Don't Dream – Google SEO for Foreign Trade Websites Isn't Something You Can Just Pay For to Succeed

For some website owners or company executives who have not been exposed tobuilding your own websitethey naively believe that aForeign Trade Independent Websitesjust needs to pay a web development company to build the appearance, thenpayhave them helpdo Google SEOcan achieve good rankings, thereby attracting traffic to the website and converting it into orders.Don't dream about it. If it were really that simple, give me one reason why a web development company wouldn't handle foreign trade orders themselves:

1. Don't want to do it? Who wouldn't want to do something that makes money.
2. Don't know how? If optimization is so simple, just hire someone if you don't know how.

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 NaibaRepostedLiaoshen„s “How Deep is the Water in Foreign Trade Website Promotion and Google SEO Ranking?" article, andaddedsomepersonal insightsto form this combined article,hoping that foreign trade website owners won't waste money or think about taking shortcuts.Note:Green text is quoted from Liaoshen's original content,Burgundy 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 web development company has already told you about the benefits website SEO can bring. What is the conventionalSEOAapproach? It can generally be divided into the following steps:

1. Research the target industry and analyze keywords;
2. Register a domain name 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. Build internal links and external links for the articles;
6. Perform basic SEO optimization for the 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—Google SEO for foreign trade websites isn't something you can just pay for and succeed at.

Analysis of why paying for Google SEO is unrealistic

Not being an industry professional, unable to write original articles

In the field of website SEO, there„s a saying: “Content is king, backlinks are emperor." This means that good website content is the true key. So, how can you expect someone outside the industry to help you write substantive, industry-specific content? Especially when it comes to English articles that need to be updated regularly and irregularly.

Not a professional SEO practitioner, lacking technical skills

You must believe that a web development company cannot possibly handle Google SEO promotion for only your website; it's likely one staff member is responsible for optimizing N websites on Google. SEO is a very time-consuming task. I don't believe these web development company staff 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—that's it.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 most being exaggerated in effectiveness, making false promises, and being unqualified. In my opinion, a professional SEO service provider should at least have convincing capabilities or background in English online marketing, after all, SEO in the English online world is significantly different from Chinese SEO. Most importantly, based on a certain level of English proficiency and continuous learning ability, achieving the mining of high-quality English resources is essential. This requires practitioners to continuously accumulate and explore, gradually building up a mindset for English writing. 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 once discovered by search engines, it leads to irreversible consequences;
• Gray Hat SEO: Everything is left to fate; I don't care about rankings, I update, I'm happy.

Black Hat SEO doesn„t truly consider the reasonable content of a website or the actual needs of search users; it merely engages in speculative operations, exploiting some vulnerabilities in search engine rankings to try to “take shortcuts„ for ranking improvements. The most common practice is piling up 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 users' search intent and 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 SEO and adopt safe White Hat SEO as the right path. Qualified service providers must have a truly deep 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, and guarantee inquiries? They even say no payment if there's no effect.Promoting so-called „guaranteed rankings“ is just a better way to sell, making clients feel that choosing this service provider is safe and the money is well spent. So-called guaranteed rankings have several tricks:

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

Targeting certain meaningless keywords, then using Google rankings for these keywords to forcefully explain and justify. As long as these keywords have rankings, the promise is fulfilled. After all, some meaningless keywords have no competition; just adding a few pages with a bit more content and some backlinks can push the rankings up. Previously, a foreign trade SOHO consulted me. He wanted to buy a service package from a marketing promotion company, and he sent me materials saying that company claimed to do Google promotion. I glanced at it briefly—website building plus Google SEO promotion, with fees not low, nearly 30,000 per year for services. There was a case study in the materials saying that Google ranking reached the first page, with a screenshot. I looked at that search term and instantly understood the trick: a long-tail keyword with 5 English words (extremely low search volume). Looking further at the webpage title of that site, it exactly contained those 5 words. Just one 5-word long-tail keyword ranking on Google's first page, and then they advertise to fool novices. Who gave you the courage to put it in promotional materials?! Clearly, it's meant to trick those who don't understand. What does a 5-word long-tail search term mean? 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 had him ask the service provider if such long-tail, low-competition keywords count. The other party said Google first-page ranking keywords, even very long-tail ones, count, and the interpretation belongs to them. Hah, all I can say is, we foreign traders sure have a lot of wealthy people~

