Author: David LeWallen, International SEO Strategist

Establishing a global web presence and optimizing for search engine results is more than just translation. In fact, without a true understanding of the cultural, political, linguistic, and social differences of the targeted country, marketers run the risk of driving users away.  And, without the proper International SEO Strategy, they run the risk of something worse – never being found by users in the first place. Take a look at some of the best-practices and strategic tips below to help you gain international exposure and SEO value.

1. Select Your Domain Name – Your domain name is the unique address that defines who you are and where you reside on the World Wide Web. When selecting an international domain, there are three options to consider:
   1. Country Code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) – Purchasing the ccTLD of your target country lets the search engines know where your business is located and what markets you are targeting for a specific website. This also helps to keep brand equity with your company. If you do not purchase your ccTLD for a specific country a competitor could buy http://www.yourcompanyname.fr for example.
   2. Country Code Sub-Domains – The second option for an international URL structure is to set up country specific sub-domains. E.G. http://fr.yourcompanyname.com this gives the search engines the ccTLD and lets them know that you are targeting France.
   3. Country Code Sub-Folders – If the previous two options are not viable then use a specific sub folder with the ccTLD of the country you are targeting (E.G. http://www.yourcompanyname.com/fr/).
       
2. Set the Country You Are Targeting in Webmaster Tools – If you choose “country code top level domain,” Google Webmaster Tools will target the country for you. If you choose “country code sub domains” or “sub folders,” you should set the country that you would like to target within your Google Webmaster Tools account. This is a secondary way of letting Google know what country you are targeting. Other search engines have a webmasters area as well and this varies by engine.
    
3. For Countries Where Google Is Not the Major Search Engine – You will want to host your site in the country in order to let the local search engines know that you are relevant for your target country. You will also want to submit your site to these search engines as well. Countries where this is the case includes Russia and China.
    
4. Localization – Your customers drive your business, so you need to not only speak their language but also their culture. If you simply translate your site, you may be missing out on some opportunities to target localized versions of the language. For example, if you were selling “soccer cleats” you would miss the localized version of that keyword “football boots” which is used in the United Kingdom
   1. Title and Meta Data Localization – Make sure to localize your title tags and Meta data, using keywords that are highly searched in the market you are targeting. Some companies will create a new site and translate the content into the language but leave all of the Meta data in English. In order to capture search traffic in the target country you need localize and optimize your title and Meta data.
   2. Content Localization – You need to have your content localized into the language you are targeting. Don’t forget about images that contain text, many times companies will translate/localize their text but they leave the same images from the U.S. site, and if those images have text in them that text will still be in English.
       
5. Global Gate Way – Your global gate way is your language or country selector page. It is important that this page be written in HTML as opposed to a dynamic script like Java or Ajax. By writing your global gate way in HTML the search engines will be able to read the links and pass link value to all of your international domains and URLs.  We do not recommend using flags to represent the countries because if one were from Mexico they may get offended if they have to click the Spanish flag in order to get content in Spanish.

There you have it. The five foundational steps to international SEO success. Implementing these best-practice recommendations will help you set a solid foundation, and you’ll be well on your way to establishing a strong global web presence.

by Caroline O’Donoghue

Sponsorship is brilliant for many reasons;  supporting a great cause or event, building awareness of your brand with a new audience and changing opinions of your brand through affiliation.

When it comes to something as big as the World Cup, the link between sponsors and the main event can appear tenuous until you’re introduced to the “concept” behind the relationship through brand messaging.

For example, Coca Cola’s desire for people to celebrate goals with a beverage or McDonald’s customers being compelled to avoid or discuss the games in its diners during the tournament.

However, communicating these concepts is no longer a mere media-buying activity. International brands now have their social media channels to help them along the way…

As part of an upcoming report, I assisted our Senior Research and Insights Analyst Dominic Parker by taking a look at what brands were doing within social media in order to exploit their relationship with the World Cup. I was genuinely surprised at a lot of what was and, just as importantly, was not happening in social.

The graph below demonstrates Facebook activity by active international brands who sponsored the World Cup over a two week period covering the beginning of the event (4th to 20th June 2010). The X axis represents the number of World Cup related status updates published during this time and the Y axis the amount of fan engagement (Comments and Likes) of World Cup v Non-World Cup related status updates during this time.

