Technical SEO for import and export companies starts with a question most trading websites never answer: which countries are you trying to be found in, and in which languages? I work with exporters, importers, sourcing agents and trading houses to build the technical structure that lets procurement teams abroad find their product catalogue, not just their homepage.
How overseas buyers search for a supplier
A buyer sourcing a product rarely searches for a company name. They search for the product with qualifiers: material, grade, specification, certification, “manufacturer”, “supplier”, “wholesale”, “OEM”, sometimes the country of origin. Some search in English, many in their own language. Some arrive through B2B marketplaces and then visit the supplier’s own website to check whether the company is real.
That last visit is where technical weaknesses cost deals. A buyer who finds an exporter on a marketplace and then sees a slow, half-broken website with a single “products” page and a Gmail address will move on. Your own site must be fast from the buyer’s country, show a structured catalogue and look like a business that has been around a while.
A catalogue that matches how procurement thinks
Trading websites often hold a long product range in one of two broken ways: everything on one huge page, or a gallery of images with product names written only inside the pictures. Neither gives search engines anything to rank. The structure I usually build:
- Category pages by product family, each with a short description, the materials or grades offered and links to every product.
- Product pages with specifications in an HTML table (dimensions, material, finish, packing, minimum order quantity, lead time), not in an image.
- HS codes in text where you know them and they are correct. Some buyers and customs agents search for them, and they help a search engine understand exactly what the product is. Check them with your freight forwarder or customs broker.
- Certification and compliance pages for the standards your goods meet, written as text with the certificate available as a download.
- Product markup with brand, model and material. I leave price out where you quote on request rather than inventing a number.
For importers and distributors the structure flips: pages by brand you represent and by sector you supply, with clear statements about the territories you cover.
Choosing a structure for international targeting
| Option | Works well when | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| One English site, no regional versions | Buyers in all target markets search in English and the offer is identical everywhere | Missing buyers who search in their own language |
| Subfolders, such as /de/ and /fr/, on one domain | You want language or country versions without splitting authority | hreflang must be complete and every version needs real translation |
| Country domains, such as .de or .co.uk | You have a registered entity, staff or stock in that country | Each domain starts with little authority and needs its own maintenance |
For most small and mid-sized trading companies, subfolders on a single domain are the practical choice. hreflang annotations then tell search engines which version suits which language or country. I set them up with return links between every pair and an x-default, and check them regularly, because a broken hreflang set is one of the most common technical faults on international sites.
I also advise against automatic redirects based on a visitor’s IP address. They can stop search engines crawling all language versions, and they annoy a buyer travelling abroad. A visible language switcher is safer.
Speed for buyers on the other side of the world
A trading company’s website is often hosted cheaply in its home country, while its buyers sit thousands of kilometres away. Each request travels further, and a heavy page with large product photos feels slow. A content delivery network (CDN) caches pages and images closer to the buyer, and modern image formats cut file sizes sharply. I test load times from the regions you sell to, not just from where the server is.
Pakistan-based exporters and buyers in Europe, the Gulf or North America
I am based in Karachi and work with exporters here as well as with trading companies elsewhere. For Pakistani exporters, the technical points I check most often are a professional email domain matching the website, a physical business address and contact details buyers can verify, English product pages written for a foreign buyer (not translated from internal Urdu notes), and a site fast enough from the target market. Working hours overlap comfortably with the Gulf and with Europe’s mornings, and I report asynchronously for clients in the Americas.
What an engagement includes
- Market and language mapping: which countries and languages you are actually targeting
- Catalogue architecture with categories, product templates and internal linking
- hreflang setup or repair, and an international targeting review in Search Console
- Product and Organization markup
- CDN and image optimisation recommendations, tested from target regions
- A prioritised fix list your developer can work through
The wider scope is on my technical SEO services page. To see how I write up findings, browse my case studies.
Questions trading companies ask
We are listed on B2B marketplaces. Do we still need our own website?
Yes. Marketplaces are useful for discovery, but your listing competes with every rival on the same page, and you do not own it. Buyers check the supplier’s website to verify them, and your own catalogue can rank for specific product searches that the marketplace page does not target.
Should we translate the whole catalogue?
Not necessarily. Start with the languages of your strongest markets and your best-selling categories. A smaller, properly translated section with correct hreflang is better than a machine-translated copy of everything, which reads poorly to buyers.
Can we show prices on the website?
That is a commercial decision. Technically, both work. If you quote on request, say so clearly and show minimum order quantities and lead times instead. Just do not put placeholder prices into product markup.
If you want overseas buyers to find your product range rather than your competitors’ marketplace listings, request a free audit of your export website. I will check how it performs in the countries you sell to.