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

Generally speaking, the more difficult the keywords to optimize, the higher the corresponding fees will be.。Some companies or individuals charge based on specific keywords, promising to get them on the first page. In such cases, you need to deeply understand their capabilities. You shouldn't just cooperate casually because of so-called promises of refunds if ineffective. After all, in this industry, there are companies that engage in disputes, renege on promises, 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 specific aspects of how optimization was completed. Those with a bit more capability would at least list what optimization work was done, how they managed to add some high-quality backlinks, and finally improved the website's ranking, achieving relatively ideal results. Some have indeed done cases diligently, but only as an image project to do well, as a means to gain trust and secure orders.After taking on many other orders, the quality of service is completely incomparable to the showcased cases. It's important to know that in the service industry, especially one with such high professionalism, competitiveness, and significant uncertainty, once the number of clients increases, it's inevitable that the original service quality cannot be maintained, and eventually, everything gets averaged out. Without adding professional staff, doubling the orders means they can't be digested in time.Friends who have run their own companies know that labor costs are the highest part of management costs. And if staffing isn't timely or professionalism is lacking, with so many client orders on hand, it's impossible to handle each one patiently—when would it ever get done? Who will honestly do link building for you? No one! I believe almost 90% or more of 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 sites—this level of effort and time isn't something you get by paying an average package price. Those who truly achieve this degree require high-end customized services. Going through all that trouble, and still not guaranteed to get high-quality backlinks, and if there are inquiries or orders, will the profit even cover the share? It's like a clueless male customer visiting a sex worker, telling 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, and 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 clock out. Perhaps you'll question if I'm making an innuendo, but isn't that the principle? Anyway, brushing backlinks is low-cost, and there's little loss if it doesn't succeed. If Google hasn't detected it and some effect is seen, then quickly talk to you about upgrading the package plan. See, it's working! Then after you pay, Google detects the cheating, gives a harsh penalty, rankings plummet straight down, and indexed pages drastically reduce. 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 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 hard to sustain. In reality, the effects from SEO service providers are time-lagged; you won't see how effective it really is until at least three or four months after the work is done. So those promoting speed are inherently deceptive. 而Guaranteeing traffic is the simplest. Directly buy traffic from traffic platforms; it's very cheap.I know a friend who does English online money-making; he mainly does media buy, which means buying paid traffic (like FB ad traffic and traffic from various traffic exchange platforms) to run offers provided by foreign advertisers to earn USD. 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 group 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 doubts, there's no solid evidence to prove the service company faked it. 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 have little effect 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. Actually, some SEO work is very complex; maybe 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 that rank on the first page of Google, unless competition is indeed very low, are rarely newly established and indexed sites. There are also some foreign trade practitioners who understand that white-hat SEO takes time but are impatient by nature, so they can't help but urge the service provider for results, which also puts a lot of operational pressure on the 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's advised to lower expectations regarding timeliness and not place all hopes 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 don't last. So understand one thing: haste makes waste.

Believing content marketing is suitable for any industry

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

For industrial use products, due to lower competition difficulty in rankings, it is easier to compete for product keywords or product category keywords compared to daily necessities. Moreover, some products are highly specialized and have very specific application fields, which people unfamiliar with the industry would not understand at all. Therefore, it is more like a small niche segment. It can be said that,Industrial use products are relatively more suitable for optimization and content marketing, to obtain higher-quality traffic, which can then be converted into effective inquiries.

It is not to say that all Residential use products are difficult to convert organic traffic into inquiries through SEO content marketing; I believe some products are like this. For example, most daily necessities and common goods, with low value and poor experience, are hard to spread and gain followers slowly on social media enterprise accounts, and end-users are not keen on searching for them. For these, using SEO and content marketing to drive traffic and convert inquiries is not very effective.

Of course, among Residential use products, there are still many categories that are suitable. For example, digital products, smart home devices, and electronic products themselves offer good experience and are easy to spread on social platforms. In such cases, building a website, driving traffic, and converting 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 certain skills and sufficient time, you cannot produce more than 10 high-quality English articles.
• Secondly, if you hire writers on outsourcing platforms, just testing and screening writers will take a lot of time and effort. The quality of the writing may completely disappoint you, and the content quality may be far inferior to articles on websites that currently rank well on Google.
• Additionally, the direction of the content is also very important. Keyword research and analysis of search intent are needed, 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 is 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 articles are written by themselves, and a small part are outsourced. Their own articles are revised and polished by foreigners, spending great effort on content creation. They have 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

Now there are many social platforms, such as Facebook groups, Instagram, Quora, etc., which can all 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 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, 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 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 is better to hire someone specifically for promotion and optimization.

