As tends to happen in the ever fluid world of online marketing, Page One Web sees new trends emerging on a regular basis. Due to the fact that we spend our workdays (and a lot of nights!) researching, reading, and hypothesizing, we usually have a good grasp on how to best implement each trend by the time the general public comes calling.

In recent months, the trend is leaning toward the concept of international SEO. We have had countless requests for this process from clients so far in 2010, and one particular notion stands out: The majority were looking for the “easy” way to optimize their sites on the International stage. Surprising? Perhaps not, considering human (business) nature and the perceived state of the economy in 2010. What is surprising to most folks, however, are the challenges and issues that these companies, large and small, are facing.

Below, I’ll talk about the three top issues that most companies (and many consultants)  a) aren’t aware of and b) have no idea how to tackle.

1) Domains

Selection of a domain is, by its nature, an extremely important early step in any SEO campaign. Once we cross the line into international search, however, it becomes even more important and even more challenging.  Simply stated,  you need to have a separate top level domain (TLD) for each of the countries you are targeting. This in itself can be a lot more trying than you might expect.  For one, many countries mandate that you have an actual physical business location in that country before you can obtain a TLD. To gain a German (.de) top-level-domain, for example, you must operate an office in Germany. As we all know, the goal of any search engine is to deliver the most relevant results possible for each search query entered. It stands to reason then, that if your domain ends in .de (as opposed to .com) that Google.de will see your site as more relevant.

2) Hosting

Once again, this issue speaks directly to the fact that search engines want to deliver the most relevant results possible.  Each engine is going to consider a site that is hosted in that particular country as a more relevant result. That said, the engines all look at the host locations (IP) of each site that is in its index.

Ideally, you’d have the ability to host your unique TLDs in-country. So, if you’re targeting Germany, you need a .de Web site and host this within Germany.

If you operate in 15 countries, you want to try to take this same principle and apply it to each target country.

3) Content and Translation

This is a biggie, and is usually how the conversation starts with a prospective marketer who wants to go international. “How do I translate my site for international search engines?”  I am not going to delve into the various theories here today; rather I am going to tell you what works. TAKE THE TIME. SPEND THE MONEY. LOCALIZE ALL OF YOUR CONTENT TO EACH MARKET, and do not leave opportunity and dollars on the table because you took a shortcut and duplicated your English content across the board.

The above three items are the issues we encounter regularly in talking about international SEO. This is in no way a complete list; rather, these are the items that need to be at the forefront when you are considering undertaking such a campaign.

As always, please email with any questions or for more information.

chris@pageonewebsolutions.com

Talk to you soon….

Generally speaking, we like to keep this space pretty simplified with the subject matter that we discuss. Obviously we expect that our clients are reading these posts regularly, so it is important to us that we do not over complicate what we post. That said, I’m going to go ahead and throw that idelogy out the window for today.

Matt Cutts, one of the bigger cheeses (particularly to those in the SEO field) at Google is usually good about telling us his feelings and occasionaly giving the general public some insight as to how things at Google work.

Matt  joined Google as a Software Engineer in January 2000. Before Google, he was working on his Ph.D. in computer graphics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has an M.S. from UNC-Chapel Hill, and B.S. degrees in both mathematics and computer science from the University of Kentucky.

Matt wrote SafeSearch, which is Google’s family filter. In addition to his experience at Google, Matt held a top-secret clearance while working for the Department of Defense, and he’s also worked at a game engine company. He claims that Google is the most fun by far.

Matt currently heads up the Webspam team for Google.  Eric Enge over at Stone Temple Consulting was kind of enough to share with us the interview with Matt that he recently conducted, and I am going to post it here in its entirety. There is some great info, and Im going to leave it as is rather than try to water it down…so as always, if there are questions and/or comments, please post here or feel free to give me an email at chris@pageonewebsolutions.com.

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To those of you (well, those of you who listen to us!!)  that work with Page One on a regular basis, this news will come as no surprise whatsoever.

Hitwise, and in particular their Research Director Alan Long, are reporting some very interesting news out of Australia this morning.  It seems that, for the first time ever, social media sites such as Facebook and Youtube actually overtook search engines with respect to number of unique visits during the week of Dec 19-26, 2009.

“While this looked like a short term lead”, wrote Long this morning, ” we are now seeing continued growth of Social Networking and Forums to now sit just 0.4% share behind Search Engines in the week ending 16 January 2010.”

