Some of the most common questions I’m asked –or I find myself asking– during international SEO processes are very straight-forward and can be easily answered with the help of some tools. I will share both so you can take these into consideration in a future international search engine optimization process.

1. In Which country is this site hosted?

You can see the country of a site hosting directly in the browser with the help of extensions for Firexfox and Google Chrome:

1. The Flagfox extension for Firefox. 
2. Flag for Chrome

2.    What terms are used in which country?

When localizing the content sometimes it’s not clear which term is most used where. This can be verified by using Google Trends and taking a look at the volume and usage trend of search terms per country.

For example, the terms “apartment” and “flats” in the UK:

3.    Which are the top countries that refer me more organic traffic?

Go to “Audience >> Demographic >> Location in Google Analytics and select the non-paid search traffic default segment or create an advanced segment for organic traffic excluding brand names, for example:

4.    In which countries do I have a better organic search visibility?

In Google Analytics go to the “Traffic Sources >> Search Engine Optimization >> Geographical Summary” report and verify the countries that are getting more results in search engines:

5.    How the search engine results look from another location?

Use a proxy tool to connect through another country IP, such as Netshade for Mac OS X and verify how the search engines result pages for that country are shown:

6.    How is the international competition?

Use SEMRush and ahrefs to identify the competition of a keyword or site in a specific country.

7.    How can I check my international rankings?

Several organic results rankings tools tools support international markets, such as SEscout and Authority Labs.

Which other International SEO questions do you frequently have and how do you usually solve them?

Posted in International Search |