Global, Multilingual SEO Including SEM, PPC, SMO and Usability

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2 Global, Multilingual SEO Including SEM, PPC, SMO and Usability Ron Spinner ISBN AIMS.co.il

3 Copyright 2013 by Ron Spinner All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. No patent liability is assumed with respect to the use of the information contained herein. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and author assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. Neither is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein. Trademarks All terms mentioned in this book that are known to be trademarks or service marks belong to their respective owners. We cannot attest to the accuracy of this information. Use of a term in this book should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark. Warning and Disclaimer Every effort has been made to make this book as complete and as accurate as possible, but no warranty of fitness is implied. The information is provided on an as is basis. The author and the publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damages arising from the information contained in this book or from the use of programs/files accompanying it. Version 1.0 March 2013

4 Dedicated to all of AIMS.co.il s clients Our success is a direct result of their partnership

5 About the Author Ron has a M.Sc. degree from the Technion in Architecture and Urban Planning and a B.Sc. Degree from the University of Michigan s Architecture school. His thesis focused on usability studies of buildings, a foreshadowing of his usability studies for his clients websites. Ron Spinner started his marketing business in In 1998 a client came to the company offices to update his website. He told Ron two important things: 1. Our website is bringing in lots of leads. 2. You should check out this new search engine called Google. That is when he started to change the company focus from Marketing Communications to Internet Marketing. He has been listening to his clients ever since. Ron has continued to be an early adopter and was one of the first 100 people worldwide to pass Google s Professional AdWords test. He still has the hat that Google mailed him and the other 100 first passers. Companies from the USA, Europe, the Far East, as well as Israeli exporting companies found his company website and became clients. This resulted in a deep understanding of Global and International marketing.

6 Table of contents 1. INTRODUCTION English for a Global Audience English for a Wider Audience In order to have more people understand your English: Who Should Use This Book? 2. SHOULD YOU MARKET GLOBALLY? How do you find out if there is a market for your product in other regions? Find out if there is competition What if there is no competition? A better way to determine if there is a demand for your product Wasting money What about testing in Baidu? What do I do if I have a product that is not known in a particular country and there are no searches on it? Should I go ahead and market my product? Marketing your website to other language speakers 3. SHOULD YOU TRANSLATE THE ENTIRE WEBSITE? What about missing information? How should I translate the website? I would not be surprised if Google s algorithm filtered out pages that use its translation tool. Those pages would not provide a good user experience. Translating keywords How does the search engine know what language you are writing in? Language specific URLs Helping people find the right language without confusing the search engines Using flags to denote language in the menu Automatic redirects to the appropriate language 4. LETTING THE SEARCH ENGINES KNOW WHAT COUNTRY YOU ARE TARGETING FOR YOUR WEBSITE

7 Website architecture: folder vs. domain vs. subdomain S Separate folder system Subdomains Hybrid solutions Using query parameters to communicate location and language to search engines 5. ADDITIONAL FACTORS TO CONSIDER WITH GEOLOCATION The influence of links Duplicate content The special case of.com TLD Language Server location If the site is in Spanish and the server is in the USA, it would be a signal that the target audience is in the USA. However, there are plenty of sites hosted in the USA for economic reasons. If the site is located in Equator, it could be a strong signal that Equator is the target audience. Links 6. SELECTED LANGUAGE/COUNTRY SCENARIOS Multiple languages/multiple countries Chinese Portuguese Spanish Arabic One language, one country Japanese In the case of Japan SEO, there is only one language and one TLD. This makes things much easier, but before you come to the conclusion that SEO in Japan is an easy task, consider this: there are 3 different Japanese alphabets. Hebrew One country, many languages Switzerland Other examples of one country, many languages Starting local, growing globally One globe, one language One language, many websites 7. ADDITIONAL LANGUAGE ISSUES Acronyms and PPC

