international seo: a guide to promoting your business overseas, from explore export
TRANSCRIPT
#ExportWeek
International SEOUsing the Internet to
Grow Internationally
Laura Hampton
Hallam Internet
www.hallaminternet.com
0115 948 0123
@lauralhampton
lauralhampton
uk.linkedin.com/in/lauralhampton
Web: www.hallaminternet.com
Email: [email protected]
Search Engine
Optimisation (SEO)Paid Search (PPC) Email Marketing
Social Media Digital Strategy Training
• Search engines and how they work
• Why International SEO
• Major considerations
• International SEO: 9 steps
• Setting and tracking goals
Today’s Agenda
How Search Engines Work
How Do Search Engines Work?
A search engine is made of three basic components:
A Spider or RobotAn automated browser, it
searches the web for new
websites, or changes to
websites, and then strips
out the text content
A Storage System
or DatabaseA record of all the pages
viewed by the Spider
A Matching Process or
Relevancy AlgorithmThe rules that tell the search
engine how to determine
what would be relevant to
your search
Keyword Focus
• Each page on your website should have a clear focus
• For example, you can’t expect a page that lists all of your shows to produce high rankings for every single show on that list
• Comes back to providing the most relevant search results
Importance of Links
• Links to your website count like votes for your website’s authority and value
• Not all links are equal – must be relevant and authoritative themselves
• Search engines crawl the web through links
International SEO: Targeting a Global Audience
Why International SEO?
• Search results differ in each country
• Search engines don’t know that your website content should be targeted at more than one country
• You need to explicitly guide them to your country/language specific content if you want it to be indexed in more than one region.
Major Considerations: Localisation
• The products/services in other languages
or countries won’t be searched necessarily
with the exact same “translated” phrases or
terms – localisation is essential.
Major Considerations: Search Volume
• The search volume and potential organic traffic in
other languages or countries will be different.
Major Considerations: Search Engines
• There might be local search engines in
some countries that are more important
that Google and you will need to optimize
and rank for them to be where your
audience is (for example, in Russia is
Yandex and in China is Baidu).
1. Identify Potential Online Markets
• Webmaster Tools
• Google Analytics
2. Identify International Keyword Targets
• Begin with UK/English Keywords
• Professionally translate and localise
• Ensure you identify the correct keywords in each location
• Even English Language keywords differ in other countries (Courses/Programmes Example)
3. Create Localised Content
• It's important that you develop attractive and optimised content for your international target audience that includes the desired keywords, is interesting & serves to connect with your visitors
• Native Support = Essential.
4. Geo Target Your Site
• You can geo-target your site using your website structure (ccTLD’s)
• Add each different country/language section of your website to webmaster tools as separate properties, and specify a target country.
• If possible, host your site with a local IP address – this is not essential but can provide a small boost
Geo Targeting in Webmaster Tools
5. Website Structure
• Each language or country specific page/area of the site should have its own website structure, so they can each be crawled and indexed as ‘separate’ entities. Never use cookies or scripts to show your language versions in the same URL.
• Your websites URL structure has the potential to impact the visibility of your website to your global audience than any other marketing activity.
ccTLD Website Structure
• Purchase a Country-Code Top Level Domain Name (ccTLD). This is a domain name tied to a specific country –.co.uk is the ccTLD for the UK. For example, http://www.example.co.uk
Subdirectory Website Structure
• Use a gTLD with a country or language specific subdirectory, e.g. http://www.example.com/uk. If you are targeting countries where more than one language is spoken you will need a structure that includes both country and language subdirectories. For example, http://www.example.com/gb/en/ would be used to target English speakers in Great Britain.
Subdomain Website Structure
• Use a Generic Top Level Domain Name (gTLD), with a country (or language) specific subdomain, e.g. http://uk.example.com or http://en.example.com
• ccTLD = www.example.fr
• Subdirectory = www.example.com/fr
• Subdomain = fr.example.com
Website Structure Summary
6. Technical Elements
• rel="alternate" hreflang="x"
• Meta Content Language Tag
Rel=“alternate” hreflang=“x”
• Use rel="alternate" hreflang="x" tags in the HTML <head> of each page – referencing itself too.
• Create a Hreflang XML Sitemap using this free tool: http://www.themediaflow.com/tool_hreflang.php
• Note: both options require an understanding of how to use Hreflang markup
7. International Link Building
• Promote your international website assets by leveraging relevant local sites, understanding cultural factors, building relationships with local influencers and media, and identifying what works best in each country to scale and track the response to each international version.
8. Testing Your International Results
• Test International results using http://isearchfrom.com/
• Test International Targeting in Webmaster Tools for HrefLang issues.
9. Tracking Your Success
• Track each of your International ‘properties’ separately in both Analytics and Webmaster Tools.
• What do you want to achieve?
• Make it measurable
• Think SMART
Setting Your Goals/KPIs
What is an effective goal?
S
M
A
R
T
PECIFIC
EASURABLE
TTAINABLE
ELEVANT
IME BOUND
• Increased brand visibility = traffic increase
• More visibility in search engines = increased traffic from Google organic
• To sell more tickets = more completed online bookings
• To sell more tickets = more enquiry forms submitted
Example Goals
• Search engines and how they work
• Why International SEO
• Major considerations
• International SEO: 9 steps
• Setting and tracking goals
Today’s Agenda
Laura Hamptonwww.hallaminternet.com
0115 948 [email protected]
Recommend me on LinkedIn:
www.linkedin.com/in/lauralhampton
#ExportWeek