Posts on State of Search about ‘International Search’

Quality Versus Quantity and Cost in International Web Translation

Two things we’ve heard a lot about over the past couple of years are quality and content. Panda highlighted the importance of both from Google’s point of view and let’s be honest, it’s not rocket science that providing quality content is going to be better for your brand and your users.

However, this notion often seems to be forgotten when it comes to translation. Accuracy and quality are often sacrificed for fast turnarounds and quantity, which are perceived as giving value for money – but do they really?

It’s not just about what you say, but how you say it – and the actual message of your content becomes irrelevant if it has been poorly translated. Spelling mistakes, grammar errors, context mix-ups all impact how well the content is received, understood and remembered.

If you’re going to spend time and money going into new markets and translating your website, you need to do it properly, otherwise it’s just wasted resources and a potential risk to the reputation of your brand. (more…)

Spain & Search Marketing: The 2nd Edition

Spain is one of the countries in which a lot more is happening that we can see at this point. Aleyda Solis tries to get a grip the market by gathering some of the best of what happened in Spain. If you have tips, go to our tip page and send them to us!

There was certainly a lot of activity last November in Spain search marketing world. Let’s take a look at what happened that you cannot miss: (more…)

7 International SEO Common Questions & 7 Tools to Answer Them

Some of the most common questions I’m asked –or I find myself asking– during international SEO processes are very straight-forward and can be easily answered with the help of some tools. I will share both so you can take these into consideration in a future international search engine optimization process.

1. In Which country is this site hosted?

You can see the country of a site hosting directly in the browser with the help of extensions for Firexfox and Google Chrome:

2. What terms are used in which country?

When localizing the content sometimes it’s not clear which term is most used where. This can be verified by using Google Trends and taking a look at the volume and usage trend of search terms per country.

For example, the terms “apartment” and “flats” in the UK:

3. Which are the top countries that refer me more organic traffic?

Go to “Audience >> Demographic >> Location in Google Analytics and select the non-paid search traffic default segment or create an advanced segment for organic traffic excluding brand names, for example:

4. In which countries do I have a better organic search visibility?

In Google Analytics go to the “Traffic Sources >> Search Engine Optimization >> Geographical Summary” report and verify the countries that are getting more results in search engines:

5. How the search engine results look from another location?

Use a proxy tool to connect through another country IP, such as Netshade for Mac OS X and verify how the search engines result pages for that country are shown:

6. How is the international competition?

Use SEMRush and ahrefs to identify the competition of a keyword or site in a specific country.

7. How can I check my international rankings?

Several organic results rankings tools tools support international markets, such as SEscout and Authority Labs.

Which other International SEO questions do you frequently have and how do you usually solve them?

SEO for Baidu: Optimising for China

With over 530 million internet users, China is a huge online market and one that is becoming increasingly attractive to businesses looking to grow internationally. It is also one of most, if not the most, complicated markets to target, with factors from language to bureaucracy, censorship to culture providing search marketers with some interesting challenges to overcome if they want to succeed there.

And we can’t even rely on our trusty friend Google to help us navigate the Chinese search maze, as its search share is less than 10%, but instead must look to home grown search engine Baidu to spread our message to the Chinese audience.

Baidu is the undisputed leader in Chinese search, and until recently claimed almost 80% of the search share. It took a hit in August this year when Qihoo, a local security vendor and internet provider, launched its own search engine and gained around 10% share almost immediately but it still handles 60-70% of all web searches in China. So if you want to succeed in China, you need to optimise for Baidu or you’re losing access to around 65% of 500 million users ( you do the maths!) (more…)

Is Yandex Simply A Russian Google?

On 1^st October, Russian search engine Yandex announced the launch of its new web browser, Yandex.browser. Based on the Chromium open source technology (used to build Google’s Chrome among others), the cloud-based browser is very similar in look and feel to what we’ve seen before but incorporates many of Yandex’s already popular products and services, and of course its own search engine.

