians, that’s going to piss them off because we’re not some back hick town with Crocodile Dundee and kangaroos on our backs. You’re kind of wanting, you want to see the beauty of Sydney Harbour or something sophisticated maybe. So that’s really interesting, isn’t it? You wouldn’t think that. You just need to talk to someone from the country maybe.
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
So that’s that’s the thing. And that comes down to using translators that are in those countries that are like … I always think it’s bad because I also do translations, and then if somebody asks me, “Hey, can you translate into French?” I was like, “No, translators always translate into their native language,”-
Kate Toon:
Native language.
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
“For a reason.” So don’t use a translator who claims to know that language. Use somebody who actually grew up in the culture, who really understands the mentality and everything. One example that I noticed for myself is when you ask for example, somebody on the train, if the seat there is taken, this is what you say in English, “Is the seat taken?” Whereas in German we ask, “Is this seat free?” And I noticed this for myself that the first few times I always said it wrong in English, and then I noticed, okay, people are actually saying it the other way around. So by now I’m doing it-
Kate Toon:
No, it’s not free. Yes, it’s $20. Yeah.
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
And so now I notice when I was home in Germany over Christmas that I suddenly asked in German, “Is this seat taken?” Where I was like, oh this was so strange. Now how does it now impact my native language that I’ve so long in the UK? So it’s these little things that make a text resonate with somebody in that market.
Kate Toon:
Love that.
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
It’s also images. For example, if you’re targeting somebody in an Arabic country, don’t use an image with a half naked woman. Whereas in western countries that’s fine.
Kate Toon:
In western countries absolutely use naked women.
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
Yeah, exactly. And then for example, what I also noticed in Italy, they like when everything is flashy and colourful on a website, whereas for Germans it has to look clean. There needs to be a structure and not too much going around.
Kate Toon:
She’s waving her hands around people. She’s on a podcast, but she’s like, she’s doing lines for the Germans and waving hands for the Italians.
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
Exactly. Well I should do this for the Italians.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, she’s doing the thing. Hey.
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
So it’s these little things that you kind of need to know about your market and understand. And it’s also legislation. I worked for quite some time in the online gambling industry, and there for example for Italy there was a separate legislation, whereas for all the other European countries, they were kind of all under the same umbrella. So these are also things that you just need to know. What do you refer to when you cite a legal reference? You cannot just translate this from one. It’s like, okay, what’s actually the rule in that country now? How do I do this? So all these little things, but the cultural ones that make a text resonate with you, it’s the most important.
Kate Toon:
And finding a great translator in a relevant country and doing some testing of that content before you just whack it up and go find out before you put it live that people hate it, and more naked women. So let’s talk about some SEO factors. We’ve talked a lot about language. I think one of the things that I know that for example, Yoast is getting a lot more international in terms of you can target different countries keywords, but do you use the same keyword tools that we’re using over here when you’re doing keyword research for the German market or the Spanish market or whatever? Because I’m assuming that most of the search engine tools are mainly focusing on English. So how do you deal with that when you’re working with a different language?
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
So I’m using the same tools and you can change for which market you wanted, and also always keeping in mind even if these tools might be a bit behind on those markets, Google is as well. So things that work in English for SEO, they might work for other languages maybe in a year or two depending on which language it is and how many speakers in the world and so on. So all these algorithms. But yeah, it’s generally it’s the same tools.
What I always recommend instead of, oh yeah, here’s your English keyword, let’s just translate these keywords. No, no, do a separate keyword research, like how you do your market research, also do a separate keyword research for that market to really find out what are the topics that are actually relevant for that target audience. And for example, when it comes to very tacky things, software, it is usually there’s a big overlap, but it might be other topics like travel related content, food, all these things. It might be completely different, what people want to read about in the other country of what their problems are, why they need your product, your solution.
One example I had also with that client in Germany, they’re producing screenshot software and they wanted to target the educational sector. And I said right from the start. I was like, educational sector in Germany, they’re not really investing in tools, they’re using free tools because it’s all funded by the government basically. So they have very limited budgets. It’s not like in the US where you have all private schools where people pay thousands of dollars for their child to go there. So I was like immediately, I don’t think this will work, this won’t bring any conversions. We can of course rank for this content, but.
Kate Toon:
It’s not going to translate into sales.
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
Exactly.
Kate Toon:
That’s what I found with clients. I find that the transactional intent keywords, pretty similar. Everyone seems to buy in a similar way. Navigational intent keywords, pretty similar. But when it comes to informational and investigational terms, which lend themselves more to content marketing, the questions people ask and the way that they phrase them and the problems they have, dramatically different from country to country. So I think that’s amazing advice. And yeah, I love the point of not just doing your English keywords and then putting them into Google Translate. Thank you very much.
And the tools I think are getting better. I think their databases are slightly smaller for the other markets. So you can look to similar countries for trends. So even in Australia, same languages as America. Sometimes if you go into SEO in Russia and you look for information, there’s just not enough data. In Australia, it’s not a big enough country, there’s only like 25 million people. So we will look to America for trends in keywords because they’re like, it’s similarly similar enough culturally that we may be able to get some information out of there that’s useful. So yeah, looking at other countries that are similar might help.
