Don't dream about it; achieving Google SEO for a foreign trade website isn't something you can just pay for and succeed at.

For some website owners or company executives who have never been exposed to itbuild my own websitethey naively believe that aForeign Trade Independent Websitesjust needs to be built by a website building company after payingpayhave them helpdo Google SEOcan achieve good rankings, thereby attracting traffic to the website and converting it into orders.Stop dreaming. If it were really that simple, give me one reason why a website building company wouldn't handle foreign trade orders themselves:

1. Don't want to do it? Who wouldn't want to make money?
2. Don't know how? Optimization is so simple, just hire someone if you can't do it yourself.

So why don't they do it? The reason is simple: website SEO and Google optimization are not as easy as they claim. This article is from NaibabijiRepostLiaoshen„s “How Deep Are the Waters of Google SEO Ranking for Foreign Trade Website Promotion?" article, andaddedsomepersonal insightsto form this combined article,hoping that foreign trade website owners won't waste money unnecessarily or look for shortcuts.Note:Green text is quoted content from Liaoshen's original article,Wine-red text is key content to focus on.

What is SEO, and how should Foreign Trade SEO be done?

SEO is what we commonly refer to as search engine optimization, I believe the website building company has already told you the benefits website SEO can bring. ConventionalSEOApracticesare? They can generally be divided into the following steps:

1. Research the target industry, analyze keywords;
2. Register a domain and purchase a server to build the website;
3. Use Theme templates and Plugins that are beneficial for SEO;
4. Write original articles centered around keywords;
5. Establish good internal and external linking for articles;
6. Perform basic SEO optimization for website articles;
7. Optimize website page loading speed;
8. Analyze website statistics daily, and a series of other operations.

Next, let's analyze together why Naiba saysDon't dream—doing Google SEO for a foreign trade website isn't something you can just pay for and succeed.

Analysis of Why Paying for Google SEO is Unrealistic

Not an industry professional, unable to write original articles

In the field of website SEO, there„s a saying: “Content is king"Content is king, backlinks are queen." This means that good website content is paramount. So, how can you expect someone outside the industry to help you write in-depth, industry-specific content? Especially when it comes to English articles that require regular, periodic updates.

Not a professional SEO practitioner, lacking technical skills

You must believe that a website building company cannot possibly handle Google SEO promotion for only your website; they likely have one staff member responsible for Google optimization for N websites. SEO is a very time-consuming task. I don't believe the staff at these website building companies can keep up with the latest search engine rules, and I certainly don't believe they understand optimization for English websites. At best, they might know more SEO terminology than the average novice webmaster. In their eyes, SEO might just mean helping you modify titles, keywords, descriptions, and submitting them to Google.There are many service providers in China offering Google SEO, but many so-called professional providers still use outdated Chinese SEO optimization tactics for their clients. However, this industry is a mixed bag, with the majority exaggerating results, making false promises, and being unqualified. I believe a professional SEO service provider should at least have convincing capabilities or background in English online marketing, as SEO in the English-speaking online world is significantly different from Chinese SEO. Most importantly, based on a certain level of English proficiency and continuous learning ability, it's about achieving the mining of high-quality English resources. This requires practitioners to constantly accumulate and explore, gradually building up a mindset for writing in English. All of this requires you to frequently read English websites, immerse yourself in the world of English information and knowledge, and absorb nutrients.

Using black hat SEO optimization, focusing only on short-term gains

Website optimization, whether for Google or Baidu, can be divided into three types of SEO: White Hat SEO, Black Hat SEO, and Gray Hat SEO.

• White Hat SEO: Optimization that complies with search engine rules, yielding long-term benefits when done well.
• Black Hat SEO: Optimization that exploits search engine vulnerabilities, effective in the short term but disastrous once discovered by search engines.
• Gray Hat SEO: Everything is left to fate; I don't care about rankings, I update, I'm happy.

Black Hat SEO doesn„t genuinely consider the website“s reasonable content or the real needs of search users. It„s just speculative operation, seizing some vulnerabilities in search engine rankings, trying to take a “shortcut„ to improve rankings. The most common practice is building a large number of spam backlinks to try to increase authority and gain rankings. Google's algorithm rules for the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) have long been user-centric. Google judges the user's search intent and then displays results that best match that intent, rather than websites that rely on piling up backlinks for authority. For foreign trade industry websites, if you want long-term development, you must stay away from Black Hat and adopt safe White Hat SEO as the correct path. A qualified service provider must have a truly profound understanding of Google's official optimization guidelines. Then, unify knowledge and action, and put it into practice!

