[Build Backlinks Online] 40+ Tools to Advance Your International SEO Process

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, '40+ Tools to Advance Your
International SEO Process'


Posted by Aleyda

One of the most frequent questions I get is about the tools that I use for
international SEO, and although I included most of them in my international SEO
presentation at MozCon, since I didn't had the time to focus on them, I would
like to share how I use them to support my international SEO activities.


There are tools to support every part of your journey, including identifying
the potential, targeting an international audience, optimizing and promoting the
websites, earning international popularity, and measuring and achieving benefit
with the international SEO process. Let's get started!



Your initial international search status

Google Webmaster Tools


Identify your initial international search visibility, from the volume and
trends of queries to pages' impressions, clicks, and the CTR you get per
country. Use the "Search Queries" report in Google Webmaster Tools and filter by
location.




Google Analytics


In the Google Analytics "Demographics" report, check your current visits,
conversions, conversion rate volume, and trends coming from different countries
and languages, along the traffic sources, keywords, and pages used.



Your international search potential

SEMrush, SearchMetrics Essentials, Moz Keyword Difficulty Tool


Beyond researching the search volume for relevant keywords in the language and
country that you want to target (using the keyword tool of the most popular
search engine in the relevant country), you can also use tools like SEMrush and
SearchMetrics â which support many countries â to identify your
current market activity and competitors.


To find out which search engine is the most popular in your target country,
you can use StatCounter or Alexa, and then use their keyword tools to verify the
specific search volume. It would most likely be Google Keyword Planner for the
western world that mostly uses Google, Yandex Keyword Statistics for Russia, and
Baidu Index for China.



Your international keyword ideas

Ubersuggest, SEOchat Suggestion Keyword Finder


Identify additional keyword ideas with Ubersuggest (where you can choose
between many different languages and countries) and the Suggestion Keyword
Finder tool.



Why I don't recommend Google's Global Market Finder

I'm also frequently asked why I don't recommend (or recommend, but only very
carefully) Google's Global Market Finder in my International SEO advice, and
here's the reason: It's frequently inaccurate with the translations and term
localization, and can easily lead to confusion and misunderstandings.


The tool has an "important note" below the results:


"...since the translations are created using Google Translate, they are not
always perfect so be sure to confirm that the terms you're selecting are
accurate..."


Even so, people usually assume that since it's a Google tool the results should
be okay. In some cases, though, when you're not a native speaker of a language,
it's very hard to know for sure when it's right or not.


Because of this, the tool is useless most of the time, since it only adds
additional complexity to the process. In the end, you'll need native support
anyway, as well as validation with other keyword tools for more accurate keyword
ideas and their search volume.


For example, let's say I'm from an American company looking for the potential
search volume in Mexico related to "apartments" and "rent apartments":




The tool suggests "pisos", "alquiler apartamentos", and "alquilar
apartamentos". These results have the following issues:


The term "pisos" in Mexico is not used as a translation of "apartments," but
instead is what the "floor" is called. It is in Spain where apartments are
called "pisos."
"Alquiler apartamentos" is "apartment rentals," and "alquilar apartamentos" is
"rent apartaments," but while these terms are popular in Spain (and some other
countries), they are not in Mexico. In Mexico, for "Alquiler apartamentos" it
would be "Renta departamentos," and "Alquilar apartamentos" would instead be
"Rentar departamentos."


You can see how if you search for these Global Market Finder-suggested terms
in Google's own keyword research tool, their local search volume is very low
compared to the ones I mention, which are the correct ones to use in this
situation:




Additionally, the term "Alquiler apartamentos" is not grammatically correct,
since it needs a "de" preposition. It should be "Alquiler de apartamentos"
(literally meaning "Rent of apartments" in Spanish). Although it's true this can
also happen with any keyword research tool, in this case it adds even more
confusion to the process. As I mentioned before, you will end-up requiring
native support to be accurate anyway.



Your international audience profile

TNS Digital Life and Google's Consumer Barometer


Understand your target international audience's demographic characteristics
and online buying preferences not only by researching with studies like the
Comscore Data Mine, but by browsing the TNS Digital Life and Google's Consumer
Barometer sites. These sites let you select and interact with their data for
almost every industry, country, and demographic characteristic.



Your international industry's behavior and characteristics

Alexa, Rnkrnk, SimilarWeb, and Google Display Network Research


Identify your competitors in the international market, including their
characteristics and trends, by researching with Alexa, Rnkrnk, Google's Display
Network Research, and SimilarWeb.


You should understand which are their most popular products and content, their
unique selling proposition, their weaknesses and strengths, which marketing
activities they're already developing, and a little about their online
communities.





Your hreflang annotations

MediaFlow's Hreflang Sitemap Tool, DejanSEO Hreflang Validator, Rob Hammond's
SEO Crawler, and Screaming Frog SEO Spider Tool.


Make sure to include the correct hreflang annotations on the different
versions of your international pages, indicating the language and country
targeting of each page, following the ISO639-1 format for the language attribute
and ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2 for the country attribute.


You can use the DejanSEO hreflang validator to check the usage on a specific
page, or Rob Hammond's SEO Crawler to quickly verify if all the pages are
correctly featuring the notation. If you need to validate more than the 250
internal pages allowed, you can use the filters in Screaming Frog to
specifically identify those pages which contain (or don't contain) the desired
hreflang tags.