And again, let’s talk about back links. I mean obviously it makes sense that if you are trying to establish yourself in Germany, you’re going to get your PO box, you’re going to change the language, you’re going to talk about some other such things as German comedians. I’m joking, but you are also going to try and build back links in Germany, right? Yeah. So how do you go about that? Same way as we do over here?
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
Okay, so don’t buy links. Yeah, so the way it goes in general, say around the world basically is digital PR and that is a lot harder in Germany than it is for the markets. I’ve worked with an agency and I was doing their digital PR for Germany and every month when we looked at our KPIs, I was like, “I’m sorry, it’s again a lot less links than people got for the other markets.” But I also had an explanation for this because in Germany media is heavily … I don’t know if regulated is really the right word, but they’re all under big publishing houses.
So if one media outlet says no, the other ten are going to say no too because they’re all belong to the same organisation, then it is a lot more difficult in Germany to call yourself a journalist, you need to be officially accredited as a member of the press. These things, they have very high editorial standards. Whereas I feel in the English-speaking world, it is a lot easier to call yourself a journalist, to write for a paper and just accept all content that somebody says, “Oh yeah, great, another piece that I can get out.” In Germany, the obstacles are a lot higher to get through to someone. And yeah, it’s just, it’s so hard.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, I think you possibly insulted journalists around the world there, but I’m joking. But I think as well, one of the ways that here in Australia that we get digital PR is to not necessarily go after the big papers, which are all owned by Murdoch and his mates, but the local publications who are a bit more desperate for content and will publish that story about the fact that you’ve just got a new cat. Are the links as strong? No, but they’re easy to get. And again, that’s very hard to do from another country to know that that little local paper is actually really well read. It has a good domain authority. So again, having somebody in the market who understands the market and knows that, yeah, maybe we can’t get the big media outlets, but here are some other ways and here are some smaller TV channels, here are some other ways that we can build back links.
And also, again, there’s cultural references there because one of the ways that I like to build back links, I call it the good karma back link strategy, is to give back to the community, sponsor your local football team, give to the local dogs home and then be featured. You’re doing something lovely. But then also they feature you in their sponsors pages and you get back links. Again, to do that, you would have to know which charities are good to sponsor, which fundraisers you want are relevant to your brand and a natural values, which is going to be very hard to do from overseas. So we are global, but you do need that local expertise is I think what we’re getting to.
Let’s go back to global though. Obviously one thing that’s universal, the bum, Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Are there any special things we need to do in Google Search Console to tell Google that we’re building international sites? Is there anything different that we need to … would we set up each site as a separate property? How does that work?
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
Well, if you have them on different top level domains, you have to, but there’s nothing anymore that you really need to do in Google Search Console. There used to be this thing that they’ve retired years ago where you could specify. And then I also think, well if you have to tell Google in Search Console which language your website is in-
Kate Toon:
You have a bigger problem.
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
Something wrong to me. Yeah, exactly. It’s like maybe your website is not crawlable. Check that. So no, there’s nothing in particular that you need to do there. And also in Google Analytics, what I like to do in Universal Analytics is to set up different views for the different markets so that it’s easier for me now, “Okay, now I only want to see the data for France. Now I only want to see the data for Spain.” And instead of going through five hoops and applying hundreds of filters, have a different view for each of them. I don’t know if that works in GA4. I don’t think it is that easy at the moment.
Kate Toon:
Nothing works in GA4.
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
Yeah, let’s not go into that topic, but this is what I liked to do in universal analytics. And that also comes down to how is your website really set up? How easy is it for you to filter? So there’s, for example, this thing that I noticed a few years ago. You tend to have your top level domain and that is the website in English, and then you have slash DE, slash FR, slash ES, whatever. And I was like, okay, now I can easily filter for FR, DE, ES, but I can’t easily filter for EN, because I could only filter for it if I’m excluding all the other folders.
So this can be from a usability and data analytics point of view become a bit difficult for you to just, how do you look at your data that you have? So what I’ve done for my website is the one without a folder is redirecting to slash EN, and all my English content is in slash EN, and all my German content is in slash DE-
Kate Toon:
Very clever. I love it
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
To have that a bit easier. And I always think if it’s easier for me, it’s probably also easier for Google and that big machine behind that brand.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, I mean it’s still a machine. It feels like it’s smarter than us, but it’s learning from us. So whatever works for us is going to work for it. Look, I think this has been so helpful and so practical. I think often people talk about international SEO and it feels undoable for smaller businesses. So I think, say go right back to basics and we’ll finish off with this. If we’re not going to set up separate domains and subfolders and whatever, but we just want to make sure that the site that we have is as accessible as possible to other markets. Do you know what I mean by that?