The tricks of paid Google SEO optimization

After saying so much about impossibilities, you might still have doubts. You say it's impossible, but why do others dare to guarantee first-page website rankings, guarantee traffic, guarantee inquiries? They even say no payment without results.Promoting so-called „ranking guarantees“ is just a better sales tactic, making clients feel safe choosing this provider and that the money is well spent. There are several tricks to so-called ranking guarantees:

Trick one: Ranking for low-competition (or even no competition), insignificant keywords

Targeting certain meaningless keywords, then forcibly explaining and justifying using the Google rankings of these keywords.As long as these keywords rank, the promise is fulfilled. After all, some meaningless keywords have virtually no competition. Adding a few more pages, slightly increasing content, and assisting with a few backlinks can push the ranking up. Previously, a foreign trade SOHO consulted me. He wanted to buy a service package from a marketing promotion company, and sent me materials saying that company did Google promotion. I glanced at it briefly: website building plus Google SEO promotion, the cost wasn't low, nearly 30,000 per year for services. The materials had a case study saying Google ranking reached the first page, with a screenshot. I looked at the search term and instantly understood the trick: a 5-word long-tail keyword (extremely low search volume). Looking at the webpage title of that site, it exactly contained those 5 words. Just one 5-word long-tail term ranked on Google's first page, and then they used it in ads to fool novices. Who gave you the courage to put that in promotional materials?! Clearly aimed at tricking those who don't understand. What's the concept of a 5-word long-tail search term? For example, 'face mask' – he can't rank for the broad term. Okay, 'hydrating face mask' – still no ranking. Then 'beauty hydrating face mask'? Still no ranking. Then 'beauty hydrating whitening face mask'? Still no ranking. Then I asked him to question the service provider, asking if such low-competition long-tail terms even count. The other party said Google first-page ranking keywords, even very long-tail ones count, and the right of interpretation belongs to them. Hah, all I can say is, there are really many wealthy people among us foreign traders~

Trick two: Guaranteeing rankings for specific keywords, with refunds for ineffective results

Generally speaking, the more difficult the keyword to optimize, the higher the corresponding fee.。Some companies or individuals charge based on specific keywords, promising to get them to the first page. In such cases, you need to deeply understand their actual capabilities. You can't just cooperate casually because of a so-called 'no results, no payment' promise. After all, in this industry, there are companies that engage in disputes, renege, and lack professionalism. Many SEO service companies don't have complete, transparent, and credible client case studies because they simply lack the capability. There are also many that promote themselves as White Hat SEO service companies, showcasing some so-called client cases. Some are vague, with content not detailed enough; some gloss over the specifics of how the optimization was completed. Those with a bit more capability would at least list what optimization work was done, how they managed to acquire some high-quality backlinks, and finally how they improved the website's ranking, achieving relatively ideal results. Some have indeed done cases meticulously, but only as a showcase project, a means to gain trust and secure orders.Once they really take on many other orders, the service quality is completely incomparable to the showcased cases. You must understand, in the service industry, especially one with such strong professionalism, competitiveness, and great uncertainty, once the number of clients increases, it's inevitable that the initial service quality cannot be maintained, and everything gets averaged out. Without adding professional staff, if orders double, they can't keep up.Friends who have run their own companies know that labor cost is the highest part of management costs. And once staffing is not timely or professionalism is lacking, with so many client orders on hand, it's impossible to patiently handle each one individually. When would they ever finish? Who will honestly do link building for you? No one! I believe almost 90% of service providers in the foreign trade SEO service circle won't do this. To understand your industry, research good websites in the industry, and then find ways to get backlinks from these websites—such effort and time are not something you get by paying an average package price. Those who can truly achieve this level require high-end customized services. Going through all that trouble, and still not necessarily obtaining high-quality backlinks—wouldn't it be better to share profits from inquiries and orders? It's like a clueless male customer visiting a sex worker, instructing her to say 'I love you' later and not to fake moan. Would the sex worker be willing? Damn, there's no emotional connection with you, yet you want me to say 'I love you' and not fake moan. How long would that drag on? Fake a few moans, finish quickly, and rest early to wrap up. Perhaps you suspect I'm making an innuendo, but isn't that exactly the point? Anyway, the cost of spamming backlinks is low, and there's little loss if it fails. If Google hasn't detected it yet and some effects appear, then quickly discuss upgrading your package plan with you. See, it's working! Then after you pay, Google detects the cheating, delivers a heavy penalty, rankings plummet straight down, and indexed pages drastically decrease. Want your money back? Once the money is in the pocket, is it that easy to get back? Many Google SEO service providers in the market offer guaranteed rankings or fast ranking services, especially the so-called fast ones, which basically use black-hat SEO techniques or more or less subtly incorporate some black-hat methods to gain rankings. Even if temporary results are achieved, they are difficult to sustain. In reality, the effects provided by SEO service providers are time-lagged; you can only see how effective they truly are at least three to four months after the work is done. So, those promoting speed are inherently deceptive. 而Guaranteeing traffic is the simplest. Directly purchase traffic from traffic platforms—it's very cheap.I know a friend who does English online marketing; he mainly does media buy, which means buying paid traffic (such as FB ad traffic and traffic from various traffic exchange platforms) to run offers provided by foreign advertisers to earn US dollars. Spending a little money casually can easily get tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of foreign IP visits. Guaranteeing inquiriesis actually also simple.Directly use software to simulate sending mass inquiries.There are plenty of free email services abroad, and various bulk-sold corporate email accounts with different domains, costing very little. With so many backup emails, even if you have suspicions, you have no substantial evidence to prove the service company faked them. Anyway, the number of inquiries is guaranteed for you; if you don't get orders, that's your own problem.

