Launching an International SEO Campaign

Eli SchwartzOnline Marketing Manager

SurveyMonkey

International Search Summit 2013

SEO @ SurveyMonkey

International SEO

SEO Opportunity

More Spanish speakers worldwide than English*

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers

Look at page two of Google

Google.com (English) Google.es (Spanish)

Google’s Webmaster Guidelines

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769

What do actual users think?

• Random selection from general US population• Random assignment

into 1 of 2 surveys with 16 questions• Survey sent to 3,000

people• Survey was open for 5

days• 615 people

participated• Comparison of means

over a variety of indicators

TLD does not seem to impact trust

The difference in trust was insignificant

Spelling and grammar matter

Trust decreased 25% for

incorrect grammar and

spelling

t(231,334) = -7.62, p < .001

Don’t use machine translation

International SEO is your plane

No content, no rank

Learn just one word…

Google Translate

Start Googling

Search in your target language

Google can help even in non-Google dominant languages

Two tabbed browsing: Translate and Original

Google suggest will show new keywords

Spanish English Translation

View search competitors in two tabs

English Translation Spanish Original

• Add all competitors to a competitor worksheet • View each site to find new keywords

Use a thesaurus

Keyword discovery tools

Semrush.comTrends.Google.comUbersuggest.orgAhrefs.com

Pluralize keywords

• Not every language has a plural • Don’t forget non-s plurals

(Alumnus alumni)

• Search volume of plurals could be greater than singular• A greater search volume for the plural

version of one word does not have bearing on other words• Singularize plural keywords from original

list

Look up search volume of keyword list

Adwords keyword tool

Dedupe the list and make it actionable

Verify keywords in a Google search

Find a native

Audit existing (or plan new) content

Start with pages on your English domain

Change to 25

URL will now show:

Change to 2500

1) 2)

3)

4)

Discover all your URL’s with Screaming Frog

Optimum settings

Screaming Frog is a crawler that will show all URL’s on the site

Download here: http://bit.ly/scfrog

Launch Option 1: Use a translation company

http://www.smartling.com/

http://gengo.com/

https://www.tolingo.com/en

https://www.transifex.com/

Launch Option 2: Freelancers

Keyword use: quality over quantity

Priority Placement

1 Title (used in a correct phrase)

2 H1

3 Content (within text and alongside synonyms)

4 Internal links

5 Meta description (increase CTR for specific keywords

Interlink your new sites/languages

Tools for checking progress

Traffic > Rankings

Learn from the data and update

Impact

• Significant increase in Non-brand organic traffic• Traffic referred by new keywords• Optimal keywords included at the content

creation stage• Content queue targeted to localized

translations• Data to learn from• Learn lots of nouns in a foreign language

Summary

1.Always focus on user experience2.Do the work yourself3.Find a native4.Localize content5.Rinse and Repeat

Thank you!

Eli Schwartz, SurveyMonkey eli@surveymonkey.com @5le @surveymonkey