Be Found on the Web

SEO and Internationalisation

Enterprise Ireland eMarketing Event

Using the Internet to Compete in International Markets

John Caldwell

john@creatorseo.com061 513267/ 01 5313061

086 2410295

1. Introduction

In An Internet Minute!

• 640,000 GB of Global Data transferred

• Sales of $83,000

• 100+ New accounts

• 100,000+ new tweets

• 6 million Facebook views

• 1.3 million video views

• 2+ million search queries

In An Internet Minute!

• 640,000 GB of Global Data transferred

• Sales of $83,000

• 100+ New accounts

• 100,000+ new tweets

• 6 million Facebook views

• 1.3 million video views

• 2+ million search queries

• 2.4B global Internet users

• 85% of all traffic on the internet is

referred to by search engines

• 90% of all users don’t look past the first

30 results (most only view top 10)

• SEO

• PPC

• Social Media

• Videos

• Website ……

Internet marketing

Terminology

• SEO is the process used to increase the amount of visitors to a website

i.e. obtain a high-ranking placement in the search results page of a search engine including Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines

• A Web presence is a greater influence than a "standalone" net site

www.creatorseo.com

It All Starts With Strategy

SEO is a set of processes that can be used to optimise the natural

ranking of a website or web page in order to achieve a defined

Search / Marketing Strategy

The strategy can include:

•Targeting a particular market

•Which country or countries

•Focussing on a region

•Emphasising particular products

•Etc…

Digital strategy:

Marker-place analysis:

Goals and KPI’s:

Strategy:

Key - This is a process or a set of processes

� Website and competition audit

� Identify opportunities� Analyse (Google Analytics) – GROWTH

HACKING

� Website user experience

� Website reach

� Website conversion

� Develop plan

� Document baseline

� Implement changes

� Analyse (Google Analytics) – GROWTH HACKING

Marketing Marketing

incl. SEOincl. SEO

CustomerCustomer

NeedsNeedsDataData

Growth

Hacking

Marketing Marketing

incl. SEOincl. SEO

CustomerCustomer

NeedsNeedsDataData

Growth

Hacking� Analytics

� Baseline

� Create a dashboard

� Perform AB Testing

� Create interventions

� Make changes

� One Metric That Matters?

� Talk to customers

� Make more changes

Marketing Marketing

incl. SEOincl. SEO

CustomerCustomer

NeedsNeedsDataData

Growth

Hacking� Analytics

� Baseline

� Create a dashboard

� Perform AB Testing

� Create interventions

� Make changes

� One Metric That Matters?

� Talk to customers

� Make more changes

An

aly

se b

efo

re a

nd

aft

er

cha

ng

es

How Do Search Engines Work?

� Spider “crawls” the web to find new documents (web pages, other documents) typically by following hyperlinks from websites already in their database

� Search engines indexes the content (text, code) in these documents by adding it to their databases and then periodically updates this content

� Search engines search their own databases when a user enters in a search to find related documents (not searching web pages in real-time)

� Search engines rank the resulting documents using an algorithm (mathematical formula) by assigning various weights and ranking factors

� Spiders read text and nothing else

What a Search Engine Sees

Understanding the Search Page

Paid adverts

(PPC)

Paid adverts

(PPC)

Natural or

Organic

Search (SEO)

News

The Golden triangle

The Golden Triangle

When it comes to getting your website found and then

converting your traffic into leads and sales, you should take The

Golden Triangle very seriously.

2. Which? - search engines!

Be found on the internet

• Ranking – its just a formula….

= 2a+0.7b+12c+9d+2(a-b+d)-1.5e+2f …………..