Misunderstandings about SEO among foreign trade professionals

Just pay someone to do it, be a hands-off manager yourself

Many people think: I've outsourced this job to you. You're the professional; I don't understand, I just need to pay. Help me solve this problem, complete this project well; I don't have time to manage other things, nor do I want to. For SEO, a very important point is that you must personally participateand fully communicate with the service provider in many aspects. Without sufficient communication and no dedicated person responsible for tracking and confirming the project's progress, the project will likely be ineffective later on. If you don't even care, why would I give you 90%? 60% passing is enough, no more—there are other clients to serve.

Eager to see immediate results

Many feel that since they've spent money, they must see results quickly. In fact, some SEO work is very complex; perhaps the website you previously built with someone else has an unreasonable structure or various issues, and the service provider needs to slowly modify and optimize it for you. Usually, websites ranking on the first page of Google, unless competition is indeed very low, are rarely newly established and indexed sites. Some foreign traders understand that white-hat SEO takes time, but they are impatient, so they can't help but urge the service provider for results, which also puts great operational pressure on the service provider. „Why hasn“t the ranking improved yet? It„s been half a month.“ „Sorry, new websites take time for Google to index, and rankings with white-hat SEO require time. It“s not that fast.„ „Then give me an exact deadline—when can I see rankings?“ „...“ It is advised to lower expectations regarding timeliness and not place all hopes entirely on website SEO, dreaming daily of lying back and receiving inquiries. Your website is your virtual asset; it requires careful management. Things that can quickly increase asset value with money are not long-lasting. So understand one thing: haste makes waste.

Thinking content marketing is suitable for every industry

I previously wrote an article stating:Products for Industrial Use are easier to do Google SEO and content marketing. In most cases, products for Residential use (daily necessities, household items, fast-moving consumer goods, etc.) face greater difficulty competing for rankings on Google because the first page is almost all e-commerce platforms.

Whereas the latter, industrial use products, have much lower competition difficulty for rankings, making it easier to compete for product keywords or product category keywords for ranking. Moreover, some products are very specialized, with specific application fields; those unfamiliar with the industry know nothing about them, so it's more like a small niche. It can be said thatIndustrial use products are relatively more suitable for optimization and content marketing, obtaining higher-quality traffic, which then converts into effective inquiries.

It's not that all Residential use products are difficult to convert organic traffic into inquiries via SEO content marketing; I believe some products are like that. For example, most daily necessities and common goods, with low value and no experiential aspect, where social media corporate accounts struggle to spread products and gain followers slowly, and end-users are not keen on searching for these products—using SEO and content marketing to pull traffic and convert inquiries for these is not very effective.

Of course, among products for residential use, there are many types that are suitable. For example, digital products, smart home devices, and electronic products themselves offer a high degree of experience and are easily spread on social platforms. In such cases, building a website, driving traffic, converting leads, and generating inquiries are all feasible. There are many good examples, which I won't list here.

However, content marketing is not easy to do.Because:

• If you write it yourself, without a certain level of skill and sufficient time, you cannot produce more than 10 high-quality English articles.
• Secondly, if you find writers on outsourcing platforms to write, just testing and screening writers will take a lot of time and effort. The quality of the writing may completely disappoint you, as the content quality may be far inferior to the articles on websites that currently rank well on Google.
• Additionally, the direction of the content written is also very important. It requires keyword research and analysis of search demand, and then considering what content to write that can generate search traffic.If you write a lot of articles that no one is interested in or searches for, it's also a waste of effort.

