How Airwallex Spreads Its $5.5-Billion Product Across the Globe With International SEO and Content Distribution

I’ll scream this one from the mountain tops: The best product ideas — whether for home appliances or enterprise tech — come from founders and entrepreneurs who stumble across a need in their lived experience. 

Yet another instance occurred in 2015 when four entrepreneurs started a café in Melbourne with aspirations of creating a global franchise. 

While establishing an efficient supply chain, they encountered significant friction points. They found it particularly challenging to purchase supplies from China, where they were burdened by high remittance fees and slow fund transfers. Recognizing these challenges, they founded Airwallex with the mission to create a financial infrastructure that seamlessly supports cross-border operations on a global scale.

Fast forward eight years — Jack Zhang and the rest of the café founders now partner with global investment firms to provide startups with all the multi-currency financial services they may need. It’s been quite a ride for the Asia-Pacific (APAC)-based FinTech unicorn. 

Here’s some of what the FinTech unicorn has accomplished since its 2015 launch: 

• Over 100,000 customers across the globe
• A $5.5 billion valuation in 2022
• $902 million raised across 12 funding rounds
• Nearly 1.8 million global visitors to its website each month
• Local and SWIFT payouts supported in 151 countries across 40 currencies

In this case study, we’ll look at how the Airwallex founders have realized their dream of a truly global brand using international SEO and content marketing.  

Airwallex Is a Truly International FinTech Platform

As a company born from the frustration of international money transfer, the Airwallex team has a perfect understanding of the pains facing modern business owners. That’s why it’s created a range of software products and money management APIs for businesses around the world — global accounts, foreign exchange and transfers, payment links and plugins, borderless cards, and more. 

Airwallex made new inroads in its global aspirations by acquiring a Chinese payment platform and securing an online payment license for the country in early 2023. This status as an approved third-party platform opens up Airwallex to a massive regional market that contains tens of millions of businesses. 

Just a few months after this announcement, we see that the strategic move is already making a difference — according to SimilarWeb, over 25% of all Airwallex traffic in July 2023 was from China. 

By securing the latest license, Airwallex now operates in all key financial markets around the globe, including Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. 

Looking at total website traffic, it’s easy to see which markets are most interested in Airwallex’s services: China, the United States, and the United Kingdom. 

While this regional traffic split is great for an aspiring global SaaS brand, it also represents some logistical challenges. Mainly, language.

The slight differences in spelling and grammar between the US, UK, Australia, and other English-speaking countries are a small hurdle. But more than 32% of Airwallex’s total web traffic currently comes from China, Hong Kong, and Singapore, which use Standard Chinese or other Sinitic characters. 

Even when we look at Airwallex’s organic traffic, non-English countries still make up a sizable share of the traffic at just under 16%.

Hong Kong’s 6,400 monthly organic visits seems like peanuts, especially in comparison to some of the heavy hitters we feature in these case studies. But remember, not all traffic is equal. 

According to the International Trade Administration, financial services represents over 20% of the city’s $369-billion GDP, and it’s home to 78 of the top 100 banks in the world. Essentially, it serves as a “springboard” for two key business types: 

1. Those looking to access the market of Mainland China
2. Chinese companies looking to go global 

So, we’ve established that Airwallex truly is an international brand and that its ability to market effectively to both English and non-English regions is critical to its success. So, the question now becomes: How does it do it?

The answer: international SEO. 

What Is International SEO? 

International SEO is the strategy of optimizing a website so search engines can more easily and efficiently identify which countries you want to target and which languages you use to conduct business. The SEO experts at Moz encourage you to think of it as “international geotargeting” for your web content.

Essentially, international SEO is about showing search engines that the content you’ve created is specifically designed for certain populations or regions. This process involves using specific URL structures, keywords, and content to achieve three end goals:

• Language targeting

• Country targeting

• Regionally relevant content

As tech continues to break down boundaries across the globe, international SEO is now a key part of enterprise SEO for SaaS brands like Airwallex, particularly FinTech brands like Airwallex with international transfer and foreign exchange features. 