• … but Google has more than 250 items in its algorithm

• … and growing

1 Search terms in the HTML title tag2 Search terms in the HTML body copy3 Search terms in bold typeface4 Search terms in header tags5 Search term in anchor text in links to a page6 PageRank of a page (the actual PageRank, not the toolbar PageRank)7 The PageRank of the entire domain8 Quality of link partners9 Type of backlinks that bring anchor text juice for search terms10 The speed of the web site11. Search terms in the URL - main URL and page URLs 12. Search term density through body copy (About 3 - 5%?) 13. Fresh content 14. Good internal linking structure 15. Age of the domain 16. Links from good directories 17. Image names 18. Image ALTs 19. Reputable hosting company 20. Diversity of link partners too21. Geo located search results22. Rate of new inbound links to your site 23. Relevance of inbound links24. 301s, 404s, 414s etc 25. Duplicate title/meta tags 26. Participation in link schemes27. Quantity of backlinks 28. Quantity of linking root domains 29. Quality of linking root domains 30. Link distance from higher authority sites 31. Outgoing followed links from back linked pages

There are hundreds of Search Engines

… but you can get very good results by optimising the site for the

primary search engines

… but it is usually enough to focus on the main

Search Engines

• Ranking

= 2a+0.7b+12c+9d+2(a-b+d)-1.5e+2f …………..

… and let’s not forget

World-Wide Search Engine Market

Share

Search Engine Market Share

Search Engine Market Share

3. SEO Strategy

Strategy

Target audience: Language? Culture?

Search Pyramid

You have to get

these right firstBefore you get

these right

Hummingbird and Carousel

The search demand curve

Source: SEOMoz

1 2 3-4 4+

4. Internationalisation

Google.ie, Google.co.uk, Google.de, Google.fr……

https://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/faq-

internationalisation

Main aspects

• Multilingual sites• URL structure

• Language selection

• Auto-translation

• Character encoding

• Meta tags and rel-alternate-hreflang links

• Geotargeting• URL structure (ccTLD)

• Server location

• Webmaster tools

• Meta tags

• Use “rel-canonical” and “rel-alternate-hreflang”

Trading internationally

• Common situations:• one country, several languages

• one language, several countries

Trading internationally

• What can be done?• domains by country?

• main domain and subdirectories per language?

• sub domains?

• Geo targeting on Google

Trading internationally

• Best option domains by country

• creatorseo.com

• creatorseo.fr

• creatorseo.de

• but • complicated to manage and coordinate

• one CMS for all or one per domain?

Trading internationally

• Sub-domains or Domain name alias

• us.creatorseo.com

• fr.creatorseo.com

• de.creatorseo.com

• Directories by country/language

• creatorseo.com/us/

• creatorseo.com/fr/

• creatorseo.com/de/

• One language, several countries

• creatorseo.com/es/

• mycompany.com/es-pu/ (Peru)

• mycompany.com/es-mx/ (Mexico)

Trading internationally

• Directories by country/language

• Cheaper

• Less technical resources required

• Easier to manage and coordinate

• Directories contribute to increase the general relevancy of a domain

Trading internationally

• Subdomains by country

• Search Engines consider subdomains almost a completely different entity than their domain

• they don’t inherit most of the domain's relevancy

• Example of a sub domain

• http://spanish.creatorseo.com

• … but are a more integrated approach than having a number of unrelated domain names

X

Don’t forget to include the necessary language

signals

• Meta language tag• <meta http-equiv="content-language" content="en-gb">

• <meta http-equiv="content-language" content="en-ie">

• HTML language / country definition• <html lang="en-gb">

• Link element to different language-locales pages• <link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/en-ie" hreflang="en-ie"

/>

• <link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/en-ca" hreflang="en-ca" />

• <link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/en-au" hreflang="en-au" />

• <link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/en" hreflang="en" />

• Block automated translations in robots.txt

5. Competition

Competition

• On-line competition may not be your traditional competition

• Different competitors in different regions

SEO is about beating your competition in the targeted geographies

Search is a process

www.creatorseo.com

6. PPC versus SEO

PPC versus “Organic” SEO

Pay-Per-Click “Organic” SEO

� results in 1-2 days

� easier for a novice or

one with little

knowledge of SEO

� ability to turn on and

off at any moment and

easily updated!

� results take 2 weeks to

months

� requires ongoing

learning and

experience to achieve

results

� very difficult to

control flow of traffic

PPC versus “Organic” SEO

Pay-Per-Click “Organic” SEO

� generally more costly

per visitor and per

conversion

� fewer impressions and

exposure

� easier to compete in

highly competitive

market space (but it will

cost you!)