Basically, among the English B2B websites I know that do content marketing well, most are done by themselves, many in the machinery industry. Most of the articles are written by themselves, and a small part is outsourced. The articles they write themselves are revised and polished by foreigners, spending a lot of effort on content creation. They have all persisted for at least one or two years, gradually seeing stable increases in website traffic and a gradual increase in naturally generated inquiries each month.

Not actively driving traffic yourself

There are many social platforms now, such as Facebook groups, Instagram, Quora, and many other platforms that can drive traffic. If you don't understand them yourself, can you expect service providers to help you publish content and drive traffic? Although a few private or small-scale studio service providers might help you with such specific services, 99% of service providers will not do it for you. You need to value the traffic from social platforms yourself, use copywriting, images, and creative videos, and combine them with content marketing to actively drive traffic to your website. Although both off-site traffic driving and content marketing are difficult, if you are determined, you can gradually build them up; it just requires continuous effort, learning, and persistence. Of course, there is an opportunity cost. The same time and effort could also be spent on expanding business and increasing sales staff. Therefore, if you are determined to focus on marketing, it's better to specifically hire someone to specialize in promotion and optimization.

High-quality backlinks are difficult to obtain, but not impossible

For corporate websites of this type, the number of pages is too small. Including product pages, there are only a few dozen pages in total. The order of magnitude of page indexing is too low, and the page quality is relatively low because many page structures are similar, such as product pages. So, the only way is to try to do more content marketing,writing long and in-depth articles around your products, industry, services, technical points, and other aspects. All articles must be written around your products, industry, or service content. Then, for the off-site part, it's about continuously mining valuable external links. Of course, this is a very difficult step. High-quality websites generally won't give you links and may not even respond to you. Social value needs to be exchanged, and development requires win-win situations. What value have you added to the other party? Why should they give you an external link? So these aspects are worth thinking about. If you want to stand out among the many competitors in Google rankings, relying solely on keywords is not enough. It can only ensure that your optimization direction is correct. Relying solely on on-site SEO is also completely insufficient because many of your competing peers do on-site SEO better, so it's hard to directly create a gap in these areas. However, if you have a few more high-quality backlinks, it's like going for a job interview with several weighty recommendation letters from well-known industry professionals, which may allow you to directly surpass other competitors. But of course, the difficulty is great. However, if you can write high-quality, sufficiently lengthy Killer Posts and submit them to websites with high authority in the industry to obtain backlinks on article pages, that is also a method. Additionally, assist by using content marketing on social media to drive traffic and shares, gaining reviews.

Not prioritizing the production of video resources

In recent years, video has becomea very important content for SEO optimization of foreign trade websites.1.3 billion people worldwide use YouTube.The statistics for video plays on YouTube and Facebook have grown rapidly in the past two years. Google also pays more attention to video and places it in search engine results pages (SERPs). If you are already planning to do some online marketing promotion, then YouTube videos should not be overlooked. You can try recording some short videos: such as company introductions, product demonstrations, production processes, quality control, product selection advice, and even compilations of clips from client visits to the company.Then, on othersocial media sharing platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, share the videos to gain traffic and links to the company website.

Comparing prices, I want a cheaper service provider

It must be said that Chinese people indeed strongly believe in the term 'cost-performance ratio'. You need to know thatcompanies that provide truly beneficial SEO services can never achieve it by spending just a few thousand dollars.Because this is a very labor-intensive process that requires continuous management, and labor costs will not be low. Therefore, if you are confident that the service provider you found has good technical skills, sufficient background in English optimization, excellent customer cases, and you have also researched and understood the real reviews from customers who have purchased their services. If the price is indeed significantly higher than other service providers, I can only say that the higher price is justified. And if you choose a service provider by comparing them like ordinary commodities—this one is expensive, that one is cheaper—you may end up suffering the most losses. Because you pay a lot of money but ultimately get nothing of value. Another common question is: Should SEO be outsourced to foreigners? For example, Indians. Outsourcing SEO to Indians I often receive cold emails from Indians in my inbox, most of which are about helping with SEO to improve rankings. Indians are indeed globally renowned in the software outsourcing industry because of their low costs—only about one-third of European and American labor costs—and generally good English communication skills. There are good Indian SEO teams with decent technical skills, and their prices are not necessarily cheap. However, most of what you can find are cheap options, with generally mediocre service and quality, and they tend to procrastinate and lack attention to detail. You need to understand that when it comes to professional services, there is no such thing as cheap and good value. Nevertheless, Indian quotes are much more reasonable compared to domestic ones. At least domestically, companies like China Enterprise Power quote tens of thousands for building an ordinary corporate website, which is really ridiculous.