Yes, we’re not targeting people who speak other languages, but we don’t want to make our site in impossible for them. How do we therefore make our site have a kind of an international vibe, I guess. I mean for me, I think I focus a lot on readability and keeping the readability age of my content down to about year 12 or 13, which just helps people who don’t have English as a first language. I don’t go massively far into idiom, jokes, slang, metaphor, and simile because similes and metaphors just do not translate.
And I try and keep my … and it’s hard because you want it to be fun and conversational and engaging, but also not making it so narrow to your country that it actually makes other people feel alienated. Any other tips around that? So do you know what I mean by this? I’m an Australian business. I’m not trying to target France, but if you are French, you are welcome. How do we deal with that, do you think?
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
It’s in general and it’s not even non-native speakers. Everybody is becoming a bit lazy at reading in general. So the general recommendation anyways is keep your paragraphs a bit shorter, maybe have a table of contents at the top, which also again helps Google, but it’s also for the reader so they find easier where is that paragraph that actually answers my question as they’re just scrolling through bullet points, these things.
And then also using idioms and slang and so on, can also be tricky for SEO. Because I hear, I have quite often that discussion with clients it’s like, “Yeah, but this is our branding. These are the words we’re using.” They’re like, “Yeah, but these are not the words people are using. So how do you want to appear in search?” And of course, if your brand is big enough that everybody knows what your brand name means, like Kleenex in France stands for this is a tissue to blow your nose.
Until you’re there, nobody will understand what it is about what your product is, what you do. So use the words that people are using. Speak to them at their level and that yeah, it does not necessarily mean … And sometimes, especially in English, I’ve seen non-native speakers speak better English.
Kate Toon:
Oh yeah, absolutely.
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
So it really doesn’t come down to this. It’s more, again, it’s common sense, make it easy for people to read your content. Again, also accessibility. Maybe somebody who’s a bit colorblind or someone don’t use these shades of colour that are difficult to read is a bit of a bigger font maybe as well to just make it easy for people.
Kate Toon:
And we’re going to have an episode of the podcast coming up all about accessibility. For me, I think that’s the next big thing Google’s going to focus on, I feel like. They’ve done a lot on usability, UX and customer experience. And now it’s really going to be about making sites accessible without the need for a little plugin that toggles things on and off. Really, sites that have accessible content are going to be rewarded in some way.
I agree with that. Love the bullet points. Love the table of content, sub-headers that really sign post what this paragraph is about. Images next to paragraph that tell the story of the paragraph. If you write about polar bears, bam, polar bear image. And as long as it’s not offensive, a polar bear’s offensive? I don’t know, in some countries possibly, who knows? Check that out first. But I think that’s it.
Also, we need to remember that not every piece of content needs to be written to be findable. If you are writing like a brand story or you want to write a really entertaining blog post, it’s for your existing audience and they’re going to get it and they’re familiar with your brand, you can idiom the crap out of that because that’s serving a different marketing purpose. It’s building brand loyalty, it’s building relationship. Not everything has to be offered up to the Google gods. Make sure you’ve got enough content for them. But if you want to write a fun piece of content that’s packed with stuff that your audience that love you is going to get, that’s fine. That’s absolutely fine. Just make sure you balance it out. Hey Julia, this has been smashing. It’s been [German 00:47:16]. I can’t think of anything else. Those are all my adjectives. [German 00:47:25]
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
[German 00:47:24]
Kate Toon:
What does that mean? Say that again.
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
[German 00:47:29]
Kate Toon:
What does it mean?
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
Oh, what’s the exact … great.
Kate Toon:
Great?
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
Yeah.
Kate Toon:
Germans use-
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
There are all these things. Amazing. Awesome. You can use all-
Kate Toon:
Yeah, Germans use a lot of characters to say something really basic, don’t they? [German 00:47:47], it means great. I mean, come on, come on. It must take half an hour to tell a story. Anyway, it’s been fantastic, Julia, so appreciate you coming on. Where can we find out more about you? I mean, I think I found you on LinkedIn, which you’re quite active on. Are you still doing Twitter or have you left since Elon’s messed it all up?
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
Well, I am still on Twitter, but not as regularly as I probably should. Usually when I go to an SEO event, a meeting or something, it’s like, “Yeah, can I check you on Twitter or something?”
Kate Toon:
Tweet, tweet.
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I even retweet, and that’s when I log in, I was like, “Oh my god, I missed this many notification.” But yes, I am on Twitter as well and I have my own website, which is Charlieonthemove.com. That’s a travel blog, but you’ll also find my contact details there. So there’s also Facebook and Instagram and everything.
Kate Toon:
Fantastic. Well look, I’ll link to your Twitter, your LinkedIn, Charlie on the Move. Also, I’ve included in the useful resources some guides on how to get stuck into international SEO. There’s an amazing one there from as well, and some other good ones and some Google technical support documents. So if you want to check those out, head to the show notes. But Julia, thank you so much for being on the show today.
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
Thank you for having me.
Kate Toon:
It’s been fantastic. Cheers.
JULIA-CAROLIN ZENG:
Cheers.
