Before we can delve into the differences between the two types of SEO, it’s important to understand what they both are, what they do and what kind of function they provide for businesses.

What is Local SEO?

A local SEO company uses a variety of techniques and tactics to improve your business’s position in local search rankings. Local rankings occur when a user search any local keyword or a search engine retrieves a location from its device. An example of this can be when someone searches for “Restaurant in Los Angeles, California

What is International SEO?

International SEO is the sum of all activities aimed at improving the presence of organic search for websites in multiple countries or languages. This includes,  language and country targeting settings, content localization, and technical SEO changes that specify multilingual link building.

How Local SEO And International SEO Help Your Business?

Local SEO Helps In Your Businesses

Local SEO service is great for businesses that have a physical location and offer their services and or products to a specific geographic location.

For Example, if a restaurant owner runs his business in Toronto, they’d want the people in their locality to notice the restaurant’s presence as soon as they search for “Restaurants within Toronto.”

Even for businesses that don’t have a physical store, an online store that delivers to a specific locality can also benefit greatly from the use of local SEO and local link building services.

An example can be that Rachel, someone who sells handmade crafting supplies wants to only sell these items within her locality. So instead of marketing in countries like China or the opposite side of the country, she’d optimize her website to be more region-specific.

International SEO Helps In Your Businesses

International SEO ensures that search engines can easily identify the country your business is trying to target. It also tells search engines which language to use to attract customers from different countries.

International SEO is best used if your business wants to grow a following in more than one country.

For example, Sarah writes blogs related to world politics and wants people from The US, France and Spain to view her content. She’d have to utilize an International SEO plan in order to get the audience she wants.

The similarities between Local and International SEO

Despite serving two entirely different purposes, the similarities between a good local SEO strategy and an International SEO plan are not far-fetched. Most of the requirements for a good Local SEO strategy are also found when making a good International SEO strategy. The examples for such have been listed below:

The Importance of Keyword Content

Keyword patterns have long been used by Google and other search engines to determine the locality of a search. It’s not just about including geographic terms such as cities in search queries, for example; “Durham.”

We will also talk about the position of the term Durham in search queries. This can affect both the results and how they are displayed. For this reason, queries such as “Durham restaurants” may return different results than ” restaurants Durham.”

In international search engine optimization, geographic terms like “Durham” can make clear and confuse the location of a search query (by country), but the search query itself is “local”. The principle remains that it contains useful indicators for both local location and International location.

For example, in the past, searches in the UK often ended with” UK “so that search engines could guess English-speaking countries involved within the Search Query

Listing Physical Addresses

International SEO often overlooks the need to ensure that websites are rich in the correct country addresses. Meaning, the addresses are tagged in the way search engines prefer. You also need to list all physical locations on Google Maps through Google Places. This is an equally relevant tip whether you’re doing international SEO or local SEO.

Using IP Addresses

An increasingly popular solution for both “local” and “international” SEO is that search engines use the geographic location of IP addresses to relatively accurately indicate the location intended by the searcher. .. In the early days of the Internet, this was only useful for finding users at the national level. Now, IP locations are becoming more and more accurate today.

The Differences Between The Two

Despite the many similarities they share, at the end of the day, there are places where the two contrast. That may come as no surprise considering the fact that they serve vastly different purposes.

Using A Language To Identify A Location

The biggest difference between local SEO and international SEO is the language and its impact on everything. Language influences culture, how to buy things, how to look for things, how people buy. It’s a very complex subset of new things that language alone can make the difference between them.

Domain References To Target A Location

The use of links, hosting indicators, and webmaster settings can have a significant impact on the success rate of your international SEO deployment plan. Local SEO isn’t prone to facing these challenges.

Conclusion

All In all, international SEO and local SEO are used for entirely different purposes but have a lot more in common than people expect them to. It’s important to have an understanding of both SEO’s In order to determine which one is best for you. To get help from local SEO and International SEO experts, feel free to visit our contact us page.

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