In a recent SEJ think tank webinar webinar "International SEO Disaster Prevention", Motoko Hunt and I were asked about building a business case to make an investment to properly integrate the hreflang elements of the site. Securing the budget to integrate functionality into your site can be a challenge for site owners of all sizes. The purpose of the business case is to justify the cost by showing the current problem and the requirements and costs associated with the repair. One of the biggest lessons I learned while at IBM was how to create a 3-5 slide executive business case presentation. The easier you can maintain these requirements by minimizing technical jargon and complexity, the more likely you are to approve your project.
You need to elaborate on the implementation planning process and all the technical elements. These are my recommendations for developing the basic business case of the hreflang implementation. Problem statement In this section, you need to analyze the actual problems you are facing and their magnitude. advertisement Continue reading below For photo color correction services most managers, they are about losing revenue and engagement opportunities. Also, keep in mind that most of them don't know what hreflang is and why they should care, so you need to explain it to them. An example problem statement looks like this: Over the 22-country version of the site, 60% of the ranked pages belong to another country. The pages displayed in the search results are from another country, so searchers cannot click to access the site.
If they do so land on the page, they will encounter different currencies, expensive shipping costs, or different languages. Both of these can lead to lost opportunities. The best way to indicate a problem is to have one of the markets send a screen capture of the problem on an unranked non-local page (for example, an Australian user is viewing a page in British Pounds, or Argentine search visitors are viewing) Spain vs Argentine Peso Euro). advertisement Continue reading below You can also use data from the Google Search Console to clarify the point. The following example shows impressions and clicks on a global English page from a market that has its own local version of the page. How to Develop a Solid Business Case for Hreflang Implementations In these four markets alone, the global version of the page was viewed more than 134,000 times, with nearly 4,000 false clicks.