The year 2011 was a good year for search engine marketing. As content became the king, some real impressive search engine optimized websites were developed. Many small and big players around the globe also poured into the domain of search [...]]]> The year 2011 was a good year for search engine marketing. As content became the king, some real impressive search engine optimized websites were developed. Many small and big players around the globe also poured into the domain of search engine marketing. Then in August 2011, the search engine giant Google came up with a new algorithm update and rolled out Panda internationally. This proved to be quite a challenge for websites that had a .com extension with either a sub domain or subdirectory structure. The problem was naturally more intense for companies that had presence in more than one country.

Multilingual and multi-country websites have similar content or translated similar content with perhaps some variations in terms of currency signs and title tags. So the combination of duplicate content and a directory/sub directory structure caused websites to get stuck in the Panda filter.

Google rolled out a solution for the problem that multiple language sites started facing due to Panda filter. This key was in the form of ‘hreflang’ and ‘canonical’ tags. This is Google’s way of telling site owners that they should use a regional subtag in their head tag for the website URL. This will help Google search crawlers to figure out the nature of content on each page and its relevance to a search performed. With these tags on websites, Google will comprehend that content on the site is truly intended for that region.

So how do the Hreflang and Canonical tags help?

Hreflang Tag

The hreflang attribute (hreflang: rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x”) is very helpful for website owners in different parts of the world who need content translated in native languages to target a particular region. It can be easily used for multilingual websites using substantially the same content on all web pages with some differences in spellings – for instance pages in English for Canada, USA and Australia.

Hreflang can also be used by multiregional websites using fully translated content or substantially monolingual content that targets different regions – pages in English, French, German, Spanish, and other languages.

To use the hreflang tag for multiple language versions of a website, each language must use rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x”. So, a page in German needs to have a rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x” link to the English and Spanish version and the English and Spanish version must include a link pointing to the German site.

Google has expanded its support of the rel=”alternate” hreflang link element to take care of content that is translated or offered for more than one geographic region. The hreflang attribute mentions the language, optionally the country, and URLs of equivalent content. By stating these alternate URLs, Google’s goal is to be able to consolidate signals for such web pages, and to serve the appropriate URL to users in search. Alternative URLs may be on the same website or on another domain.

Canonical Tag

The multilingual canonical tag (rel=”canonical”) tells Google that a certain URL is the preferred location and the most significant translated version of the content of the primary or general URL.

So multilingual canonical tag:

• Is used in tandem with hreflang
• May be used when web pages have the same content in same language but target multiple countries
• Designate the translation of content that gets indexed and returned to users

With canonical tag on web pages, when users enter content into search results, they are likely to see the URL that has relevant content in their preferred language. In other words, Google will use “canonical” signal to focus on preferred version of web pages in each search, while displaying the local URLs to users where appropriate. To quote an example, you can use the tag if you have the same product page in Spanish, but want to target it separately to users searching on the Google properties for Spain, United Kingdom, and Germany.

To explain how the tags would work, here is an illustration for a hypothetical site abc.com

http://www.abc.com/ – contains the general homepage of a website, in Spanish

http://es-es.abc.com/ – is the version for users in Spain, in Spanish

http://es-uk.abc.com/ – is the version for users in United Kingdom, in Spanish

http://en.abc.com/ -     is the generic English language version

For all of these pages, the website owner can use the following markup to specify language and optionally the region:

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”es” href=”http://www.abc.com/” />

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”es-ES” href=”http://es-es.abc.com/” />

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”es-UK” href=”http://es-uk.abc.com/” />

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en” href=”http://en.abc.com/” />

When a regional sub tag is specified, Google assumes that the website owner wants to target that region. Website owners need to remember that all of these annotations are to be used on a per-URL basis. They need to use the specific URL, not the homepage, for both of these link elements.

