International Keyword Research: First steps

If you are involved in a company that wants to tap into overseas markets, and are looking for ways to make a success out of the endeavor, you have probably seen this term floating around the web rather often. International Keyword Research is a form of Search Engine Optimization (SEO for short) that attempts to place your website within the first results of a related search using specific words and terms that are popular searches in specific countries.

International Keyword Research is a form of SEO that attempts to place your website within the first results in specific countries.

Let’s use an example. Open up Google and type in a word related to your business. Before you even finish typing it, Google will automatically display a list of suggested searches. Those are the most common searches related to your word. While it’s almost guaranteed that every suggestion won’t be in line with your business interests (If you are a luxury watch dealer, the first suggestions might be “cheap watches”), there will always be more generic options that you can take advantage of (Online watch store for example).

The ways to tap into this can become a rabbit hole of technicalities and fine-tuning, but the plain and simple way of understanding the concept is this: The more of these suggestions you include in your website, the further up it goes in the search results, because those things are what people are actually searching for. In essence, that’s meat and potatoes of it.

But here is where things get a bit more tricky. Different cultures, aside from varying interests and regional trends, use the internet and its search engines in vastly different ways. To complicate things even more, they might use search engines that also function in different ways themselves. The final cherry to top cake is that technology and search algorithms are always changing and evolving, so staying on the same page can be a time-consuming and seemingly endless task.

Let’s not panic though. There are multiple ways in which one can reap huge benefits without spreading resources too thin by trying to be everywhere at the same time. Now that we have laid out the basic concept of International Keyword Research, we can start to touch upon ways to keep track of the words and trends that can really benefit your business.

Stay tuned for our next post!