International Search Summit Munich 2012 – Wrap up #SMXISS
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International Search Summit Munich 2012 – Wrap up #SMXISS

6th April 2012

This time last week the International Search Summit took place at the Hilton in Munich alongside SMX München.

Once again a great selection of international speakers covering a variety of topics including John Mueller from Google, Bernard Lukey from Yandex, fellow state of searcher Bastian Grimm, new to me Niall Donahoe, and the usual suspects, Brett Petersen, Andy Atkins Kruger, Tracey Falke (and her amazing shoes!)

The breakout sessions were in a mix of German and English, so I have covered the speaker sessions.

If you haven’t yet been to an International Search Summit, I highly recommend it, the next one is in London alongside SMX Advanced London

ISS Munich 2012 Line-Up

? Introduction to International Search – Checklist – Andy Atkins-KrügerWebCertain
? Global Search and Social Trends -Brett Petersen – GlobalWebIndex
? Global Search & Social Case Study – Tracy Falke – Streetsmart Social
? Google: New Markup for Multilingual ContentJohn Mueller – Google
? SEO: International Link Building – Bastian Grimm – Grimm Digital
? International PPC – Case Study – Niall Donohoe – be2
? A Global Approach To Google Places – Andy Atkins-Krüger – WebCertain
? Yandex: Search in Russia and Beyond – Bernard Lukey – Yandex
? Interactive debate: Breakout Sessions

Stand out Speaker Sessions

Some of the sessions were covered previously in the ISS London 2011 round up so here are the pick of the rest!

Introduction to International Search – Checklist – Andy Atkins-Krüger – WebCertain

A Top 10 checklist of things to watch out for in Global search

1. Market research – do things mean the same to you as they do to others – beamer for example is both a car and a projector. Making sure your keyword research is meaningful in the country you are targeting is crucial for success. Different countries also show different search results

2. Competitive review – if you don’t know what your competitors are up to or how wide a reach they have, you cannot compete

3. Planning global roll-out – using the Webcertain global rollout card, Andy shows us how to target the strongest countries first

4. Content strategy – so much to consider here from, users, mapping keywords to pages, long clicks, short clicks, socialisation, personalisation. Content is so much more than creative copywriting, consider types of content, updated content, and translated content also.

5. Domain strategy, geo-targeting and tagging – if you are not targeting locally, you may not be targeting effectively is the message here. Stand next to your customers in both language and location but avoid duplication.

6. Landing pages – review and test, make sure each language or location is catered for as opposed to one size fits all

7. Trustworthiness – talk in the right ‘language’, get the message right, make sure you get appropriate credit card and other ‘trust’ symbols for the countries you are targeting

8. Local presence – link building should be appropriate to the countries you are targeting, page rank is also different everywhere

9. Keeping Google in perspective – target the right engine for the country. Google does not have market share in every country so may not always yield the results you expect. Check engines per location – others include: Seznam (Czech Republic), Yandex (Russia), Ayna (Middle East, North Africa), Naver (North Korea) and Baidu (China) – and don’t forget Bing or mobile!

10. Working with specialists – local and global specialists already know what to target and what to avoid so you could save a lot of time and money by talking to the experts first!

 

Google’s new language & country markup – John Mueller, Google Switzerland

John Mueller – top Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google Zürich – gave us a highly technical international session regarding the new language and country markup.

rel=”alternate” hreflang=

Last year, Google improved support for multi-lingual content and has now improved handling if you have a multi-regional website with similar content such as North America where the only difference is in pricing, and multi-regional websites with translated content that or content that targets different regions using the same language.

Takeaways:

? Don’t be afraid of “Duplicate Content” (don’t spam either)
? Aim for one primary language on a page
? Think about “cross-language” content – (names, locations, etc.)
? Double-check with site:-query w/ language restrict
? Metatags for location & language are ignored.
? There is no regional geotargeting.
? Don’t allow automated translations to be indexed!
? Googlebot doesn’t use the “accept-language” header.

…there were many more on the slides, but I won’t use all of them as I am afraid of duplicate content 😉

Google’s Geotargeting factors:

? ccTLD
? Webmaster Tools (gTLD + vanity ccTLDs)
? Server location
? rel-alternate-hreflang
? Other signals

For a detailed overview or how to implement the code – visit the Google Webmaster Blog http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/new-markup-for-multilingual-content.html

International PPC – A Case Study from be2 and C-Date – Niall Donohoe, Insparx GmbH

Winner of the Medallion Speaker Award and great international PPC Case study of German Based be2 – one of the largest matchmaking sites.

Serving 39 countries and operating in 18 languages, Niall shared the challenges and pitfalls of rolling out 70 different sites with limited team members.

PPC Challenges included:

? Fast & Consistent market roll out
? Linguistic subtleties
? Cultural differences
? Maintaining overall ROI

Takeaways:

? Hire based on SEM skills and experience, not on language skills
? Language issues can be solved by having the right people
? Don’t limit profile to certain language sets
? Have a single point of contact per country
? Have a lot of meetings!!
? Sometimes is it impossible not to sacrifice quality for fast roll out
? Keep translators as far away from the campaigns as possible
? Let users and not translators decide the keyword list & structure
? Chose your battles but take opportunities when they present themselves

International Link Building – Bastian GrimmGrimm Digital

As always, a fantastic overview of from fellow State of Searcher, and Germany based Bastian Grimm. International Link Building Tips and Strategies. there were so many, that I decided to just post the slides instead!

http://www.bastian-grimm.com/tmp/ISS-Munich-2012_Grimm_International_Linkbuilding_FINAL.pdf

See more Photos of the International Search Summit Munich

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Written By
Jackie Hole is an Award Winning Search Marketing consultant specialising in Paid Search, Conversion Improvement and Organic Search / SEO for the USA, Canada and European markets. Starting out in Multimedia & Interface Design, Jackie has over 15 years experience in online marketing and was recently awarded European Search Personality...
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