The higher up the Y axis, the more fans engaged with World Cup related updates, compared with non-World Cup related updates. The top line of brands engaged solely on the subject of the World Cup during this time. The size of the bubbles denotes the number of fans a brand has.

You can clearly see here that many large brands are sitting in the bottom left hand corner of the table, meaning that they didn’t update their Facebook page with news of World Cup related activity and therefore didn’t receive any engagement from their large Facebook following.

This is symptomatic of a continuing trend within companies of operating in silos when it comes to online activity. Why spend millions on display advertising and creative if you’re not going to make the most of it online?

Working with the example of Facebook, why not post adverts as videos? Why not let people know about competitions you’re involved with even if they’re not taking place on Facebook? Why not just shout from the rooftops that you’re contributing to one of the biggest sporting events in the world? I’m by no means saying ram it down people’s throats, but if you have exclusive content and assets why wouldn’t you share them?

Every brand marketing campaign these days should think about social media’s role within it as a given. Campaigns peak people’s interest and encourage consumers to engage with companies on Facebook and other branded online spaces. The more people you encourage to Like, Follow or Subscribe to your content, the larger the audience you will have to talk to you when it comes to your next campaign. These are all basic points that many of you will be rolling your eyes at but when you look at working examples from large brands, they are often missed.

This would be a step up from simply “broadcasting” to customers, analysis of customer comments allows brands to utilise their online customer base as a focus group. Think about what that could save a company!

Making friends with customers in social media might be a struggle for some, but for those who’ve got the people there ready and waiting, the opportunity for social as a broadcast, engagement and insights tool is there to be grabbed. For some brands the World Cup is an opportunity missed, but it should also be a lesson learnt.

By Pace Lattin (c) 2010

The way I see it, NBC has little chance of survival in the next ten years. They’ve proven themselves so caught up in the normal TV schedule way of thinking that they fail to understand their audience, what little of it is left.

Their lack of knowledge about social media, how it’s formed and how it can control the conversation is part of their failure in this situation and may very well be part of their failure as an organization.

Conan O’Brien on the other hand was able to harness the internet and social media to make a stand and, in the end, become more famous than he ever was before.

I’m going to explain this slowly, for the folks at NBC, if they are reading this. Let’s think of Conan O’Brien & Jay Leno as a brand, and that the internet is the next big media thing, where there will be millions and millions of Americans making decisions about their life based on what they read on the internet. When people run a search on this website called GOOGLE, they get thousands of pages of choices that they can read about the topic in which they are interested. That perhaps in the future, someday, consumers and people who watch television (aren’t they the same?) will be able to type in “Conan vs Jay” and get real time results that help shape their thinking about the subject, and therefore create brand identification and/or brand alienation depending on what happens.

Now for the rest of us, who understand Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization and a bunch of other three word phrases with Affiliate, Marketing, Search and Interactive in them, here is some more high level explaining.

NBC, as a company, is still very much focused on Television being the predominant source of entertainment in the next ten years and hasn’t done much thinking beyond that. Despite paying people like Jay & Conan ridiculous amounts of money, their audience base plummeted each year as more and more people turned to independent internet entertainment. So they did not consided exactly what might happen, if they started to make changes in their schedule, move Jay Leno back to his previous slot and basically kick Conan to the curb.
 

Jay Leno, as funny as he might have been, isn’t exactly a representative of a modern, fast-paced, growing generation. He might get some people to stay up and watch the news before falling asleep during his monologue – but on the whole, no one can say he has his finger on the pulse of… well… anything.

You say, and perhaps the executives of NBC say, “we need to prop up our affiliates and their news shows, before we lose them.” So what? Television as a medium is on the way out, or at least changing. I don’t know anyone who actually watches the news at 11, let alone cares that Jay or Conan are right after it. The news has no relevance, since most of us have already learned about it 6 hours earlier from some blog or websites. As for humor and jokes, we’ve already spent most of the day on YouTube instead of doing our job, watching some kid falling down five flights of steps while eating a cheeseburger. Jay Leno isn’t going to keep our attention for more than one minute, while we wonder what his chin would like in 3-D.

So, what does this have to do with marketing? First of all, Conan O’Brien has managed to come out looking cleaner than a toothbrush at a Palin family reunion. When you google results regarding his dispute with Leno, you find tons of commentary and articles supporting him, putting him out there as the champion of the people, the underdog, the teabagger of comics.
 