8 Acronyms and SEO Non-Latin alphabet domain names and URLs When you may not want to use the TLD of your target country 8. LOCALIZATION ISSUES NOT RELATED TO LANGUAGE Legal considerations Medical devices and medicine Currency Measurements Dates 9. INTERACTING WITH YOUR GLOBAL CUSTOMERS Local websites Communicating time There are many issues regarding time with websites that target multiple time zones: Impact of multiple time zones on your business Test adding more hours for interacting with potential customers. Pay per click Holidays Language support for inquires Autoresponder with FAQs not perfect but sometimes good enough Contact us form and addresses Mobile telephones What kind of mobile phone is your target market using? Global mobile websites Usability Clickable phone numbers Shipping, costs, and time Where do you ship? Shipping time and cost Shopping cart Shipping Payment Methods Character sets Addresses and phone numbers

9 Censorship Censorship by country Censorship in the home and company Uncovering problems 10. SEARCH ENGINES WITH MOST TRAFFIC BY COUNTRY Google dominates most markets but there are a few exceptions. 11. ORGANIC SEARCH 12. SEARCHING FOR RESEARCH AND SPYING ON COMPETITORS Checking your location when searching Accent marks 13. PAY PER CLICK (PPC) Translating ads Is it best to use Hebrew / Arabic / Chinese or Latin characters in the URL? TLDs in non-latin characters Should you create a separate campaign for each language or country? Different ROI Bidding Grouping regions By language Determining ROI Telephone numbers on PPC ads 14. CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM 15. PRODUCT OR SERVICE COMPATIBILITY/LEGALITY AND OTHER ISSUES Products Electric voltage Telephones, cell phones, televisions and Legal Taxes Aesthetics 16. END NOTE

10 4. Letting the Search Engines Know What Country You are Targeting for Your Website Website architecture: folder vs. domain vs. subdomain If your website is targeting different regions there are advantages to having a separate Country Code Top Level Domain (cctld) for each country: for the UK for China for Germany etc. The reasons to buy the top level domain (cctld) are: o It gives a clear signal to the search engines what country the website is targeting. o It gives a clear signal to the user that you are serving their country. The user can be confident that when they reach the checkout they will not get a notice that shipping to their location is not available. Unfortunately, it is not always possible to buy separate domain names for each country due to the following reasons: o Some countries do not let everyone buy a domain name. In Australia, for example, you need to be a registered company or business to buy a company domain name. o It entails extra maintenance costs. If you have 30 different domain names, the webhosting and maintenance costs can be significant, especially if each site is localized. o It fragments your site so the link strength is reduced. Separate folder system This system looks like this: for the UK for China

11 for Germany This system is the easiest to maintain. In Webmaster Tools you can tell Google which folder is for which country. The downside is that it is harder to separate the sites, and this impacts your analytics. There are still ways to separate the folders, but it is more difficult. Remember that Webmaster Tools only works with Google. However, if you use accepted country codes it will help other search engines to understand your site architecture. Additional signals for the search engines and people searching are adding addresses and phone numbers with country codes to the website. You can use structured code to help the search engines understand your address. More information can be found here: Subdomains This system looks like this: for the UK for China for Germany This system has the advantage of being able to very easily analyze each language separately. You also have flexibility with web hosting. You can host all together or separately. However, your link strength will be less since each subdomain is almost like a separate domain as far as linking is concerned. This system is a little more complicated to set up than the folder system. Hybrid solutions If you have a small number of important countries, you could put those on separate domain names and put the less important sites in subfolders. That way you limit your maintenance costs, but get all the advantages of cctlds for your important markets. The link power for the weaker markets are all grouped together. You will still have to work on separate linking for the important sites which are on their own URLs.

12 There are also some people who keep everything in subfolders. However they use the country domain name and redirect to the appropriate subfolder. For example: yourcompany.jp will be redirected to yourcompany.com/jp. This may make things clearer for the search engines, although it depends on the search engine and can change with time. The disadvantage of hybrid solutions is that they may have a disconcerting effect on users who get redirected since sometimes the URL changes. Using query parameters to communicate location and language to search engines Using query parameters to indicate location and language is not recommended. But, if you are going to go this route, make sure you use standard nomenclature as in the example: Read the Book. Click Here.