Professional Global SEO – SEM | janet bartoli

Global SEO Strategy – Worldwide Search

September 21, 2007

2008/23/September

I would like to update this entry – as it is now a year old and I have created a global strategy for Asia Pacific and Europac.  First things first, yes, keywords still rule and one of the best keyword research tools, no not word tracker thank you, but Google Insight!

 After much research I have found that #1 aspect for all international strategies should include “optimizing for local peoople first” and search engines 2nd, yes, like all SEO you should optimize for people first and the bots second.

GOAL: 1- Reach more people in country – greater traffic in your own country.     

·          Local keyword research and applying optimized titles and descriptions including those primary or must own keywords into these areas.        

·          Regular and relevant content again using the language of the country

·          ccTLD – using the correct TLD in your country is very important, i.e. www.mysite.au tells Google and all others that my site is Australian not North American! Simple but important   

·          In country links – gathering local links from authoritative websites in country is also important and will help grow the site’s in country traffic. 

·          If you are optimizing a site that is not within your country, knowing that country’s language as well as your own is very important or at the least you should be working with someone in that country to help you with the content and keyword optimization. For example Chinese has many factors to consider such as character length and what part of China you are optimizing for; regional and grammatical are also very important.  I will add to this as needed….   

 2007/September  (original post)

Optimizing a site that has a global presence can be a very challenging undertaking. It is very important to review the client’s overall goals of course and some of the things you must consider should be the language of the specific country or countries your developing a strategy for. What type of slang or terminology do they use? Renting a “flat” in London or renting a “studio” in NYC? Going on “holiday” in Tuscany or planning a “family vacation” in Disney.

So, yes keywords are certainly a very important aspect of your overall global strategy. As North Americans we tend to think everyone searches and thinks as we do, since we are smarter than that we must force ourselves to learn as much as we can about the specific country we are optimizing for. There are of course some technical constraints to consider as well, they may include your CMS, country TLD, the specific IP address of your local audience, etc.

These are very important as well, but I have found the biggest challenge, which has been interesting as well, has been to decode those foreign languages to understand how the rest of the world searches. Acquiring local support in the form of copywriters who know the language and can review your SEO optimized content and work with your team is a huge plus.

You there….any global thoughts?    

Filed under: Search Marketing