High-quality backlinks are hard to obtain, but not impossible to acquire

For enterprise websites of this type, the number of pages is too small; including product pages, there are only a few dozen pages. The order of magnitude of page indexation 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, etc. All articles must be written around your products, industry, or service content. Then, for the off-site part, it is about continuously mining valuable external links. Of course, this is a very difficult step; high-quality websites generally will not 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 considering. If you want to stand out among the many competitors in Google rankings, relying solely on keywords is not enough. It only ensures your optimization direction is correct. Relying entirely on on-site SEO is also insufficient, because many competing peers have better on-site SEO, so it is hard to directly create a gap in these areas. However, if you have several high-quality backlinks, it is like applying for a job with several weighty recommendation letters from well-known industry professionals, which may directly help you 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 valuing the production of video resources

In recent years, video has becomea very important content for SEO optimization of foreign trade websites. Globally, 1.3 billion people use YouTube.The statistics for video play counts on YouTube and Facebook have grown rapidly in recent years. Google also pays more attention to videos and places them 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, or even compilations of client visits to the company.Then share the videos on othersocial media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to gain traffic and links to the company website.

Comparing prices, wanting a cheaper service provider

It must be said that Chinese people indeed strongly believe in the term 'cost-performance ratio'. You need to know that,Companies that provide truly beneficial SEO services can never be achieved by spending just a few thousand dollars.Because this is a highly labor-intensive process that requires ongoing management, and labor costs will not be low. Therefore, if you are confident that the service provider you have found has good technical skills, sufficient English optimization background, and excellent customer cases, and you have also investigated and understood the real reviews from customers who have purchased the service. 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 prices like ordinary goods—this one is expensive, that one is cheaper—you may end up losing the most. Because you pay a lot of money but end up with nothing valuable. 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 you 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. However, Indian quotes are still 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 all that has been said above, you shouldn't have the idea of a one-time solution anymore, right? Rankings are dynamic; being on the first page now doesn't mean staying on the first page 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. So,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 have actually already recommended some basic introductory books(Naiba's note: For example, this book "SEO实战密码", although it's been a few years, as an SEO introductory book, it is 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 such Google SEO training programs, and the quality varies depending on the instructor's level and whether they have real practical experience. If you're unsure, start by reading books. If your English foundation is decent, there is also a lot of content—both text and video—on Google and YouTube that you can learn from on your own. Knowing some basic SEO yourself will at least allow you to communicate more effectively with service providers and 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. Therefore, you should have a general understanding of the following professional analysis tools.

• 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 two that you are comfortable using is sufficient.

Professional WordPress SEO plugins

The Yoast SEO plugin is the most popular professional SEO plugin in the WordPress world. Of course, you can use it for free. Use the free version for six months to a year, and after becoming proficient, you can consider upgrading to the paid version. The paid enhanced version includes many very useful additional features.(Naiba's note: For the Yoast SEO Pro plugin, 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 will only use the features of the free version. Additionally, the professional version features are almost useless for Chinese websites. Naibabiji currently usesRank Math）

Part-time or full-time online marketing personnel

If you plan to handle some SEO work 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 a significant amount of time and effort. If you have someone dedicated to helping you with these tasks, 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 acquires traffic directly through keyword ad exposure, which is a more direct approach. Of course, the effectiveness varies across different products and industries; it's not uniform. The most crucial aspect of this is to thoroughly research which keywords to target. If the keywords are well-chosen, it's fine; if chosen incorrectly, it can feel like burning money. So, it's acceptable to start with a small budget, like a few thousand dollars, for a few attempts. However, I must emphasize that choosing which keywords to target in which market is very important. You need to research it yourself or have a professional service company provide advice or handle the operations. Another option is Facebook advertising. It can be said that currently, for paid advertising, besides Google, the second-largest advertiser is Facebook, though it primarily focuses on B2C products. If you want to learn about Facebook ads, you can first search for some information and materials on Google to assess whether it's suitable for you to run ads yourself.The purpose of Naiba reposting this article is to remind those who want to hire someone to do SEO for their foreign trade websites that the vast majority are scams. Many might not believe Naiba saying this, but as a well-known figure in the foreign trade circle, Liao Shen's statement should still be persuasive, right? So, since paying for SEO is pretty much hopeless, consider doing it yourself. Start by reading a few related articles:

• Steps, Considerations, Precautions, and Building Methods for Creating an English Foreign Trade Website
• 10 Methods to Improve Website SEO Ranking_Simple and Easy-to-Understand SEO Techniques