Lisa Ditlefsen on European Search Marketing Challenges

Tue 4 November 2008 16:22, Bas van den Beld

The session about European Search Marketing Challenges is all about optimizing for foreign languages. Especially in Europe more and more companies are doing business in more than just one country. When those countries have different languages its important to optimize for any single one of them.

Lisa Ditlefsen kicked off the session by trying to look at the big picture and handig us some information tips about where to pay attention to.

Lisa Ditlefsen on European Search Marketing Challenges

Ditlefsen talked amongst other things about the Search Myth. Still may people think search is simple: you do a search, you get a result and then a conversion. In fact is much more complex than that.

For example, when people don’t find what they are looking for they are more likely to make a change to the query instead of looking to another page or search engine. She hereby shows us the buying funnel: First there is Awareness, then Consideration or research, then Decision and finally Purchase. People use different terms in any of these different funnel areas.

Europe has progressed in the usage of search engines in the last years. Europeans use search engines more than any other region. But we also see a lot of differences between the European countries.

In doing SEO though other countries are behind on the UK. In Germany, France and Spain for example, paid search has developed, but not SEO. While on SEO its often easier to rank highly because of less competition.

Lisa then hands us some tips on what to look at when doing SEO for different languages. Some of the tips she gave us:

SEO Musts
-    Always host in the country you want to rank for
-    Use Google Webmaster Central to specify your country you want to rank for
Tips SEO in foreign language
-    Use PPC campaigns for keyword testing and research.
-    Use a tool like ‘Exact Keyword Tracking’ from ROI revolution
Working with translators
-    You have to educate the translators about what you are doing. Create a dialogue.
Things you have to use translators for
-    On page optimization (incl. Title & Meta)
-    Creative writing for meta descriptions + PPC
Linkbuilding
-    You want links from the country & language you want to rank for
-    Switch from build to Bait and use those translators
Linkbaiting
1.    Create content (it must be special)
2.    Host content on your site
3.    Promote content (social media, distribution, syndication)

<Dave Naylor: “SEO is like an art...

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