While it’s more than likely he will just appear on another network, there is also a chance that he will take this momentum and create something completely unique on the internet. Anything he does on the internet will immediately be covered with millions of links, tweets and AIMs – all pointing to his new project. With the NBC money that he is walking away with, he could easily just make his own website, his own comedy channel, his own comedy network and become very wealthy on just the buzz surrounding his name.

I sincerely believe that Conan knew exactly what was going to happen, and used the internet to his advantage. Many of his writers and publicity team are very modern, having grown up on the internet. They knew that if they needed good publicity they would only have to turn to the internet in order to get the point across.

They used social media to covertly create “I’m with CoCo” groups while at the same time constantly making sure there was new “buzz” to pass around on twitter. From posts on Craigslist of Conan selling himself to the highest bidder for favors to late night tweets from the writing staff to their fan base, they knew that they could always win the war with an audience – that frankly is a lot more internet savvy than the Leno fan base.

Anyone engaged in social media marketing, needs to look closely at how Conan did this, how he made it seem to be organic and natural and then allowed it to seemingly take its own course. He knew how to create buzz, but more importantly content for internet buzz fodder. He knew that the one-liners that could be posted on Twitter were a thousand times more powerful than any ten minute monologue that could be spoken by …urhmm… that other guy.

By Chris Crum 

Google often takes a lot of flack for not being incredibly successful with its social media efforts. Most recently, Caroline McCarthy and Tom Krazit tackled this subject in a CNET article claiming that “Google struggles with social skills.” I would not go so far as to say that I completely disagree with them. They make plenty of factual points that are simply undeniable. Orkut hasn’t set the world afire. Jaiku and Dodgeball didn’t work out. YouTube was pretty much established by the time Google bought it, and even since it has not been the financial success many would have assumes it would be, despite its enormous popularity.

Is it that Google doesn’t do well with social media or is it that Google is doing better at it than most people even consider. First, you have to ask yourself: what is a social network anyway? What is social media? Is it Facebook? MySpace? Twitter? Is it a network of connected people? Google Profile users can look at their “social circles” and quickly realize that Google has them connected to people.

If you look at the definitions for social media, you get things like “content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies,” “a category of sites that is based on user participation and user-generated content.” I think Google has done pretty well at indexing and monetizing user-generated content (that is if user means user of Google, which essentially makes the majority of all content user-generated).

When you compare Google to Facebook, wouldn’t it be fairer to break down Google by its various offerings? Wouldn’t it be fairer to compare Google itself to Facebook? You can say, well, Google Friend Connect isn’t as successful as Facebook. Jaiku wasn’t as successful as Facebook. Wouldn’t it make more sense to chalk each of these offerings within Google as features of the broader Google network, for all intents and pruposes?

Most of Google’s products require one account. You log in to your Google account and there are a lot of different things you are able to do, and it’s all because of that one account. You can email people, chat, write documents and spreadsheets, use webmaster tools, etc., etc., etc. Is Google not just a social network with a lot more features than most others (not to mention what many would consider to be a better search tool than most other social networks)?

One of the primary components of a keyword’s quality score is its landing page. Second only to clickthrough rate, the landing page is an important factor in determining the quality score. However, landing pages are often overlooked by pay-per-click (PPC) advertisers. Advertisers tend to build their sites with several goals in mind, some of which may not always be in line with their PPC and quality score goals.

As with many aspects of search engine marketing (SEM), relevance is king. The destination URL you use in your ads should always be the most relevant page on your site that relates to your ad copy. If you own a take-out-and-delivery Indian restaurant with an ad group themed around your vegetarian menu, you don’t want to send people who click on those ads to a homepage featuring a picture of tandoori chicken. Instead, create an individualized landing page that highlights your vegetarian menu and the benefits of eating a vegetarian diet, as well as possibly adding some unique content about the history of the vegetarian diet in India. Not only will this improve a visitor’s experience on your page, it will solidify to the search engines how relevant that page really is to the search term and ad copy.

Navigation is another major component of landing page optimization, since you need to provide the shortest path possible to the product or offer represented in your ad copy. The best-case scenario here is that the landing page is also the order form or has an “add to cart” option for your product or service (placed above the fold). Avoid any interfering elements like pop-ups and pop-unders, which create frustration for the visitor, and which may lead to a higher bounce rate. Another factor of navigation optimization is landing page load time. In Google, a keyword’s load time grade is shown in the Keyword Analysis field. If your ads are not being served because of slow load times, it will be indicated here.