Your country-targeted website's geolocation

Google Webmaster Tools Geolocation Feature, Bing Webmaster Tools Geotargeting
Feature, FlagFox extension for Firefox, and Flag for Chrome extension


If you're country targeting and using a top-level domain, you can geolocate it
using Google, Bing, and Yandex Webmaster Tools' geolocation features.


Nonetheless, the best way to geolocate a domain is by using the relevant ccTLD
for each country. Take a look at IANA's database with each country code registry
operator that usually allows domains to be purchased on their sites, or feature
those approved domain registrars in each country.


Additionally, although it doesn't play as important a role as before, take a
look at the example below. Minube, one of the most important travel communities
in Spain, is hosted in Germany. If you can have a local IP for your website
without much effort, that could be beneficial. You can check any website IP by
using the FlagFox extension for Firefox or the Flag for Chrome extension.



Your international web content

Twitterfall, Google Trends, Talkwalker, PROMT, WordReference, and ProZ


It's important that you develop attractive and optimized content for your
international target audience that not only includes the desired keywords, but
is interesting, serves to connect with your visitors, and helps you achieve your
international website goals.


For this, it's fundamental that you have native support. If it's difficult for
you to find that, check out online translator communities such as ProZ.


In order to validate your content, you might want to use professional
translation software (more reliable than Google Translate) that also integrates
with Office for example, making it easier to use. PROMT is one good example.


If at some specific point in the process (hopefully not for long) you don't
have direct access to a native language speaker, or you just want to
double-check something specifically, you should take a look at the WordReference
forum. There's an amazing number of threads around phrases and translations for
many languages.


On a day-to-day basis, you should also keep updated with the international
trends and hot topics in order to identify new content for the website. For
this, you can use Google Trends (take a look at the Hot Searches per country);
Twitterfall, which lets you to easily follow up with a specific topic and has
geotargeting features; and Talkwalker, a tool that supports many languages and
easily generates alerts via email or RSS.





Your international popularity analysis

Open Site Explorer, MajesticSEO, LinkRisk, Social Crawlytics, SimplyMeasured,
and CognitiveSEO


To research and understand your international competitors' link-building
strategies, sources, and the popularity gap you have with them, you can use the
same link- and social-analysis tools you likely already have, like Open Site
Explorer, MajesticSEO, LinkRisk, and SocialCrawlytics.


Nonetheless, in this case, you should pay extra attention to the international
audience's preferences, beyond link quality, volume, trends, sources, and types.
Look at the social activity and profile, the most linked and shared content, the
seasonality, the terms used and sites shared, the local industry influencers,
and the favorite types of content, topics, and formats.



Your international link-building

Link Prospector, FollowerWonk, BuzzStream, Topsy


Promote your international website assets by leveraging relevant local sites,
understanding cultural factors, building relationships with local influencers
and media, and identifying what works best in each country to scale and track
the response to each international version.


For international prospecting you can use Link Prospector, FollowerWonk, and
Topsy, and then follow up and manage your links with BuzzStream.





Your international search visibility

I Search From, Search Latte, FoxyProxy for Firefox and Chrome, Hide My Ass,
and Trusted Proxies


To easily verify how your international search audience sees your site ranking
in their search results, you can use I Search From or Search Latte to quickly
get the desired country and language's results.


Nonetheless, to make sure you're really seeing what your audience from other
locations is seeing, it's best to do so with a local IP by using a proxy
service. This will also let you verify your website from the desired
international location and check to see if there's any types of settings for
them, like a redirect, for example.


For this, you can use a free proxy browser add-on, like the ones from
FoxyProxy, along any of HMA's Public Proxy list. If you want to have more
reliable service, better speed, and select between many IPs, you also have paid
ones, such as Hide My Ass or Trusted Proxies.



Your international search results

Moz Rank Tracker, SEscout, Authority Labs, Advanced Web Ranking, SEO SERP for
Chrome, Rank Checker for Firefox, Google Analytics, and Google Webmaster Tools


Measure each of your International web versions independently, from the
rankings for each relevant country and language to the visits and conversions.
Remember to pay extra attention to the currency settings, cross-domain tracking,
and the country and language traffic alignment.


For each of the international versions, segment and analyze the rankings,
visits, conversions, average conversion value and rate, the used keywords,
pages, sources of traffic per languages, location, and devices.


For your search rankings, you can use web-based tools like Moz Rank Tracker,
SEscout, and Authority Labs, which support international search engines, or use
desktop applications such as Advanced Web Rankings, along with a proxy service
to avoid being blocked. For quick revisions you can use free browser extensions
such as Rank Checker for Firefox and SEO SERP for Chrome.


For the site behavior with the search engines, it is important that you also
follow up with Google Webmaster Tools (or the Webmaster Tools of the relevant
international search engine) along with Google Analytics, from a traffic and
conversion analysis perspective. That will let you to continuously follow-up
with your International SEO results, and allow you to make the appropriate
decisions.





Your international SEO ROI

The International SEO ROI Calculator


Calculate what's required in order to achieve your conversion goals and a high
ROI in your international SEO process while taking the SEO process costs into
consideration. You can use the International SEO ROI calculator to facilitate
this activity.






Last but not least, let's not forget that despite all the help that these
tools might give you the most important tool you have is your own brain.


Unfortunately I've seen how we forget sometimes about turning on an
"autopilot," missing great opportunities (or even making mistakes) as a
consequence.


Tools are not meant to replace you, but to support you, so do your own
analysis, test everything and validate frequently, using your brain.



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