Lets have a look at the actual statistics folks:

We can see clearly that these social networks are no longer the “new stuff” that no one understands just yet. They are the real deal, are sustainable, and are driving SIGNIFICANT QUALIFIED traffic to businesses every minute of every hour of every day.

The most prevalent question/objection we are still (STILL!) hearing is, “but these social sites are not relevant to business. They can’t do anything for my business.”  We will be getting into some nice numbers and hard proof in our next column. IN the meantime, I have two thoughts for you to consider:

1) Dell made over 7 million dollars on Twitter ALONE in 2009. How much did you make? How about your competitor? Who’s going to take YOUR market share in 2010?

2) To our beloved B2B and Industry- type folks: Do you remember talking to us (or someone like us) in about 2003 or so? Do you remember telling us that NEVER was it possible that your potential customers were going to use the Internet and search engines to source you? No? WELL I REMEMBER!!! Obviously, that turned to be untrue, and so is the fact that social has no place in B2B or Industry. We dragged you onto the search engines, and that turned out pretty well for you. So I guess if we have to, we’ll just drag you into the Social Media world also…….TO BE CONTINUED………

Disclaimer: I am writing this under the assumption that you  understand a couple of things. The first is that you need to employ a web marketing strategy that includes SEO, and why that is. The second is that it is going to be 2010, and in 2010 you need to ALSO be employing a social media marketing strategy- and why THAT is. If you understand those two things (even if you are not doing them yet) then read on. If not, email me NOW at chris@pageonewebsolutions.com!!!

Now, let’s consider press releases. Once we understand that marketing online (in any sense) works best when we employ the concept of LEVERAGE, we can see why press releases are so beneficial to our campaigns- and are no longer an option.  If you want to get yourself in front of MILLIONS of people, the online press release can’t be beat.  When coupled with the fact that search engines (and Google in particular) LOVE press releases, it stands to reason that a consistent press release campaign is an absolute must if you intend to dominate your market in today’s online  world.

“Search engine rankings are arguably the most important small business marketing tool available today because it drives Web traffic — and potential prospects — to a small business’ Web site,” a PRWeb spokesperson recently told the industry website WebProNews. “However, because improving search rankings is desirable, achieving results can be both challenging and highly competitive.”

WebProNews goes on to tell us, “PRWeb shared a case study with us, involving a firm that typically sees a boost in search engine rankings and a 50% spike in web traffic after they issue a release. In fact, for one release in particular, the firm saw a spike of 400% on two different Web sites, and the firm doesn’t believe they were from the same users. They also incorporate social media tools like Twitter to extend the “shelf life” of press releases, and say that drives additional traffic.”

On top of that, it is recognized in the web marketing industry that when using the web to research, 95% (NINETY FIVE PERCENT!) of journalists will use search first.  If your website and your press release are both showing up on Page 1 of Google– who do you suppose looks like the expert in the field? Who do you suppose will be getting the call from the reporter, and who do you suppose will be getting quoted in the article? Imagine what your prospects will think of you then. IT HAPPENS EVERY DAY………

Well, that’s it for 2009…everyone have a great holiday, and we’ll talk again in 2010. If you take anything away from this space into the new year– make it this: you will be losing significant market share in 2010 if you get left behind on this stuff. Whether or not you choose Page One Web Solutions as your provider,  you need to be an aggressive social media marketer; its simply not an option anymore. Your competition is doing it- I promise you that.  Lets keep ahead of the curve and make 2010 a profitable online year.

About 2 weeks ago, a piece of noteworthy news came out of Google regarding a change to the presentation of some of the results that are returned in its pages. This is in addition to the much anticipated Caffeine update (which is also beginning to show itself and will be the subject of another post a little bit later this week). The announcement stated that Google would begin testing the presentation of breadcrumb navigation in  its SERPS (search engine results pages)  in place of the traditional URL structure that we are all used to seeing. A result here and there seemed to show after the announcement, but I am now seeing this with enough frequency that it merits a discussion (or at least a mention). Lets head out on to the web and take a look:

Lets consider the search for, oh I don’t know,  Jimmy Buffett CD.

You will notice that the first two results (at least at the time I am writing this!) are from CD Universe and have a traditional URL structure underneath them in blue.  Now, look at the three and four results that currently belong to Amazon. Can you see the difference in the URL? To those of you that use this type of navigation on your sites, this will make perfect sense. What does this mean as far as rankings are concerned? Well, as always Google is trying to present searchers with the most relevant set of results possible, and they also fell like this presentation will be easier and more user friendly for searchers.

