When we’re talking about international and local, they are very different. With international SEO, people often refer to localized content and localization of content, but that doesn’t necessarily mean local SEO. These are the differences.
- International SEO is the process of optimizing your website so that search engines can easily identify which countries you want to target and which languages you use for business.
- Local SEO is a search engine optimization strategy that helps your business be more visible in local search results on Google. Any business that has a physical location or serves a geographic area can benefit from local SEO.
International SEO is optimizing your website so that search engines around the world can understand your website and it can rank in the relevant markets and for the relevant languages. You need to ensure that your content is localised so it is relevant to that specific market.
An example of this would be fashion ecommerce sites, for whom it is important that they are optimising the site towards the seasons that are present in their target country at that time. This, of course, varies. An example of localisation can be seen on Nike’s sites in the screenshots below.