The decision to launch a browser has undoubtedly been driven by search, and the potential advantage Google was gaining over Yandex in the Russian search space as a result of Chrome. StatCounter data shows Chrome as the most popular browser in the country, with approximately 33% share and with Google as its default search engine, it’s no surprise that Google has begun, slowly, to eat away at Yandex’s majority hold on the market. And the search giant is serious about succeeding in Russia, one of the few markets where it trails a local competitor, having even run an offline marketing campaign there to promote Chrome but it is a still long way off beating Yandex, which stills holds roughly 60% share. (more…)

What International Marketers Can Learn From The Search Engines

Search engines guide what search marketers do – their rules, guidelines and incessant updates all play a role in shaping strategies and recommendations – and often result in a lot of headaches and expletives. But how often do you look at what strategies and tactics the search engines are using to grow their own business? After all, search engines are businesses- international businesses – that want to increase their customer base and make a profit (and we know they certainly do that).

Rather than just reacting to updates and additions to tweak campaigns and websites, monitoring what the search engines are doing and where they’re going can provide useful insights into what is going to be important and effective in global marketing.

Over the next couple of posts, I’ll take a closer look at what Google, Yandex and Baidu are focusing on and how that can help us with our own global efforts. Today, I’m specifically looking at their choices and strategy when it comes to international expansion. (more…)

Hreflang Sitemap Tool for Multilanguage & Multinational Websites

Google have recently added (in May 2012) another method to implement rel=alternate, hreflang=x to appropriately geotarget your websites, allowing you to tell them about your content for different regions and setting the rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x” with an XML sitemap. This is a simpler way of implementing multilanguage and multinational websites as it reduces the amount of development time and page code.

However, when Pete Handley at the Media Flow was asked to implement the hreflang tag on a site containing different versions of content for different countries, he found that there were no tools to help, and the HREFLANG sitemap tool was born…

(more…)

Multinational and multilingual sites: Google’s Pierre Far discusses

Google’s engineer Pierre Far has been very active in the past year being an advocate for Google and for ‘Good SEO’. He has been speaking on many different conferences, he has been active on Google+ and he has been doing a lot of Webmaster Central “Office Hours” hangouts.

In these hangouts Pierre (or another Googler) discusses a specific topic. He explains what Google is doing and he answers question. A very informative way of connecting to the search industry. If you ever have the chance on joining one of the hangouts I would suggest you do, it can be informative.

Last week Pierre Far had a Webmastercentral Hangout about a topic which has been on the agenda for many lately: multinational and multilingual sites. You can watch the hangout below. (more…)

Take Part in the Geo-targeting Survey

As you may have noticed, Geo-targeting is ‘hot’. We talked about the new Linkdex functionality recently and last week at SES San Francisco it was a much discussed topic as well. But there is more!

Ask any international search marketer what they find most challenging about international SEO, and there’s a good chance they’ll say geo-targeting. Deciding between local domains or subdomains, choosing local hosting or not, managing duplication issues across languages – the list goes on. Google attempted to alleviate some of the geo-targeting pain by introducing the hreflang tag to improve the targeting of international websites and ensure users are presented with their local version – yet for many it has proved confusing and complex. (more…)

Key Takeaways From The International SEO School

A few months ago the International SEO School launched. And the school (on which I myself am also a trainer) decided it wanted to give some extra attention to talents so it gave away two scholarships. We received a lot of applications and in the end there were two winners who both attended the first series of the SEO School in Barcelona.

The two winners were asked to share their experiences of their week in Barcelona. And both of them did. Below you can find the experiences of Michael Rurup Andersen and Gary Wells. They share what they have learned and why it benefitted them. Enjoy! (more…)

Baidu Employees Arrested for Taking Bribes

The BBC reports that in China three employees of Baidu, the biggest search engine of China and by many seen as a possible ‘Google killer’ once they would expand, have been arrested “on suspicion of having accepted bribes to delete posts from its forum service”.

The three, together with a fourth employee, were fired by Baidu when it became clear they had deleted posts in return for money, but now they also were arrested for this. Apparently they accepted thousands of euros in return for the deletion of certain posts. (more…)

Searching in Different Countries Without Proxies

As someone living in the Netherlands and as someone who is keeping a close eye on what is changing in the industry and with the search engines I have one big problem: localized search. Google tends to localize your search results based on where you are, which means for me in the Netherlands it is quite difficult to see how State of Search is doing in for example Australia or even closer, Spain or France.

There are tools working on solutions for this problem, because for SEOs who work internationally it is difficult to see where you rank. One tool which looks at just this issue is “I Search From“. Here you can see what results you get from a query in any country in the world, in any language you choose. (more…)

Page 2 of 5«123 4 5 »

State of Search