If you are into blogging or own a website then you know the process of optimizing your website to be found by search engines. While in the ongoing process if you want to target a specific audience then you will need to identify the region under demographics. Once you know which section to target for bringing in revenue and traffic, it is of much importance to cater to the needs of this specific audience. Of all the possible features that one could think of, user experience is of high priority. This could be made possible by reaching your audience in their local language. Does this sound familiar? If yes, then you are into Internationalising your SEO process. There are specific steps one needs to follow, we will discuss them in brief. On a high level, the process can be divided into three sections Country Targeting, Language Targeting, and Verifying the setup. Country Targeting can be achieved in one of the following three ways : Country-Specific Domains (ccTLDs) TLD stands for Top-Level Domain, while ccTLD stands for country code TLD. It is also referred to as CTLD or Country Top Level Domain. This means your website domain name includes the country code that you decide to target. For instance when the domain name of this website points to "digimarketeronline.in" or "digimarketeronline.fr" then these domain names are region-specific. While this gives greater scope for indicating strong signals, to the crawlers that these sites are specifically designed for a given country, the downside of it would be the cost and content management which would increase with the increase of the number of country codes. Sub-Domains To overcome the costing concerns of having multiple websites targeting regional audiences, one can choose to have sub-domains under the same TLD. For instance, if you are planning to target the audience of France and Canada then fr.digimarketeronline.org and ca.digimarketeronline.org are sub-domains that can be considered. The crawlers consider these sub-domains as different instances, though the domain authority gets shared between sub-domains, so it is important to have unique content with different URLs and SEO optimization must be done for these separately. Usually, sub-domains are opted for when dealing with different content under the same domain name. Sub-Directories When you know the content is similar but needs to be handled differently under one domain name sub-directories are preferred over the rest. For instance, all digital marketing stuff related to the US region is clubbed under the directory name "united states" and the region is then treated as a category. It may look like digimarketeronline.org/us or digimarketeronline.org/fr. Now when you want to deal with similar content but want to categorize based on regions, it is preferable to use sub-directories. Crawlers treat them as the same domain but in different categories so the domain authority of the site gets reused while ranking. Language targeting can be confirmed using hreflang tags in the head section of the page. hreflang Once you have decided on your website structure, it is important to tell the crawlers which language and country combination the page is catering to. This instructs the engines to display region-specific content from the same website. When you have opted for the ccTLD structure of the site, you may wonder if this tagging is needed, the answer to this is that the tag creates a marker for search engines to explicitly confirm that the page is designed for the given country code and language combination. Including this tag in the head section of the page confirms the internationalization of content. The format looks like the following tags, the default tag points to all remaining countries and languages that are not being targeted meaning the search engines will have to show these pages in the results for the remaining non-targeted audience. The below tag signals the search engine that the page needs to be surfaced for India in the English language. Once you have targeted the country and language, it's time to check and verify your setup. Google provides a tool for checking and verifying the setup for internationalization under the link https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/i18n The tool can be used with the authorization credentials of your search console setup. The tool provides tabs for country and hreflang setup. These are the basic criteria for setting up international SEO. Once these parts are set up, it's the turn of setting up the appropriate content. It is advised not to use auto-translated content. This may reduce the quality of the sites and hence may not rank on search engine results. Local advertising and backlinks are suggested for improving the ranking of the page. If these measures are taken care of, then the site will perform well with search engine optimization involving internationalized content. For more on search engine optimization check my blog .

If you are a social media marketer then the very basic question every digital marketer in the field has would be How to grow social media audience ? I started my social media journey a couple of years earlier and it felt like someone threw me into a pond of water when I dint know to swim. Most readers may relate to this, but with time I was able to learn the tricks and nuances of the field which has made me share this story. Who are your audience ? Audience depends on the niche that your content is around. For instance I write about digital marketing so my niche is digital marketing and related fields. The content I write would interest mostly the people from this field. What can I do to attract my audience ? Once my niche is decided the next step would be to know what my audience needs. The current trend shows that with COVID-19 most people have sought to this field of work and would need insights into how they can build a business around this. This gives me an idea that the knowledge which I gained over the years needs to be shared with my audience. What tools would I need ? When I know my audience and have interesting content handy, now its time for using the right tools to reach the targeted audience. Following are the tools which I used to reach my audience : Keyword Research : To identify strong content topics we need the right keywords . Data Extraction : To identify the audience from the field we need few automated tools to make our job easier. Messenger Bots : While creating your niche audience there may be times when you need to send notifications and messages. Plagiarism Checker : When you talk of rich content we need to make sure that our content is unique. Duplicity Remover : To create unique content we can make use of tools that can help rewrite phrases which can avoid duplicity. How often should I post ? Once you have your audience and content you would need to post consistently to maintain the interest of your audience. Social Media Management Tools can help you schedule your content by posting once a day or twice a week depending on your field and the platform you have selected. The timing of post also matters. Identify your audience activity timing using Google Analytics or any other analytic tool. How to get engaging Audience ? For your audience to engage with you, You need to engage with them regularly. This can be done by liking their posts and articles. Commenting frequently and staying connected. We can use automation as well depending on your need. With this approach, we can grow social media followers organically. Once the audience gets comfortable with the content and posting manner they would engage more often increasing more followers with time. If you are looking for videos on these topics you can subscribe to my channel DigiMarketerOnline For more content around these topics, Please like and share my posts. Happy Reading!