International Search Summit New York 2012 – Morning Sessions #SMXISS
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International Search Summit New York 2012 – Morning Sessions #SMXISS

1st October 2012

SMX East is upon us once more which means that the best International Search Workshop is also in town. Today we’re at the International Search Summit 2012 in New York. Held at the Sheraton Hotel and Towers.

As usual an incredible international line up with high level speakers talking about Russian Giant Yandex, search in The Middle East, Hispanic Language searches, Geo-targeting, high level in house team management tips from Motoko Hunt and Bill hunt and some exciting ‘announced today’ news from Gemma Birch.

We’ve split the post in to two – Morning and Afternoon Sessions so look out for both.

ISS New York 2012 Line-Up

  • A Checklist for International Search Success – Andy Atkins-Krüger – WebCertain
  • Operationalizing Global Search – Bill Hunt – Back Azimuth Consulting
  • Global Search Engine Headlines – Gemma Birch – WebCertain
  • Geo-Targeting: Being in the Right Place at the Right Time – Andy Atkins-Krüger – WebCertain
  • Searching for Hispanics in the US and Abroad – Hamlet Batista – Hamlet Batista Group
  • Adobe: SEO In Asia Case Study – Motoko Hunt – Adobe
  • Search in Asia: Tips for Success – Michael Bonfils- WebCertain US
  • The Challenges of The Middle East – Lee Mancini – Sekari
  • Getting it Right in Russia – Preston Carey – Yandex
  • SEO Tools for a Globalized Website – Don DePalma – Common Sense Advisory
  • Interactive debate: Breakout Sessions

Operationalizing Global Search – Bill Hunt – Back Azimuth Consulting

  • There is no uniform and accepted search strategy
  • Proving value to management and local business units
  • Managing search in house or agency models – more companies are bringing work in house
  • Integrating content with web development teams
  • Maximizing localized content opportunities – gov regulations how you market to niche is different in each country
  • Integrating Search and Social Media – how you blend

Mistakes

  • Redundant page audits – if a site uses the same template every page it does not need to be audited by local agencies
  • Translaing keywords – based on business goals and best practices develop a comprehensive global and local search best practice, protocol strategy – detailed actionable guide
  • Process and operations – different process between countries and agencies – difference KPI’s between countries and agencies
4 Fundamentals of Search
  • Indexability
  • Relevance
  • Authority
  • Clickability
That breaks down into 4 quadrants
  • Infrastructure/integration
  • Keyword Management / reporting
  • Content / Social Media
  • Centre of Excellence
Where in your content workflow does it start to fit in?
  • Search implications on roles
  • content authors
  • localizers
  • Q&A specialist
  • Search team
Top Takeaways
  • Understand of current search operations
  • Devise overall strategy for search
  • identify gaps and refine current operations
  • Survey local markets
  • COE obligations and deliverable’s
  • Get a search council
  • Strategic oversight and collaboration
  • Best Practices documentation and maintenance
  • Resolve best practice integration issues
  • Keyword Landing page /Personalized Keyword Landing page
  • Enforcement of diagnostics metrics
  • Page level & template coding recommendations
  • Demonstrate the Business Impact
  • use the ‘at now’ function in Excel
  • Create Missed Opportunity Performance Models
Links
  • Align language related content
  • Leverage your interconnected network
  • Vendor Link Quality Scorecards

Operationalizing Global Search – Gemma BirchWebCertain

Gemma Birch gives us an overview of other players in the international search market in the following main areas:
  • Expansion
  • Search
  • Social Media
  • Mobile
  • Local
  • Other areas

Expansion

  • All search engines are expanding into different areas
  • Google keeps losing share in China
  • Yandex – mainly Russia – gaining share in mobile and other platforms
  • 360 Search launched and overnight had 10% of the share instantly – Hitwise are not sure why that is happened – will this change or take more share from Baidu?