This is a pretty significant change that we are seeing. Folks, if your site has lots of pages and/or products and services……LISTEN UP!!!  The state of your internal linking structure and site navigation just got a whole lot more important in the eyes of Google!

Please pay extra close attention to this, and as always, if you think your site needs help and would like to get it done correctly the first time, send me an email at chris@pagonewebsolutions.com to set up a  free consultation…..

One of the things our teams here at Page One spend a lot of time doing is writing, editing, and tweaking website copy.  In the normal course of our day, we find the need for the occasional dictionary or thesaurus  or word counter, amongst other things.  Since a good part of what we do revolves around search engines and around Google in particular, we naturally reach out to the big G to serve as all of the above (and more) on a regular basis.  I don’t suppose that most non search obsessed folks might be aware that Google actually serves many functions beyond the one that made it famous. I’m going to go ahead and go through a few of the ones that I use on a regular basis:

1) Dictionary. Type into your search box the word “definition” (without quotes) followed by the term you would like the definition of.

2) World Clock. Type into your search box the phrase “what time is it” (without quote) followed by the name of a city and voila- you have a world clock at your disposal.

3) Metric and Currency Converter. I use this one all the time.  Simply type into your search box the conversion you wish to make (no quotes). “5,000 US Dollars in Euros”, or “50 lbs. in Kilograms”.

4) Track Your Flight Status. Again, pretty simple.  Enter your Airline and flight number into your search box and you’ve got it.

5) Make Google Recognize Faces. This is a Google Image search, and  a bit more complex, but still cool. You have to make an addition in the actual url of the search. Let’s use the name “Rose” as an example.  Search for images of “Rose”. You will get a bunch of flowers. Now, go to the end of the url in  the address bar and add &imgtype=face (at the end). Hit refresh. Now it only returns faces.

6) Identify an object or phrase even if you don’t know what it looks like. This is what Google Images is all about.  Say you’re reading a book about the jungle and you don’t know what an ocelot looks like. Type ” image ocelot” into your Google search bar (no quotes), and there you have it! This also works great for foreign language terms which you may not remember or not known in the first place.

As always, feel free to email me at chris@pageonewebsolutions.com with questions or for a free webinar to talk about all things internet.

So I’m driving this afternoon, and onto the radio comes a commercial which starts something like  “in today’s economy, small businesses need all the customers they can get- instead of chasing them, why not have them come to you for once???”…so naturally, the thing pops into my head is  “well, why would that even be a question in 2009 if you are marketing yourself properly on the web”? Sure enough, the ad is hawking websites……for $4.99 a month. They go on to talk about “choose your site, put it up, and get your new customers as easy as 1,2, 3.” You have got to be kidding me…

Look, its almost 2010 and we all (I think) know that we need to be spending a good portion of our marketing budgets online. The questions that we, at Page One, are hearing now on a regular basis, though, are “well, how much of the budget should be online?” and “what specific areas online should we be focusing on”? I’m going to take a few minutes here and answer those questions for you.  If you don’t know the answers to them, you are going to sink before you’ve started. Online marketing is anything but “easy as 1,2,3″, and I don’t know about you, but my 5 bucks a month would be better spent on a foot-long from Subway.

The answer to the first question is pretty straightforward.  We can assume safely that all businesses are going to spend somewhere between 0 and 25% of  revenue on marketing and/or advertising their product or service. Smaller companies will spend less, and medium and large companies will spend more. Now, and please listen closely: if you are not spending AT LEAST HALF–YES HALF-of this on the web, you are losing business to your competitors. If this comes as a surprise to you- PLEASE, email me RIGHT NOW at info@pageonewebsolutons.com to set up a free webinar session to discuss.  I am not kidding.

As for the marketing components themselves.  Products and services have some inherent differences that require them to have different online marketing needs. However, two things will always stay true.  YOUR WEBSITE ITSELF, YOUR SEO and YOUR ANALYTICS  are by far (and its not even close) your best online friends, and need the majority of your budget. And I  mean 50-60%.  Period. Youcan be flexible and spend on PPC as well, and in many cases we’d advise it- but your Website and your SEO-  one ties into the other, they go hand and hand, and YOU WILL FAIL online if they are not tended to properly. There is no time like a crappy economy to have a solution like web marketing, and SEO in particular. But folks– it needs to be the majority of what you’re doing…..as always, please email info@pageonewebsolutions.com for a free webinar session delving into what we’ve discussed here, and our recommendations as to how to build (or repair) your online marketing program.