[lg policy] Top 10 Pitfalls of International Search Engine Optimization

Wed Oct 14 15:05:50 UTC 2009

Top 10 Pitfalls of International SEO

TopRank is fortunate to have an excellent team of consultants, many of
whom contribute here at Online Marketing Blog.  It is therefore, a
rare occasion that we invite guest posts. The globalization of search
and to follow, search marketing, brings a tremendous need for quality
information and best practices.  Search Engine Optimization for North
American English can be a challenge on it’s own, but what about SEO
for 5 languages and 12 countries? Or 30? That’s why I’ve invited Andy
Atkins-Krüger, CEO of UK based WebCertain, a specialist agency in
multilingual search marketing to provide a list of the most common
challenges companies face when embarking on international SEO efforts.
Avoiding the big mistakes can save companies time, money and
embarrassment.

After more than a decade of working in international SEO, it would be
true to say that many of the same issues present themselves time and
again.  Lee kindly invited me to describe the commonest of these to
help marketers take positive avoidance steps, so here they are.

 1. Translating keywords is by far the most dangerous trap of all in
international SEO rather than the technical hosting issues or the
cultural risks – not appreciating that ‘keywords’ cannot be translated
is rule number one.  If you’re not a linguist, this can be a difficult
concept to appreciate but the fact is that ‘keywords’ are convenience
words – not really normal words – created by people to help them
search and then responded to by search marketers.

So for instance, let’s take ‘car insurance’ by way of example.  The
correct translation of this into French would be ‘assurance voiture’
where ‘car’ equals ‘voiture’ and ‘assurance’ equals ‘insurance’ which
does see a small number of searches.  However, most search volume is
at ‘assurance auto’ where ‘auto’ is an abbreviated form of
‘automobile’.  French searchers and speakers have simply adopted this
phrase out of convenience.  The translation simply goes to the wrong
place.  This happens in all languages including English.

The solution to this is in fact, very simple.  You simply recreate the
keywords in the target language exactly the same way you would do in
English.  What that means is using a native-speaker of the target
language – who is also trained in search marketing – researches them
from scratch.  That’s why we employ some 45 nationalities within
WebCertain!

2. Not giving consideration as to how you’ll manage content when
multiple languages are involved is a particular blind spot to many
causing some nasty budget surprises.  Worse, many organizations (the
larger are more guilty) will invest considerable sums of money in
producing truly FABULOUS English content – and then hand it over to
the localization team with little budget and no thought for its SEO
value.

A better strategy is to build your English content with localization
or translation in mind.  In other words, the copywriter’s brief should
be to create the content without in-jokes or cultural references that
a translator will simply not be able to translate.  And bear in mind
that fresh copywriting in each new language will be significantly more
expensive than using translation – although a good option is also to
mix fresh copywriting on particular local subjects which warrant it
and using localization for the rest.  The ideal would be to work with
an international search marketing company which can localize and
optimize at one and the same time.

3. Believing that an associate or, worse the CEO’s nephew, has studied
French and therefore would be able to make a good stab at the language
is not going to fly.  You need someone who learned the language at
their mother’s knee ideally growing up in the country in order to have
the degree of intuitive understanding that will be required.

4. Taking an agency’s international claims at face value is an
understandable mistake.  One agency who claims a vast team of people
who can work in 40 languages intrigued me so I undertook a detailed
credit check.  They happened to be based in a country where it’s a
requirement to declare the number of employees within accounts and
they employed just 3 people – which makes roughly 13 languages each.
And if you see organizations which offer more than 40 languages then
they’re almost certainly sub-contracting to translators (which you
definitely don’t want) because there are only 42 languages including
several versions of English which are regularly targeted within
international search.

5. Choosing new target countries based on existing analytics is a good
idea to support your export initiative, but is not the best way to
decide in which languages to roll out your new web site additions.
For instance, if you sell Supergizmos to the Dutch on your existing
web site then what a good idea to try and expand those sales by
checking on what the Dutch are looking for.  You may find that they
actually search for ‘supergizmos’ in English because that’s how they
most easily expect to find them.  Perhaps some additional support via
paid search targeting the Netherlands would be a good idea.  But
localizing your web site into Dutch would target the same people who
are already buying and may not increase their propensity to buy.

Meanwhile, some keyword research might reveal that the Italians (who
fanatically buy supergizmos) are not using your web site at all – so
an Italian language web site would incrementally add to your sales in
the way that adding Dutch would not.  Your analytics are never going
to tell you this.

6. Finding excuses to run with a dot com – and not using local domains
is very common.  It would be true to say that I have made it something
of a personal mission to promote the local domains – especially in the
US – with some success.  A number of proponents of the dot com have
changed their minds after looking more seriously at the problem.
Local domains are better for SEO because they give the best geographic
information to the search engines AND users prefer them AND people you
want to link to your site also want to link to local sites.

If the dot com decision is a policy decision and outside your control
– fine we can find some workarounds.  But take note of that word
‘workaround’ – that’s not what we ideally want right?

7. Not getting local links or hosting is a major handicap for many
international sites – these do make a difference – though aren’t quite
so critical if you have local domains.

8. Launching new countries e.g. Ireland, without thinking of the
impact on the old site has seriously hampered some organizations
success.  Duplication on international sites remains a major issue –
particularly for the world languages such as English, Spanish or
French.  It is very common to find that a site which has recently
fallen in terms of performance in the UK, had just had a duplicate
copy of the site provided to Ireland or Australia and because it
wasn’t on anyone’s radar – no one realized what the consequences would
be.  There are many different ways to solve this issue – including
sacrificing smaller sites to protect the larger ones (do you really
need to rank well or Angola or is Portugal more the target?).

9. Responding to cultural differences is key – but this is only really
good marketing.  I get a little tired of all the stories about the
‘Pinto’ in Brazil being mixed up with part of the male body.  In fact
there are a great many famous Brazilians with that name as a surname,
so I asked one of my Brazilian colleagues how come and he said “They
have a very hard time at school!  These make great stories – but the
truth about culture is that countries reveal it in what they search
for.  Good keyword research can be used not just to improve the
performance of your site generally but to understand how your
potential customers are thinking and which products might be the best
ones to target selling to them via that web site.

10. Lack of research is the nub of the problem.  Few people have time
to undertake really thorough research to most effectively power up
their global export or marketing programs.  The best trick is to find
an effective international search marketing agency as they will have
all the tools you need.

http://www.toprankblog.com/2009/10/top-10-pitfalls-of-international-seo/
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