In today’s highly competitive business environment, it’s crucial for businesses to grow internationally. With the internet at their aid, reaching customers outside Singapore comes quite within the reach of businesses.

This is where SEO techniques can help your business get good rankings and land on the first page of Google. If you do not appear on the first result page of a search engine, your “potential customers” might not even know your business exists.

Implementing SEO techniques can become the top secret success mantra for your business. Here’s a detailed guide on how you can use SEO to reach customers outside Singapore.

By Link Building

Link building is the most popular off-page SEO technique. When someone finds something useful on your website, they add a link to that particular page so that others can see too. This backlink acts as a thumbs-up. Google usually perceives these backlinks as the usefulness of your website or service.

This means the more links pointing to your website means better credibility. As you build more links, Google understands the usefulness of your website and begins to upgrade its ranking.

There are several ways you can build links. It’s worth noting that many people in the SEO world practice black hat link building practices. This might be an easy way to build backlinks but can backfire anytime and drop your website rankings within a day.

Link building should be genuine. Some genuine methods to get quality backlinks are discussed below –

1. Content marketing

Content marketing is an unbeatable way to establish your brand in any country. This is where you create “useful and original” content.

Content that users love includes case studies, data analysis, expert opinion, interviews, infographics, local press releases, research papers, etc. Evidently, creating such content will take hard work and resources, but is high yielding.

Content marketing will help you –

• Build brand awareness by sharing insightful and original content;
• Gain trust from your target audience by giving them useful information;
• And lastly, get more traffic from your target countries.

While useful and original content is important. It is just as important to know where to post it so that it reaches your target audience.

Some excellent places to share insightful content are Medium, Reddit, LinkedIn, Dzone, Facebook, SlideShare, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube and, Managewp.org. Each of these has an international reach. Depending on your niche, there can be many more.

Among these, Medium, Reddit and LinkedIn are powerful platforms because the audience on these platforms is smart and educated. Getting a high number of Reddit upvotes and Medium claps are a surefire way to gather attention and raise brand awareness. Make sure you respond to people’s comments on your post. Live interaction leaves a lasting impression on users.

2. Submit a guest post on high-traffic world-class blogs

The idea of guest blogging in content marketing is to write a highly valuable post for the readers and post it on a reputed website that is in the same niche as your brand/website is. When submitting a guest post, bear the following things in mind –

Submit on a world-class blog that has an audience in your niche

Closely examine your niche-related blogs. Study the type of blogs they post and the kind of response it evokes. Before you send the pitch of the blog to the blog’s editor, pre-empt what kind of audience your blog will reach and the audience’s response. To say the least, make a list of as many top blogs as possible and then filter them out one by one until you are left with 2 – 3 blogs that match your needs the best.

It should be informative and useful to the readers and should never be blatantly promotional

It might be enticing to write down promotional statements in your blog, but it can backfire. Worst of all, your post can get rejected. Focus just on writing content that adds value to the reader’s life.

Post content that is at par with the audience

If you are targeting an audience from a different region, your post should be adjusted to the style and tone of the audience you are targeting. It will build better engagement, more shares as well as backlinks.

3. Post your products/services on worldwide service websites

List your product on worldwide product or service websites. These websites often show up on the SERPs whenever a user searches for a product or a service. Some common product seller websites include Amazon, eBay, Alibaba, etc.

If you offer a service, you can list it on Fiverr, Upwork, Freelancer and other such platforms.

4. Product reviews by overseas influencer

Overseas digital influencers are seen as regular people, which is why people trust them more than they trust celebrities. Some ways you can find overseas influencers are –

Social media

Search for an influencer by watching who comments and shares your social media posts. If they have a large following in your target audience, you can approach them for a partnership.

Google alerts for your brand

You will be notified each time someone mentions your product name anywhere on the internet. If you notice a blogger mentioning your product’s name, you can further check whether their followers are from your target country.

You can ask a trusted overseas influencer to write content for your product and hence garner trust from your target audience. To create an engaging influencer review, you can ask them to share a personal story around your product.

5. Create engaging videos on YouTube

Videos are the best form of content if you want to engage users. A video is more likely to show up on the top of SERP if it is search optimized. Create your brand’s YouTube channel and upload engaging videos that may range from explainer videos to sharing your brand’s story. Use videos to educate your audience and build trust.

With videos, you can help your potential customers visualize what place your product will take in their lives. You can make them funny, emotional, inspiring or anything that drives your customer to your website from your YouTube channel.

By On-Site Optimization

A perfectly SEO-optimized website is easy for Google to read and understand what it is all about. Google shows personalized results to users based on their location. To target the audience of a country, you’ll need to optimize the entire website for that country. Search engines value geo-targeted content more valuable than the rest of the results and display on the top in SERPs.

1. Create SEO-optimized content for the target country

Targeting a country begins with creating geo-specific content that uses the language and tone specific to that country. For the USA, you should use the language English (US) on your website. Similarly, for targeting the UK, you should use English (British). If you provide services locally, submit your website to local search directories and search engines.

Target local keywords like “interior designer in Detroit”, but beware of stuffing your website with them. Focus on creating interesting blogs and descriptions around the target keywords.

2. Create a new website and do SEO for that country

Before you head on straight to buy a new domain name to target a country, understand the value of ccTLD (country code top-level domains) and TLDs (Top Level Domains). Where ccTLDs default to a specific location, TLDs are geo-targeted domains. To build a strong authority in a country, implement the following your site’s SEO –

• Buy a location-specific TLD domain, such as .co.uk;
• Google gives preference to local IP addresses for local searches. Hence, it will be beneficial to host the website from the local-based server;
• Link to high authority locally-based website in your niche;
• Get your website listed in local search directories like YellowPages, Yelp, etc;
• And lastly, specify your location in Google Search Console.