As one of the biggest markets in Latin America, Brazil is a popular market for companies all across the globe. But how can you ensure that you’re found? As part of our international SEO video series, we take a look into SEO for Brazil with Luiz Bastos.
Let’s start with some interesting facts about Brazil
- Portuguese is spoken in nine countries across four continents
- Brazil is home to the 6th largest population in the world, with 212.7 million inhabitants
- There are 165.3 million internet users in Brazil, making it the 6th largest in the world
- Brazilians spend the most time online in the world, spending on average 10 hours and 8 minutes online every day
Online shopping is the future for SEO in Brazil
Just like other nations around the world, Brazilian shoppers love shopping online. When you take a look at the statistics, Brazil’s growth is expected to be almost twice as high as the world average (11.35%), and even higher than countries like Japan (14.7%), the United States (14.55%), and France (11.68%). This means that if you’re a B2B business, it’s important to work on your online presence straight away, and invest in SEO for Brazil as soon as possible.
Portuguese – isn’t it all the same all over the world?
One big misconception we see is that companies use Brazilian Portuguese for Portugal and Portuguese from Portugal in Brazil. Although they’re both technically the same language, it’s easy for a Portuguese consumer to tell if their content was written for Brazil and vice versa. Plus, when you’re researching keywords, the vocabulary difference will be apparent. This is why if you’re SEOing for Brazil, you need to use Brazilian Portuguese; otherwise it could break your SEO strategy.
Here are some differences to show you what we mean:
| English | Brazilian Portuguese | Portuguese of Portugal |
| cell | celular | telemóvel |
| underwear | calcinha | cueca |
| refrigerator | geladeira | frigorífico |
| Ice cream | sorvete | gelado |
| butchery | açougue | talho |
| sock | meias | peúgas |
Portuguese hreflang tags
Many Brazilian hreflang tags use a generic Portuguese tag “pt”; however, you can use pt-BR instead, showing Google that your website is intended for Brazil.
Tips for Brazilian on-page SEO content
When writing your on-page content, it’s imperative to keep your titles under 60 characters and meta descriptions under 160. You can also keep your headers under 70 characters. If you’re just translating your content, the Brazilian version tends to be much longer, so keep that in mind.
Structured data markup
A great way of keeping ahead of your competition is using structured data markup (schema) for your Brazilian SEO.
Types of structured data you can include are:
- FAQ Pages
- Breadcrumbs
- Events
- Job Postings
- Organization - Logo, Contact, Social profiles
- Product - Offer, Aggregating Rating, Reviews
- Product Carousels
- Videos
Which will look like the following in the SERPs:
You don’t need to worry about being a coder, although getting your IT team to help you automate the process as much as possible is recommended. You can place your structured data file inside the html field <head> or <body> on a particular webpage, making sure that JSON-LD is the file type.
If you’re new to the world of structured data, here are some useful tools to help:
- Technical SEO - Schema Markup Generator (JSON-LD)
- Search Bloom - Schema Markup Generator Tool
- Search and Social Tools - Schema Generator
- Hall Analysis - JSON-LD Schema Generator For SEO
Another tip is to look at "People Also Ask" data, as answering users’ questions in your content and tagging them with structured FAQ page data is a great way to get a rich result in Brazilian SERPs.
Google web stories
Another must for SEO in Brazil is using Google Web Stories, which are currently only available in the US, India and Brazil. They’re only available on mobile devices and must contain at least ten slides which can be full of helpful tips related to your industry.
Building web stories can be done via Google's own plugin for WordPress sites. If you don't use WordPress, you will be challenged to implement this functionality with your developer team. The success of your web stories can be tracked in Google Search Console via the Discovery tab.
Mobile-first SEO is a must for Brazil
74% of eCommerce websites are accessed via mobile devices. Brazil’s internet isn’t the best, so your website must be as fast as possible. To do this, you should:
- Use a modern image format, such as WebP
- Avoid images larger than 100k pixels
- Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network) in Brazil to serve your images
- Keep an eye on your Core Web Vitals metrics
- Use paragraphs of no more than four lines in your text
Final takeaways
To succeed in SEO for Brazil, you need do your research. Learn about your consumer, use A/B testing to see what works best, and most importantly, base your strategy on data. And if you're looking for help in this market, get in touch, we're happy to help.
Watch Luiz's Episode
About Luiz
Luiz holds a bachelor's Degree in Social Communication & Advertising. He has worked with SEO for over ten years, and even ran his own eCommerce business from 2002 to 2009. Luiz currently works as a Senior SEO for the largest SEO agency in Brazil and is responsible for the SEO strategies of some of the biggest players in the Brazilian market.