In the backdrop of income decreasing in the CIS segment of the Internet, webmasters started thinking about tapping into the Western counties’ markets. But is it possible to promote a site to an English-speaking audience and get on the first SERP eventually, if your English doesn’t cut it?
In this article, you’ll find an expert analysis from some SEO experts who’ve been working with their audiences from Tier 1 countries for years. Recently, they’ve shared their expertise in promoting websites to European countries and the USA.
• Alexander Pavlutsky, the founder of the NX Agency;
• Evgeny Shestakov, the owner of ZAPAD at Rush Agency;
• Mikhail Shakin, an author of the blog about website promotion, Shakin.ru;
• Igor Shulezhko, executive director of Shmeo.Link;
• Dmitry Sokhach, founder and managing partner of AdmixGlobal.
Searching for the Right Niche Through Analytics
Mikhail Shakin advises analysing the first three websites on the SERP to get a full picture of the most visited ones. It’s highly likely that those sites are owned by large companies with a large staff of journalists. So, they are rather difficult to compete against, and it takes dedication to keep pace with them. It pays off though.
Take, for instance, Ahrefs service, which makes it possible to find out many website metrics including those on the highest positions on Google. The analysis of the most successful sites and their ways of promotion allows us to look through different niches and find a killer one.
Keyword Difficulty Is the Simplest Method of Analysis
Igor Shulezhko agrees with Mikhail on the means of analysis. He uses Ahrefs monitoring keyword queries with the Keyword Difficulty up to 10% and analyses the first web pages ranking higher on Google than others.
He considers the various forums and chat rooms to be a valuable source of information on the ways to drive traffic to websites.
The Sheer Interest in a Particular Niche is a Guarantee of Website Success
Evgeny Shestakov believes that you’d be better off tapping into the European or American market only having had a certain experience in SEO. If you know a thing or two about some particular sector, and if you’re genuinely interested in it then it’ll be much easier to promote the same niche for the Tier 1 countries.
When it comes to affiliate program promotion you’d be better off with the niches you’ve already driven traffic for.
As far as the commodity niche goes, Evgeny advises finding some popular products in online stores and marketplaces. After that, you can create a niche website only for one product and then just keep promoting it. Such sites are ranking high enough.
Take All the Best from the Best Ones and Become a Frontrunner
Evgeny’s strategy of choice is as follows:
- Choose a niche/subcategory;
- Select the leaders in this particular niche;
- Find out who are the competitors of these top-notch sites;
- In the Keywords Explorer section of Ahrefs find websites with a low DR (Domain Rating), that is, websites without strong enough backlink profile;
- After that, put the list of these weak sites through the bulk check feature of Ahrefs and set aside for further research those ones with the largest number of keywords, amount of traffic, and the lowest DR;
- Analyse the content and web design of these sites;
- Then, take the best features of these competitors and apply them to your own website.
The idea is that if sites with a weak backlink profile could reach the visible positions of SEPR, then you might outperform them easily. You don’t have to go the extra mile, do just a bare minimum, that is correcting the flaws of the competitors you’ve found on the SERP.
Become Successful and Prosper
Alexander Pavlutsky shared his story of promoting a website of a dental clinic from Finland. He had previous experience in this niche and that allowed him to get success. After successfully launching the website he drew a conclusion that this niche isn’t competitive either. At the same time, he had some other SEO projects in Finland.
Expertise Goes a Long Way
Dmitry Sokhach believes that if you know some business sector inside out, then it’ll be a pleasure to work with it, hence a good result regardless of the location.
Do You Speak English? Oh No!
If you are a site owner and English is your weak point, then a contributor or a copywriter in your team might become a middleman, as Mikhail Shakin understands. If you don’t speak English well enough it won’t be a barrier to start a business even in English speaking environment. However, given the number of various English learning techniques available these days, it won’t be a problem to get this skill down. Deep knowledge of a particular business sector, its semantics, keyword research, competitor analysis all combined might become a solid driver to actually learn English.
Igor Shulezhko believes that it’s necessary to speak English at least at the B1 level. He shared his experience of promoting websites in the Azerbaijani language, which he doesn’t speak though. Nevertheless, he’s managed to make it to the top. Igor considers an effective team along with experienced management to allow doing SEO even in non-English speaking countries such as Korea, Israel, and so forth.
Evgeny Shestakov pointed out that there are lots of top websites in the English segment which are run by people from India. Even with lousy content that bristles with grammar errors they get on SERP. Such things as a good backlink profile, direct outreach, PNB networks, and so forth make up for bad content.
Evgeny is of the opinion that you can do SEO without proper English language skills, although he advocates for buying properly translated content. Alexander Pavlutsky, from NX Agency, argues that it’s extremely difficult to create an international SEO company without skills in English. You need to be in close contact with your partners and clients to create a bond and build up trust and long-term connections.
Dmitry Sokhach, the founder of AdmixGlobal, shares this opinion too, but at the same time, he says that it’s quite possible to launch an international SEO business even without English skills.
Every SEO expert can start off by creating simple websites and jump pages with a little help from freelance translators.
The Bottom Line
As the famous gangster, Al Capone once said, "You can get more with a kind word, and a gun than you can get with just a kind word".
So, you can expand your SEO efforts geography even without language skills, but you’d be better off with spoken English under your belt to tap into foreign markets and make connections with the people. And the upshot is that you can scale up your international business and at the same time work on your language skills and English in particular.