Key Components of an International SEO Strategy 

Like any SaaS marketing strategy, international SEO involves lots of research, preparation, and monitoring. Once you know the different countries and languages you need to target, here are some of the key components to prioritize throughout the process:

URL Structure

There are a few different options available for structuring your URL to attract visitors from across the globe, mainly country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs), subdomains, and subdirectories (subfolders). 

• ccTLD: domain.us
• Subdomain: us.domain.com
• Subdirectory: domain.com/us/

These differences in URL structure can make a difference in your organic performance, both in terms of user behavior and search engine crawling and ranking, so don’t make a rash decision at this stage!

Hreflang Tags 

A type of HTML tag that you may not be so familiar with, hreflang tags basically tell the search engine which language you want displayed to a website visitor who searches from a particular geographic region. Hreflang tags also help you avoid duplicate content penalties for pages that may appear similar to search engines, like ones with American versus British spelling. 

Asana’s multilingual ToFU content strategy is a great example of how hreflang tags help SaaS brands penetrate regional markets.

Regional Content Marketing 

The region-specific mindset can’t just stop with the SEO mainstays; you need to make sure that your blog content, link-building outreach, and even social posts are tailored for a specific audience.

Benefits of Airwallex’s International SEO Strategy

For a FinTech company like Airwallex that operates in the US, Canada, UK, and APAC regions, an international SEO strategy is immensely beneficial to both the brand and the bottom line. Not only does it increase market penetration in new regions, but it also improves conversion rates and customer experiences and makes it easier to stay in line with regional regulations.  

• Market Penetration: FinTech is all about innovative financial solutions, and different regions might have different financial pain points and preferences. By optimizing for each region, you can effectively communicate solutions tailored to that specific market. 

It also inherently creates better content market fit — instead of relying on Google or YouTube to translate content (shoddily), companies can take proactive steps and create content that fits regional markets. 

Using the correct URL structures, hreflang tags, and regional keywords also helps increase the overall visibility of the brand in the SERPs. 

• User Experience: By localizing content, the FinTech company ensures that its platform or website is user-friendly, resonating with the local culture and language nuances of its diverse user base. This can boost trust and engagement.
• Better Conversion Rates: If users land on a page that’s not in their language or isn’t culturally relevant, they might leave. But with tailored content and localization, the company can experience higher retention and conversion rates.
• Regulatory and Cultural Alignment: Especially in FinTech, understanding regional regulations and cultural preferences around money and finance is crucial. A well-implemented international SEO strategy demonstrates alignment and understanding of these nuances, building trust with users.

For Airwallex and other companies with a global user base, international SEO isn’t just a good-to-have; it’s a necessity. It ensures that the company is effectively reaching its diverse user segments, catering to their unique needs, and optimizing for maximum growth and user engagement in each region.

Now, let’s see how Airwallex puts this strategy into action across its own site. 

How Airwallex Reaches Its Global Audience With International SEO

As you just read, there are a number of steps and considerations involved in making web content available to potential users around the world in a user-friendly way. 

Airwallex’s approach to international SEO currently brings in about 13.2% of its total traffic through organic. Overall, the site brings in traffic primarily via direct search, referrals, and organic search. 

Here’s a complete look at the Airwallex marketing engine: 

Structuring Its Site With Country-Specific Subfolders

Airwallex delivers its international content through subfolders (subdirectories) of its main site, providing each region with its own section of the website.

According to Moz, using the subdirectory strategy for international SEO is easier to maintain than other methods like ccTLDs. Plus, it helps consolidate domain authority. That said, this URL format isn’t without its downside — the SEO experts find that subdirectories send a weaker signal to search engines than subdomains or ccTLDs. 

The airwallex.com domain currently has 1,687 pages, so each country-specific subfolder represents under 18% of the total site. Here’s how Airwallex has currently divvied up its site across other key countries using the subfolder URL format: 

Each of these country- and region-specific subfolders contains key product, blog, and resource pages that help Airwallex reach aspiring international business owners. The brand improves performance further by optimizing these pages with hreflang tags, specific keywords, and regionally relevant content. 

