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How Does Search Engine Optimization Work?
Understand how SEO improves overseas customer acquisition and boosts online sales.

How Does Search Engine Optimization Work?

Article written by James Bledsoe, Director of the eCommerce Solutions Center

Search Engine Optimization Drives Online Sales

Mobile and Desktop Search Advertising forecasts a growth rate of 15.1% annually
The search advertising segment shows average growth rates of 15.1% annually.

With the ever-growing increases in digital marketing spend for a business, there is one “customer acquisition improvement exercise” that can help improve your overall ecommerce ROI: search engine optimization.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of adding the content on your website in a way that appeals to the programming of a search engine’s search bots. 

Searchbots index webpage information and use it for search results around the world
Searchbots index your site text to use as search engine results by doing SEO to your site you help them to do their job more easily

It is important that while doing SEO, you provide the necessary content on your product pages, so that a search bot can find your product information and provide it to the search engine results page, when you should be showing up in search.

Appealing to Search Bots

Search bots are robots that exist without physical form, and only as written programming instructions. The search bots only see your website content as written text, text written about objects (eg: video descriptions, picture alt text), and written text of a website URL (eg: backlinks, internal links).

Search bots are programmed by their search engines, and that programming determines what a webpage needs to have to meet its programmed requirements for showing up first in a search engine results page. Make sure you also take into consideration international SEO best practices to make sure that your focus and tactics aren’t for a domestic audience.

Your website information is collected by searchbots and presented on the search engine results page (SERP).
Searchbots take your indexed site information and present it on a search engine results page (SERP).

SEO is therefore can simply be described as checking your website and making sure that it meets the information needs programmed into search bots, which determines whether or not you show up for an international online sales opportunity.

How to Begin SEO for Your Website

You first need to understand if your website is functioning properly from a technical standpoint, and a great way to begin this process is with our SEO audit the WGR Gap Analysis Service, which is designed to provide you a report of how a search bot would rank your website in online search results.

After you have identified which areas of your website could use technical improvement through an SEO audit, you then should monitor your website analytics in order to track your ecommerce successes and progress as you implement recommended and needed SEO changes to your website.

The WGR Service uses SEO crawls and internationalization best practices
The WGR Gap Analysis Service uses search bot data to help you identify existing content issues on your website

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Global Business Navigator Chatbot Beta

Welcome to the Global Business Navigator, an artificial intelligence (AI) Chatbot from the International Trade Administration (ITA). This tool, currently in beta version testing, is designed to provide general information on the exporting process and the resources available to assist new and experienced U.S. exporters. The Chatbot, developed using Microsoft’s Azure AI services, is trained on ITA’s export-related content and aims to quickly get users the information they need. The Chatbot is intended to make the benefits of exporting more accessible by understanding non-expert language, idiomatic expressions, and foreign languages.

Limitations

As a beta product, the Chatbot is currently being tested and its responses may occasionally produce inaccurate or incomplete information. The Chatbot is trained to decline out of scope or inappropriate requests. The Chatbot’s knowledge is limited to the public information on the Export Solutions web pages of Trade.gov, which covers a wide range of topics on exporting. While it cannot provide responses specific to a company’s product or a specific foreign market, its reference pages will guide you to other relevant government resources and market research. Always double-check the Chatbot’s responses using the provided references or by visiting the Export Solutions web pages on Trade.gov. Do not use its responses as legal or professional advice. Inaccurate advice from the Chatbot would not be a defense to violating any export rules or regulations.

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