One final key to landing page optimization is transparency. Make sure to provide your visitors all the important information about your business, such as customer service contacts and company leadership. If you collect any of their personal information, have a privacy policy that outlines what you will and will not do with that information. Do not require any sort of registration to see additional content on your site. And finally, don’t auto-install any software on a visitor’s computer or alter their browser settings (such as disabling the back button). These techniques engender distrust and will negatively impact your quality score.

By making your landing page more relevant, navigation-friendly, and transparent, the visitor’s experience is improved. Combine this with a high clickthrough rate, and you will see a dramatic increase in keyword quality scores, which will result in higher ad placements across the board.

According to Wikipedia, “customer service is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase”.  To prove how current they are, small companies and big brands alike are diving headfirst into Twitterville, but not always with the entire process of customer service in mind.  In the past, I’ve discussed the importance of having a solid Twitter strategy – for both personal and corporate accounts – before bumbling forward with the weak assumption that you’ll look cool simply by gracing the Twitter community with your presence and pumping out some mediocre tweets.

Before: before targeted and prospective customers (or clients) know who you are or have decided that they are even in need of your products/services.

• ID Key Influencers and Prospective Customers – monitor conversations related (or even peripherally related to) products and services. For example, if you sell yoga pants, monitor conversations that will ID yoga instructors, as they will be the ones with a lot of pull if you can turn them into evangelists.
• Be a Resource – @travelportland created the hash tag #inpdx to direct visitors to the best Portland hot spots.  By listening to relevant conversations and joining in to add value, Travel Portland is indirectly generating awareness and establishing credibility.

During: during an actual purchase or conversion process.

• Listen to Conversations – identify keywords surrounding those actively looking for relevant products or services and monitor the heck out of them. This will provide an opportunity to answer questions, promote offerings and increase awareness that your brand is authentically engaged. For example, @hotel_preston (full disclosure: this is a client of the agency I work for) is doing this well.

• Keep Followers Posted – shopping cart broken? Site down? Out of a hot item? Keep your followers posted so they know what’s going on and that it’s getting taken care of.

After: after the purchase or conversion, to ensure a smooth process and happy customers.

• Address Complaints – monitoring conversations surrounding all variations of your brand name in order to identify unhappy customers and turn them into evangelists.
• Provide Support – some companies may need post purchase support more than others. @comcastcares has managed to improve its previously tarnished reputation via this route.
• Offer Incentive – whether that’s through unique Twitter deals, the latest sales or new items, followers need to be reminded why they are following you.

Ben Parr posted a great “how to” for Twitter customer service on Mashable back in May, so this isn’t a completely new concept. The key is to utilize Twitter throughout the entire purchase process to ensure a great customer experience.  While big brands may need to segment Twitter handles (create a dedicated handle just for customer support or for those only interested in new products, for example) in order to conquer the Twittersphere and appropriately target new and existing customers; small companies can apply the same concept with one account as long as they are providing attentive customer service before, during and after the purchase or conversion.

Rachel Andersen works for the Portland based SEM agency Anvil Media, Inc. She has expertise in all aspects of search engine marketing and specializes in SEO for large sites. Andersen has been responsible for the development and execution of dozens of search and social marketing campaigns over her time spent with Anvil.

Are you aware of the new signals and able to develop new forms of optimization and strategy?

I’ve just read a great document by Mike Grehan of http://www.acronym.com about the future of Search Engine Marketing, you must read it. Mike Grehan is the bestselling author of the internationally acclaimed Search Engine Marketing: The Essential Best Practice Guide.

On this document: “New Signals to Search Engines – Future Proofing your Search Marketing Strategy” Mike Grehan states the need for us SEO’s to become aware of placing a much larger emphasis on optimizing a range of file types, from PDFs to images to audio/visual content.

