Andy started the conference by setting the scene for the international search landscape. Search is a billion dollars bigger than it was last year with the majority growing in the international markets.
1) Research and Planning
Culture is very important – local research is vital or your marketing message will miss the target market. This is where keyword research adds a lot of value in this regard. Google, Nike and Unilever have all made mistakes in this regard. Keywords can’t be translated, you miss all the nuances in the local markets. For example in the UK a beamer is a BMW but in Germany it’s a projector. Google images does help to show subtle variations in languages.
2) Undertake a Competitor Review
3) Global Rollout plan
Your analytics is not a great way to prioritise a rollout plan. Look at keyword research in each area and work out your current market share. Correlate that with conversion and revenue data and you will get a
4) Content Strategy
With Penguin and Panda content strategy is far more important than it ever was. If content isn’t targeting search then it’s not worth translating and optimising. People are the new top SEO factors. Long clicks and short clicks and CTR are all ranking factors so reducing bounce rate is becoming increasingly more important. This is even more important on an international stage.
5) Geo targeting
Make sure you are in the right place at the right time. Local domains, WMT, hreflang and other factors are all important. This will be covered further later in the day
6) Landing Pages
7) Trustworthiness
In Andy’s opinion this is not emphasised enough. It’s a massive part of an international search strategy. Many companies think it’s easy to get ROI from each market and that’s often more difficult. FDA logos don’t work in Germany for example. All the trust marks change from market to market. Credit card symbols also change dramatically from country to country.
8) Local Links
Each market has its own “Page Rank” and therefore you need to build up each markets link graph based on the competitor research you undertook in step 2.
9) Landscape
Google is an important dominant player but there are a lot more changes on the horizon. Facebook and Bing are getting closer. Yandex is growing aggressively with search. Baidu is now launching a phone built by Foxconn shortly.
10) Use the free tools
There is a great deal of information value in the free tools from Google and Bing use them as they have a whole lot more information than they used to.