� generally more cost-

effective, does not

penalize for more

traffic

� SERPs are more

popular than

sponsored ads

� very difficult to

compete in highly

competitive market

space

PPC versus “Organic” SEO

Pay-Per-Click “Organic” SEO

� Ability to generate

exposure on related

sites (AdSense)

� ability to target “local”

markets

� better for short-term

and high-margin

campaigns

� ability to generate

exposure on related

websites and

directories

� more difficult to target

local markets

� better for long-term

and lower margin

campaigns

Which one?

• You shouldn't be limited to SEO or PPC.

• Integration is the best approach. Each has different strengths and weaknesses.

7. Audience

Audience

• Know your audience

• Cultural• In Mediterranean counties

- Internet use is driven more by social factors rather than anything else,

• where Nordic countries rely on the internet for more pragmatic, functional purposes.

• Language

Strategy needs to consider Technology

Desktop

Mobile

Browser

Operating System

8. Local content

Local content

• Use local addresses and contact information

• Add local case studies/ testimonials • with names and images

• Customise content for each country or market • More relevant, increases local link building opportunities, and decreases

duplicate content

• Currency

9. Design and usability

Basic requirements for any website

A web site is a bit like an advert!

• Clear purpose

• Easy to use / intuitive

• High impact- you have only 4 seconds to impress!

• Optimised for visitors

• Target audience

• Easily found by the target audience

• Content must be dynamic and interesting

Design and usability

• Different countries prefer different design aesthetics

• Recreating your website in a different language may not be enough

• Get feedback on your site from locals in your target country

10. Be local

• Register each site with Google Places, Bing Business Portal for example.

12. Google Algorithm Updates

Major Google Updates

• Panda 4.0 — May 2014

• Hummingbird — August 2013

• Penguin 2 — May 2013

• Penguin — April 2012

• Panda 3 — November 2011

• Panda 2 — April 2011

• Panda/Farmer — February 2011

• Caffeine (Rollout) — June 2010

Major Google Updates

• Panda 4.0 — May 2014Even more focus on the quality of the content

• Hummingbird — August 2013 (Fast and precise)Completely new algorithm release – focus on semantic search and includes Google Knowledge Graph and geo-locating

• Penguin — April 2012Tighter focus on implementation of Google Webmaster Guidelines and crack-down on black-hat SEO (less bad-links)

• Panda — February 2011Crack-down on low quality sites and duplicate content. More focus on authority and trustworthiness

• Caffeine (Rollout) — June 2010Google web index update – improved search speed and user experience

Panda 4.0 – It’s mainly about quality,

• Conclusion I. “Content Based Topical Authority Sites” are given more SERP Visibility compared to sites that only cover the topic briefly.(even if the site covering the topic briefly has a lot of generic authority). More articles written on the same topic increase the chances for the site to be treated as a “Topical Authority Content Site” on that specific topic.

• Conclusion II. Sites with High User Interaction measured by shares and comments got a boost.

• Conclusion III. Thin Content and Automatic content is deranked, even if it is relevant.

• Conclusion IV. Sites with clear navigational structure and unique content got boosted.

Matt

Cutts

12. Tools

Tools to use

www.mysiteperformance.com

13. Google guidance

Guidance

• Create useful page titles

• Use informative URLs

• Provide relevant page descriptions

• Add your business to Google Places

• Manage your site links

Guidance

• Create useful page titles

• Use informative URLs

• Provide relevant page descriptions

• Add your business to Google Places

• Manage your site links

• Value proposition

• Call to action

• Relevance

• User experience

• Relevant and unique content

Things to watch out for

• Spelling, stylistic, or factual errors

• Is your content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites?

• Does your page have an excessive number of ads that interfere with the main content?

• Are the articles short or lacking in helpful specifics?

• Is your main content below the fold?

Some Final Tips

• Get a local mailing address

• Send website visitors to the right domain

• Speed

• Add Google translate to your site

Some Final Tips

• Country Top Level Domain's automatically associated to country

• Webmaster tools help directories-by-country sites

• Host in country

• Cross domain canonical links

Final slide

Be found on the web- SEO, PPC, Social + +

October 2014

John Caldwell

john@creatorseo.com061 513267/ 01 5313061

086 2410295