Feeling complacent once rankings improve

After reading all the above, you shouldn't have the idea of a one-time, permanent solution, right? Rankings are dynamic; being on the first page now doesn't mean staying there forever. Google's algorithm might update, causing your ranking to drop significantly, or other websites might do a lot of optimization work and surpass you. Therefore,Doing Google SEO requires persistence and long-term effort. With the right optimization mindset, a certain level of technical foundation, and sufficient effort, you may see returns. It's not about putting in a little effort and expecting immediate rewards.

Besides SEO services, what else should you pay for?

Specialized SEO books and training

I've actually already recommended some basic introductory books(Naiba's note: For example, this book "SEO实战密码", although it's a bit dated, as an introductory SEO book, it's much more reliable than other similar books). Of course, sometimes if you lack initiative in learning, you might need to enroll in some high-quality training. There are many Google SEO training courses available, and their quality varies depending on the instructor's expertise and whether they have real practical experience. If you're unsure, start by reading books. If your English foundation is decent, there's plenty of text and video content on Google and YouTube for self-learning. Knowing some basic SEO yourself will at least enable more efficient communication with service providers and allow you to make basic judgments about the quality of their services.  

SEO analysis tools

You may need to use professional SEO tools to check various website metrics, such as indexing volume, backlinks, rankings, competition difficulty, etc. Here are some professional analysis tools you should roughly understand.

• Ahrefs
• SEMrush
• Majestic
• SimilarWeb
• KWfinder
• LinkMiner
• SERPChecker
• SERPWatcher

Specific usage methods can be found on Google and Baidu. It's not about having many tools; having 2-3 that you're comfortable using is sufficient.

Professional WordPress SEO Plugin

The Yoast SEO Plugin is the most popular professional SEO plugin in the WordPress world. Of course, you can use it for free. After using the free version for six months to a year and becoming proficient, you can consider upgrading to the paid version. The paid premium version includes many very useful additional features.(Naiba's note: For the Yoast SEO Plugin premium version, unless you already have a complete understanding of SEO and know how to operate keywords, you need to purchase it. Otherwise, even if you buy it, you'll only use the features of the free version. Additionally, the premium version features are almost unnecessary for Chinese websites. Naibabiji currently usesRank Math）

Part-time or full-time online marketing personnel

If you plan to handle some SEO tasks in-house, such as hiring writers to create content for you. Then finding writers, selecting writers, trying out services, managing tasks on outsourcing platforms, communicating tasks with writers, confirming details, managing multiple writers, etc., all require significant time and effort. If you have dedicated personnel to handle these tasks for you, although it adds some labor costs, it is still very worthwhile.

Besides SEO, what other options are there to get inquiries?

Google Adwords keyword bidding ads and Facebook ads. These ads can achieve precise targeting, and you can control the budget yourself. Google Adwords directly acquires traffic through keyword ad exposure, which is a more direct method. Of course, the effectiveness varies depending on the product and industry; it's not the same for everyone. The most critical aspect of doing this is to research which keywords to target. If the keywords are chosen appropriately, it's fine; if chosen incorrectly, it will feel like burning money. So, starting with a small budget, like a few thousand dollars, for a few attempts is acceptable. However, I must emphasize that choosing which keywords to target in which market is very important. You need to research it yourself or let a professional service company provide suggestions or handle it for you. Another option is Facebook ads. It can be said that currently, for paid advertising, besides Google, the second-largest advertiser is Facebook, though it mainly focuses on C-end products. If you want to learn about Facebook ads, you can first search for some information on Google to see if it's suitable for you to run ads.The purpose of Naibabiji reposting this article is to remind those who want to spend money on SEO for their foreign trade websites that the vast majority are scams. Many people may not believe Naibabiji saying this, but as a famous figure in the foreign trade circle, I think it should still be persuasive. So? Since paying for SEO is no longer an option, consider doing it yourself. Start by reading a few related articles:

• Steps_Considerations_Precautions_Building Methods for English Foreign Trade Websites
• 10 Methods to Improve Website SEO Ranking_Easy-to-Understand SEO Techniques