I’ve found 2 important aspects mentioned by Mike Grehan on this document:

1. Search results will be heavily influenced by end users, such as geographic location, time of day, previous searching history and peer group preference…, as Mike Grehan says: “Signals from end users who previously couldn’t vote for content via links from web pages are now able to vote for content with their clicks, bookmarks, tags and ratings. These are very strong signals to search engines, and best of all, they don’t rely on the elitism of one web site owner linking to another or the often mediocre crawl of a dumb bot.” , so this will influence on what appears in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

2. The introduction of Google’s Universal Search: As stated by Google: “Google’s vision for universal search is to ultimately search across all its content sources, compare and rank all the information in real time, and deliver a single, integrated set of search results that offers users precisely what they are looking for. Beginning today (May 16, 2007), the company will incorporate information from a variety of previously separate sources – including videos, images, news, maps, books, and websites – into a single set of results, check: http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/pressrel/universalsearch_20070516.html. Universal Search offers many new methods of increasing visibility at search engines.

Matt Cutts, Google Engineer and Head of Web Spam Team mentioned: “Marketers need to embrace universal search by integrating video, images, books, etc. As far as Google trends go for 2009, they will affect SEOs as well.”

SEM stands for search engine marketing, this is very basically a combination of promotional techniques and tactics to improve a website’s ranking on search engines. There are two elements which deliver effective search engine marketing, which are SEO (search engine optimization) and PPC (pay per click) advertising.

Search engine marketing has become imperative to the success of online businesses mainly due to the growth and popularity of finding your particular website, products or services by using search engines. This means that most people use search engines to find their desired information regarding products and services. In fact it is true that 80-90% of online users are directed through the internet using search engines. So, now you can see that it has become important to get effective search engine marketing tactics to ensure that search engines and online users can find your website.

Search engine optimization is also sometimes referred to as website promotion, search engine promotion or website marketing. This is basically a process which naturally achieves search engine rankings and ensures that search engines find and include your website on their listings. SEO is basically a tactic which improves the levels and quality of internet traffic to your website. SEO techniques are generally made up of web design and development, content writing, link building, research and term analysis and other tactics such as website submissions and more. All these techniques is basically directed at improving the quality of online traffic to your website by raising the ranking level of your website on popular search engines such as Google, MSN and Yahoo.

So, if you have a website that you want to promote and effectively market on the internet, choose a leading search engine marketing company to deliver expert SEO and PPC services, ensuring you receive the benefits of successful internet marketing for your online business. A professional SEM company will deliver innovative and successful, expert SEO tactics to ensure your website gets maximum marketing exposure on search engines. Find a professional company on the internet, review services and compare with other SEO companies. Get online quotes and find more information on innovative and high-tech SEO tactics from chosen SEM Companies. Promote your website and allow your online business to grow through expert SEO tactics from a professional SEM company. Create a successful online business and market your website on the internet, allow a professional SEM company to harness the marketing power of the internet.

About the Author

Phil Smulian

SEO Software: Master the SERPs
Search engine optimization (SEO) is more challenging today than ever before. Many Web professionals opt to take advantage of SEO software to minimize the learning curve and help manage their overall Internet marketing campaigns. While some purists might argue there is no substitute for manually optimizing your site, the truth is that minimizing the often dull and repetitive tasks associated with SEO can leave more time for strategic thinking and business planning. While not a cure for an ailing SEO campaign, software can improve organization and structure.

SEO software typically provides a range of tools that mimic both the art and science of optimization. For example, keyword list builders and keyword analyzers are common, as are rank checking tools. While website submission is a relatively useless feature — search engines constantly improve their crawling practices and the practice of submitting sitemaps directly to search engines is on the rise — many solutions continue to provide that capability. While different SEO software solutions provide varied features, most are quite similar, leaving price as the only true differentiator in many cases.

One of the most well-known solutions, Web CEO, offers a free edition of their SEO software, whereas the SmallBiz and Professional Editions range from $199 to $389, respectively. There are many others, however, including RankSense (starting at $29.95 per month), and SEO Administrator (licenses range from $129 to $199). Each of these solutions offers a robust suite of search engine marketing tools in one platform.

While many of the aforementioned offerings have been around for many years, new vendors are entering the market. LotusJump ($24-$49 per month) is a robust SEO software solution that has generated plenty of attention. The service automatically populates user accounts with customized SEO and social media tasks to complete. Traffic Travis is another recent entrant offering SEO and SEM software programs. The downloadable software includes a suite of 11 tools for finding keywords, analyzing pages for SEO factors, identifying inbound links, traffic reporting and position, and provides a decent competitive research mechanism.

While there is no cure for the ills of poorly conceived SEO strategies, SEO software does help with the overall process and makes for more productive, successful and efficient campaigns in general.