International SEODo‘s and don‘ts

How to…

@AlonaDemchyk

Alona DemchykSEO Manager

Joined Plan.Net in 2015, earlier – Catbird Seat and Bertelsmann

Previous experience: E Commerce & Business Development

Qualification:Master of Philology / in Online Marketing since 2008

Education:

Ukrainian, speaking Russian, studied in England, based in

Munich…

2

Plan.Net Performance SEO – Serving more than 50 clients accross 14 industries and 8 markets worldwide

43 colleagues9 nationalities 12 languages

@AlonaDemchyk

What is SEO

paidsearch results

(SEA)

Organic search results(SEO)

4

@AlonaDemchyk

Naver 72% in 2013

Yahoo53% in 2013

Baidu n62% in 2013

Yandex62% in 2013

5

@AlonaDemchyk

International SEO

but language (ISO 639-1) & country (ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2) specific

Not global and local

6

@AlonaDemchyk

Why is this relevant?

• Migration creates multilingual societies (Germany) ->• Language borders across the countries became blurred (Russian speakers)

Rank Nationality Population (2014)

1  Turkey 1,527,118

2  Poland 674,152

3  Italy 574,53

4  Romania 355,343

5  Greece 328,564

6  Croatia 263,347

7  Serbia 252,468

8  Russia 221,413

9  Kosovo 184,662

10  Bulgaria 183,263

7

@AlonaDemchyk

You should ask yourself the following questions when deciding to go for ISEO…

8

@AlonaDemchyk

?

• What is my business model?• Who is my target audience?• What language do they speak and where are they located?• Do I have sufficient manpower, budget and time?• Can I develop my current URL structure or do I need a new one?

9

@AlonaDemchyk

Before entering the international / multilingual market• Traffic

• Keyword

• Your online capacities• URL structure• Content, CMS, competitors…

• Your physical location• Shops, warehouses

• Local customer support• Call center, e-mail, customer service

• Economy, laws…10

@AlonaDemchyk

Before entering the international / multilingual market• Traffic

• Keyword

• Your online capacities• URL structure• Content, CMS, competitors…

• Your physical location• Shops, warehouses

• Local customer support• Call center, e-mail, customer service

• Economy, laws…11

@AlonaDemchyk

Who visits your website?

12

13

@AlonaDemchyk

Where do your user‘s go?

14

@AlonaDemchyk 15

@AlonaDemchyk

Compare

Visits with x-languages or x-locations users to landing pages with the conversion of those landing pages in your main language/country

Page EN-VisitorsPage Conversion in

Germanywww.xy.de 6.600 3%www.xy.de/termin-vereinbaren/ 1.084 30%www.xy.de/service-center-in-deutschland 468 4%www.xy.de/kosten/ 326 2%www.xy.de/schaden-berechnen/ 172 5%www.xy.de/standorte/muenchen/ 85 13%

16

@AlonaDemchyk

Do your keyword research (glocally)

17

Geek SEO

18

@AlonaDemchyk

Main reasons for decision making

• Traffic• Keyword

• Your online capacities• URL (structure)• Content, CMS, competitors…

• Your physical location• Shops, warehouses

• Local customer support• Country specific features

19

@AlonaDemchyk

Why is URL important?

Each URL tells a story, whether it is…

Generic (TLD) – .com .biz .info

New generic - .comany .fashion .bayern

Country code specific (ccTLD) - .de .ru .fr .it

Subdomain – de.xy.com, ru.xy.com

20

„Every time you change your URL structure…

a backlink dies“@AlonaDemchyk 21

@AlonaDemchyk

Important ISEO components• https://www.yourwebsite.de/blog/your-article-here?nc=1#anchor• Protocol: https• Hostname: https://www.yourwebsite.de• Subdomain: www.• Domain name: yourvebsite.de• Top level domain: de• Folder: blog• File name: your-article-here• Parameter: nc• Parameter value: 1• Anchor: #

22

URLs - geographic targeting (country)

(+)Country cpecific tol level domain + folderwww.xy.de/folder/..., www.xy.it/folder/..., www.xy.fr/folder/...

(=)Generic Top Level Domain + country specific folderwww.xy.com/de, www.xy.com/it, www.xy.com/fr

(-)Subdomainde.xy.com

@AlonaDemchyk

best

worst

23

@AlonaDemchyk

URLs - language targeting

(+)Generic Top Level Domain + country specific folderwww.xy.com/de, www.xy.com/it, www.xy.com/fr

(-)Subdomainde.xy.com

best

worst

24

@AlonaDemchyk

Let the user choose (country)

25

@AlonaDemchyk

Let the user choose (language)

26

Use hreflang for multilingual websites

HTML head <link rel="alternate" hreflang="de-AT" href="http://www.xy.com/de-at" />

HTTP header (for binary data, like PDFs) Link: http://www.xy.com/de-at;rel="alternate„;hreflang=de-AT“

Default languages<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="http://www.xy.com/" />

@AlonaDemchyk

Sitemap<loc>http://www.xy.com/de/</loc> <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="de" href="http://www.xy.com/de/" /> <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="de-ch" href="http://www.xy.com/de-ch/" /> </url> </urlset>

Language format ISO 639-1Language variations format ISO 15924 (Traditional Chinese: zh-Hant, simplified Chinese: zh-Hans)Country format ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2

27

@AlonaDemchyk

One language - different countries

Plan.Net Performance X Client

Initial market is based in Germany

Austria and Switzerland were added in 2014.The content was the same, contact details werelocal.After implementing hreflang

•Ø +95% Revenue via +150% visitors a month (AT)•Ø +43% revenue via +70% visitors a month (CH)

28

@AlonaDemchyk

Common mistakes

Source: http://searchengineland.com/auditing-hreflang-annotations-common-issues-avoid-219483

29

@AlonaDemchyk 30

@AlonaDemchyk

Submit you language/local website version in the webmaster tools relevant to your local search engine

Google – Google Webmaster ToolsBing – Bing Webmaster ToolsYandex – Yandex Webmaster ToolsBaidu – Baidu Webmaster ToolsMeasure your sucsesse.g. Google Analytics

31

@AlonaDemchyk

Common mistakes

• Language or country codes (ISO‘s) are faulty• You created auto-translated pages• Different countries, one language no hreflang ->duplicate content• References of other language versions is missing• Different locations are not verified in Search Console• Track separately all of your language and location specific website

versions• You do not translate URLs and you don‘t use the UTF-8 encoding

32

@AlonaDemchyk

Obstacles

• Economic reasons• Crisis (inflation) – Russia, Ukraine

• Competitive environment• Cultural environment

• Negotiations are held differently in different cultures.

• Country specific regulations• Redtape• Laws

33

@AlonaDemchyk

Useful resources

Hreflang validatorhttp://hreflang.ninja/Hreflang generatorhttps://www.sistrix.de/hreflang-guide/hreflang-generator/

The most common issues with hreflang http://searchengineland.com/auditing-hreflang-annotations-common-issues-avoid-219483 (by Aleyda Solis)

Google Support https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=enhttps://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2620865?hl=en 34

@AlonaDemchyk

Thank you

You can find me on…

Twitter: @AlonaDemchykXing: https://www.xing.com/profile/Alona_DemchykLinkedIn: https://de.linkedin.com/in/alonademchykGoogle+: https://plus.google.com/+AlonaDemchyk

35