| How to make your website popular in more than just one country |
So you've started a web-based company based on a brilliant insight. You've registered your dot-com domain name, and you're seeing significant amounts of traffic, largely from the United States.
It's time to take that great business idea beyond the shores of the United states, but what's the right way to proceed? Some might suggest the best strategy is just to translate the website into various foreign languages, but this neglects several important considerations involved in international expansion.
Expanding abroad can be a difficult and dangerous maneuver. It's possible to make a website less useable for its existing user base, and it's also possible to cause a decrease in search-engine traffic due to mistakes which might make Google and other search engines less able to index the website.
Here are three tips for a successful international expansion:
1. Register the best international domain name possible. This piece of the puzzle is made difficult by the fact that certain countries restrict registrations of domain names to companies with a physical presence. For example, while anyone can register a domain name in New Zealand, to do the same in France, one must own a trademark in the country or live there. A typical way around this problem is to use prefixes -- for example, for France one might use "fr.example.com" instead of "example.fr".
2. Don't create too many links between the existing website and the international sites. One or two well-placed links will ensure that the new international sites show up in search engines.
3. Understand that search engines consider the international and US sites as completely separate entities. This means that it's important to use the same link-building and popularization strategies for each foreign site that worked so well for the main site in the US. The best strategies focus on in-country sites, meaning that a site based in France should strive to receive links from other similar sites in France.
Launching an international expansion for a successful US-based website is a tricky and complex endeavor. Following the tips in this article will assist in avoiding many of the problems that have plagued other expansions.
A good example of a successful international expansion, includes Phone Spam Filter: http://www.phonespamfilter.com and its UK site: http://www.phonespamfilter.co.uk
Article Source: UnArchived Articles
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