International SEO

Amplify Interactive’s notes from SMX Advanced Seattle 2008

Second day of SMX Advanced, Organic track

Moderator: Jeffrey K. Rohrs, ExactTarget
Q&A Moderator: Barry Smyth, Search Strategies

Ian McAnerin, McAnerin International:

You can geolocate web pages (not just sites).
Search Engines look at the domain country code (ccTLD), ip address, and link analysis.

• This is a script, and if the country domain is country specific, then the engine stops and assumes that country. If not, then IP address. Then, link analysis.

When looking for international links, you can have many issues:

• local terms
• spelling issues (UK vs US)
• Pop Culture
• Other Cultural Issues

SEED Tactic: Symantic Expression Equivalency Document

“Good marketing material appeals to your emotions” and then look at info. Emotions are very culturally relevent. Better writers/writing translates poorly.

Put information into bullet points and take out emotion. Then translate to other language. Then take that and give it to a real copywriter in the country to put the emotion back in. You might want to translate back as a check.

Andy Atkins-Kruger, WebCertain:

• Adopt a global PR strategy.
• Manage 301s
• Keyword URLs (can be very difficult)
• Source local links
• Need expert keyword research in target language
• Local hosting and cctlds needed

Language and content presentation

• Don’t mix up languages on the same page
• Need more than limited content to help google detect location.

This becomes a the recurring theme from all the other panelists. You need to understand culture, spelling, etc. you need to host locally and get local links.