Brighton SEO International Search - Four Pillars of Success

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The Four Pillars of International Search Success

Will CecilSenior SEO ManagerAdapt Worldwide

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• Multilingual Full Service SEO Agency• 21 languages in house• Operate across 70 markets

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The FoundationsDo you really know where the opportunity is?

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The Foundations

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Internet Penetration In Emerging Markets

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2013 2014 2015 201635

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45

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55

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Internet Usage in Emerging Markets

*Pew Research Centre

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Smartphone Use In Emerging Markets

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*Pew Research Centre

2013 2014 2015 201615

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Smart Phone Use In Emerging Markets

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1% Rise Represents: 42M people

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$30 Trillion Opportunity

*Mckinsey & Co

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Where most people go wrong

Incorrect ISO codes

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Where most people go wrong

Errors in content

creation & distribution

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Where most people go wrong

Using pure machine translations

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Where most people go wrong

Jan-15 Feb-15 Mar-15 Apr-15 May-15 Jun-15 Jul-15 Aug-15 Sep-15 Oct-15 Nov-15 Dec-15

Organic visibility

UK HK FR

Underperforming in certain markets because of buy in & operational flaws

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These problems can be broken down into 4 pillars

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Technology

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Operations

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Content

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Localisation

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Tadaaaa!

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The RIGHT Technology is crucial for international search success

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SEO’s should get a huge say in technology…. Because?

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Share price closely correlates to SEO visibility

Jan-1

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Mar-1

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May-1

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Sep-1

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Nov-13

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Mar-1

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May-14

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Sep-1

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Nov-14

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Sep-15

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Mar-1

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0

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Correlation between Yellow pages share price & organic visibility

Semrush Figure Stockprice

Date

Traf

fic in

M

Sha

re P

rice

in $

*Semrush US* Yahoo Finance

Correlation = 0.75

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*Semrush US* Yahoo Finance

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Here are some mistakes in action

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Thinking you’re too big to be affected

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-$30M from neglecting a SEO recommendation & not investing in the technology to make the change possible

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Thinking cross market ranking isn’t a big issue

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100,000 visitsLet’s assume you’re sending 100,000 visits to the wrong website over the course of a year because your French website ranks in Switzerland.

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Thinking cross market ranking isn’t a big issue

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100,000 visits

80% of these people bounce & go elsewhere because the website isn’t fit for their market

80% bounce

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Thinking cross market ranking isn’t a big issue

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100,000 visits

Now let’s assume the conversion rate & AOV of your CH site is 2% and £100

80% bounce

2%£100

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Thinking cross market ranking isn’t a big issue

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Without even considering the missed opportunity from;

• Better quality signals• Local links/shares• Reviews

-£160,000 in revenue

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3 Key International SEO Tech Factors

Hreflang

Validate all reciprocal links

Validate all country-language ISO codes

Targeting

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="http://es.example.com/" />

• Language

• Language & Country

• Country

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3 Key International SEO Tech Factors

GWT

Set up profiles for each

cctld/subdomain/subdirectory and set country

targets

Targeting

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3 Key International SEO Tech Factors

Speed/Accessibility

Use a CDN

Account for exceptions e.g. China will require a cctld & local

host

Mobile first

Reduce page load times as much as possible

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3 Key International SEO Tech Factors

Structure

Language Country

Sub Directory

Sub Domains

Cc tld

Sub Directory

Sub Domains

Keep URL structure relational across markets

Don’t cross sub

directories with geo

targeted cctld

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If you have ever felt like…..

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And this has happened…..

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What do you need to do?

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Regular Audits

• Crawl Weekly

• Crawl Staging Environments Before Release

• Feedback to devs constantly!

• Log file analysis

• Global Ranking Reports

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Key area’s to look for changes in

• Cross Linking

• IA

• Meta Data

• Crawl Errors

• Alien rankings

If you’re using ccTLD’s

If you’re using sub directories & ccTLD’s

Create lost revenue attribution based on

the user behaviour of the traffic this brings

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Monitor Monitor Monitor

Custom Crawlers

Use monitoring tools to tell you what’s changed on a daily/weekly basis

Develop your own to suit your needs

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Not just on page, off page & analytics too!

Set up alerts in GA for traffic from alien geo’s

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Not just on page, off page & analytics too!

Monitor all your markets for sudden changes in links

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Become a Q&A dependant

Become a Q&A dependant

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Use Google Tag Manager

Implement Mark Up with JSON-LD

Track All on page interactions

Version Control

Use loads of pre built tags from industry leaders

Test tracking before going live

Apply schema to new local office pages set up in HK

Set up scroll tracking on your creative content in CH

Nothing beats a safety net

Roll out new optimizely tags in IE

Ensure data accuracy

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Make sure you’re using these useful tools

http://adaptworldwide.com/hreflang-checker

http://www.isearchfrom.com

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Continuity: “The unbroken and consistent existence or operation of something over time.”

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What is important within international SEO team operations?

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Scalability – Being able to roll out strategies to all

markets

Operational – Getting the most out of a

global team

Efficiency – making actionable change

quickly

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Moving into or working across markets is challenging…

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If you don’t have a process for everything you will fail!

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“Hi Tom, can you do some keyword research in Latvia around search opportunities for televisions?”

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“Certainly, here it is”

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No back translation

No categorisation No seasonality No current

situation

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Guidance is key

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1. Create templates for all your processes2. Ensure you’ve got material to distribute as you grow into new

markets so that everyone is working to the same structure3. Standardise everything against an EN master

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Hint Use Screencasts

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Two great apps

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Guidance is key

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There is no “I” in SEO

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PR

EventsProduct Leads

PPC

SEO needs to be friends with everyone

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Share your success stories to get buy in

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Get stuff done

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Empower your team

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Bottleneck workflowsDon’t

Training Tools

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Improve your efficiency

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2

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Assess Throughput & Communication

Develop Team Strengths

Invest in tools and resources

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Key Takeaways

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Create processes for everything

Use PM tools to measure workflow

Be scalable

Sharing is caring

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What happens when you get content wrong?

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Nothing

0 0 0 0

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One Glove Doesn’t Fit All - Trends

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Relational Search Trends for Spiralizers

UK US

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It’s more than just keyword research

Market researchKeyword Research

• Keywords• Trends

• Keywords• Trends• Competitor performance• Content Type• Social Performance• Content length at page level

More Data = Better Decisions

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In facts let’s just call it localised market research

Tools/Calcula-

tors

Service/Products

Advice Industry News

Events Literature0

1000020000300004000050000600007000080000

UK

Industr

y News

Servic

es/P

roduc

ts

Advice

Tools/

Calcula

tors

Litera

ture

Events

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4000

8000

12000

HK

Link

s

Shares Shares

Link

s

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Do keyword research as per usual

Do keyword research as usual

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And…

1) Extract top performing competitors & themes through:

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Add data layers

Extract Competitor data through Screaming Frog

Extract Competitor Share Data at a URL level through the shared count API & google docs

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You should forget the word translation

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Focus on 3 content funnels.

Localisation, transcreation – content creation

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Machine translation isn’t all bad but it has to needs to be edited and manually edited by local resource

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Use a Translation Memory

Reduced content costs long term

Faster translation time

Automated checks less errors

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What translation technology can you use?

Multilingual CMS Proxy solution Multilingual CMS with TM

AWW & easyling XTM Wordpress

& WPML

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Summary

International SEOTechnology

Operations

Content

Localisation

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