Ensuring Key Pages Are Available Across Regions and Languages

Looking at the performance of the top (non-home) page for each of the regional subfolders, you see that the top interest for FinTech consumers — and possibly the intent — shifts across regions. 

Top Page in Australia

The top page in Airwallex’s /au/ subdirectory is a list-based article going over the best business bank accounts in Australia. The post also compares the benefits, limitations, and major fees for business accounts offered by top Australian companies.

It’s a great mid-funnel blog post — complete with concise copy, informative graphics, and valuable information. It also contains numerous CTAs directing potential customers towards Airwallex accounts and ultimately positioning the FinTech brand as the ideal solution. 

Top Page in the US

In the United States, Airwallex sees the most organic traffic success on its product page for virtual Visa cards. This is good news, considering that the United States is a huge market for FinTech. 

The virtual Visa page explains how Airwallex virtual accounts help businesses quickly set up employees with secure cards that have low fees, handle multiple currencies, and, most importantly, make expensing very easy. 

With lots of product screenshots, compelling copy, and ample prompts to contact sales or begin a free trial, Airwallex is perfectly positioned to turn this traffic into qualified leads and, ideally, new customers.

Top Page in the UK

Like its Australian target audience, Airwallex’s British contingent is most interested in educational blog content. In this case, one titled “What is an account number and sort code?”

The educational blog post explains what sort codes and account numbers are in the banking industry. But the Airwallex team goes a step further to include its product in an organic way by explaining to its UK customers that Airwallex products may appear different from traditional banking products due to their digitally native nature.

Top Page in China

The majority of traffic moving through the Chinese and Hong Kong subfolders heads straight to the Airwallex homepage. Considering that these subfolders have less blog content for top-of- and mid-funnel support, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The brand is also just four months into its status as a licensed third-party payment platform in China, so the marketing infrastructure is sure to grow over the coming year. 

In the meantime, getting potential customers to the Airwallex homepage is the best option. Homepages are typically one of the most meticulously designed pages on a website, and Airwallex is no exception, including a range of information and next steps for interested parties:

• A hero section carousel displaying the platform in action across mobile and desktop
• Immediate CTAs pushing visitors towards a free trial or five-minute product demonstration
• Links to the three main Airwallex offerings: business accounts, a core API, and embedded financial components
• A follow-up section with resource and blog content for each of the three main offerings
• All relevant security licenses and requirements

Through its international SEO strategy, Airwallex brings the right content to the right site visitors, no matter where they are around the world. And by focusing specifically on major financial hubs in the East and West, the FinTech brand is well-positioned to achieve its original dream of a truly global enterprise. 

Bonus: Bringing International SEO to Social Media 

Naturally, as soon as conversations turn to search engine optimization, people think of websites. It’s a habit we need to adjust, even in the realm of international SEO. Video streaming and social media platforms also run on complex algorithms that can be gamed in a similar fashion. 

Remember: Organic traffic is only 13% of Airwallex’s total site traffic. Relying on direct and referral traffic is great, but it’s always good to engage potential customers across other channels as well. 

This is where YouTube comes into play.

YouTube

The Airwallex YouTube channel is only five years old and has a relatively modest following with 1.52K subscribers. Yet it’s earned nearly 2 million views across just 100 videos; that’s not a bad start. Part of this success comes from the fact that Airwallex applies international SEO best practices to its video content as well.

You already know that YouTube SEO is crucial to success in our mobile-first age, but you may not know that this extends to optimizing for potential customers around the globe.  But Airwallex definitely got the memo; you can even tell by its YouTube handle — @airwallex.global. 

Here’s a look at the brand’s top videos sorted by popularity. It’s interesting to note that three of its top 12 videos have a Chinese voice-over, and many of the English videos feature subtitles in both English and Chinese. 

Airwallex even goes the extra mile to make its content feel regional, using accented voice-overs that match the target audience of each video. 

Looking at the latest videos, there’s a definite trend: Airwallex is creating content for its non-English customers in the APAC region. This makes sense, considering the recent licensing status and strategic importance of regions like Hong Kong.