Main Takeaway

Being present in more than one market is important – they know there is potential and for growth they need to be looking elsewhere

Search

  • Baidu is making more answers and results available – expanded to mobile platform
  • Google is doing the same with the knowledge graph – only in English speaking markets
  • Carousel has just rolled out in the UK

Social Media

  • Google Plus
  • Search Plus your world and personalized results – optimise your search results for social
  • Baidu launched their own micro blog so partnered with wiebo to sho real time twitter results
  • Yandex have added people search – have also agreed a partnership with twitter
  • Google have owned snapseed – photo sharing – own instagram? Useful for business who want to do well in image search
  • Baidu launches landmark licensed Social Music Service – ting – legal platform
  • Google dropped music service in China two weeks ago
  • Hangouts on air with Google – groups and communities are using hangeout more to connect on line and gets more poeple to use Google lus

Local

  • Google places became Google plus local
  • Knowledge graph is using the business pages – hotel, restaurant, optimise google plus local page
  • Yandex has partnered with Apple for Maps
  • Baidu release update for smartphone maps – inc discount codes for local stores – real time traffic and public transport updates and voice search
  • Google changes (see my last blog post) crowdsourcing for mapping
  • Yandex has added desktop apps such as local taxi apps partnering with local taxi companies
  • Google have added streetmaps underwater

Mobile

  • Baidu – focussing on mobile browser for Android – wants 80% of android users by end of 2012
  • Baidu released it’s own smartphone – significantly cheaper – to target smartphone accessing China
  • Now covering apple and android with partnership
  • Google has launched a Youtube App – enhancing easier ways to share and search through video channels – apps still something to think about
  • Yandex TODAY have opened an Android App store – already have 40,000 but not accessible by users – watch out for more by the end of the month
  • Project Glass by Google local gone mad? still in the testing phase to be released for 2013

Other activity in International Search Land?

  • All platforms have added storage platforms
  • Focus on Quality
  • Shopping now available on Yandex – retail
  • Yandex have launched their own browser – so watch out Google! 30% of Russian users use Chrome, so Yandex wants to bring back the share
 Takeaways
  • There is constant innovation – make sure your information is available on all platforms
  • All Search Engines are going the same way – platform based – we should be shaping our strategy
  • Search Engines are developnig services based on knowledge about what users are looking for – align
  • All areas are becomming interconnected – integration is key
  • Not all features are available everywhere – so what you are doing in each country may not be relevant to your marketplace yet

Geo-Targeting: Being in the Right Place at the Right Time – Andy Atkins-Krüger – WebCertain

Geo-Targeting matters to Google, to online marketers and to you!

This session was covered in our International Search Summit Munich Post but that doesn’t stop me from sharing ther rather splendid image of Webcertain’s Geo-Targeting Matrix

Searching for Hispanics in the US and Abroad – Hamlet Batista – Hamlet Batista Group

Hispanics are a highly coveted audience online as they respond more to advertising and are loyal to brands when finding something that works for them.

Hamlet Batista explained SEO for Hispanics using a case study for Leonisa, a Columbian lingerie retailer wanting to expand the reach to USA.

Key Facts

  • Close to 10% of overall USA searches are in Spanish
  • 86% of Hispanics are broadband users
  • 8% have used a search engine to learn more about something on TV
  • 93% use mobile phones regularly
  • 84% typically use search engines for information
  • The Hispanic audience is more likely to own a smart phone than the general population
  • 70% are using their smartphones to search
  • TV is an effective trigger for search 78% of Hispanics have used search engine to find out more about TV

3 Key Differences

  • Who we are
  • How we identify ourselves
  • How we think of ourselves when we consume media

Language is a key point of segmentation, however the basic principles are the same

  • Get found
  • Get indexed
  • Get ranked
  • Make money

Winning Strategies

  • Get men on base with base hits singles double triples increase websites search visibility
  • Score runs / increase traffic and sales
  • Google trends is useful for search – use it to identify regional interest
  • Do some regional search for car insurance in spanish
  • Find out how people are expressing themselves and using the name of your product

Keys to Mobile SEO

  • Not all the pages are being mobile optmisees
  • Use rel=alternate and point to the mobile version
  • On the mobile page add rel=canonical pointing to corresponding desktop URL
  • Use html or XML sitemap
  • Include vary http header if you site automatically redirects mobile users visiting the desktop site
  • Check info on Mobile Planet http://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/mobileplanet/en/
  • Figure out what people are doing on their mobile devices

Examples of  Hispanic keyword ‘misses’

The word GuaGua means baby in Spanish but means Bus in the Dominican Republic

‘Cuero’ means leather in Spanish, in mexico it’s hot woman, but in the Dominican republic it means slut! Check your keywords before you go live!

 

 

Stay posted for the Afternoon Sessions from Jo Turnbull!

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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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