You can employ:

• Hreflang tags to segregate same language, different content or different languages on different URLs
• Canonical tags to bring together same language and same content under one URL

While canonical acknowledges that this is the same content, the Hreflang tag identifies which URL should be displayed in different sets of results.

And, Canonical + Hreflang = same content + different URL

Google understands that the content is the same, but displays the correct URL as per the Google domain search. The use of Hreflang and canonical tags applies to local domains as well as dot coms, though the examples stated by Google are based on dot coms. The canonical and Hreflang tags do not have any direct impact on ranking – canonicals do not share the link equity of the domestic market with the new markets targeted.

The obvious benefits of Hreflang –

• It helps Google to comprehend your site better and know that pages are related to each other.
• It helps Google discover new URLs that could be the ones that it missed before in searches.
• It creates more targeted URL for searchers: Different users can see a suitable, localized URL.

So start using the Hreflang tag – there are no reasons to be scared!

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Yesterday’s standing room only international SEO session at SMX Munich featured Johannes Müller of Google Zurich and one of Google’s most popular spokespeople, known in the forums as “johnmu.” In English, he typically goes under the name “John” [...]]]> Yesterday’s standing room only international SEO session at SMX Munich featured Johannes Müller of Google Zurich and one of Google’s most popular spokespeople, known in the forums as “johnmu.” In English, he typically goes under the name “John” so I’ll continue for this piece with that anglicised version of his name.

John is a specialist on Google’s webmaster tools and has a lot to say on geo-targeting for international websites. He’s due to speak on Thursday this week at the International Search Summit Munich which takes place in the Hilton Munich Park Hotel immediately after the main show. John will also be speaking there on the management of multilingual websites — no doubt another packed session, though this time in English.

The Trouble With Geo-Targeting

The trouble with geo-targeting is that, whilst it’s relatively simple in practice, it does appear confusing at first sight. John understands this too and begins his presentation with a very simple structure to represent the building blocks of international and multilingual website management. He initially subdivides the subject into international, multilingual websites and those using hreflang though this structure soon falls apart as the audience throw in question upon question.

The first key point is that local websites in a region — such as German-speaking Switzerland — are presented higher in the rankings by Google where that helps to deliver greater relevance to the user. John says “Internationalisation is not difficult — but you do have to focus”.

Google tries algorithmically to decide based on geographic factors which will be the most relevant result. He gives the example of a search for “Bahn”. Meaning “railway”, you would expect information on Swiss railways if you searched for “Bahn” in Switzerland and on German rail if you searched in “Germany”. Google looks at things such as the IP address of the searcher and which of Google’s domains the search is carried out on to help in presenting the right results. So Google.de will tend to provide results which are “Germany” related unless there are other factors about the search that necessitate the information being pulled from outside the country.

“Don’t Worry About Duplicate Content”

John says that you shouldn’t worry about duplicate content as that is not penalised and Google has a very rational policy to dealing with it. He explains that Google understands that on mysite.fr you may have the same textual content that you have on my site.ca/fr and works to present the right result. He adds to a questioner in the room who doesn’t seem to be setting the right result that it is important to look at how well Google is able to crawl the site.

He goes on to stress the importance of having a unique URL per set of contents, whether thats targeted by country or language and stresses the importance of keeping a “clean” separation between countries. As he’s speaking German, he uses the word “sauber” for clean, a word which is uttered at least 20 times during the session with an implication that most of the problems international sites currently have are caused by their owners messing things up. International and global SEOs, you need to clean up your act!

We have presented the different factors which Google uses to determine the geography which should be associated with particular websites for many years. But Google recently introduced the Hreflang tag, which Susan Moskwa presented to the International Search Summit in San Jose.

How Geo-Targeting Became Muddled

The situation then became a little muddled in a main session at SMX San Jose when the importance of canonical tags and hreflang tags was discussed.

The whole situation has left many global SEOs at least puzzled. I have been receiving messages from large website owners saying that they can’t see how it works, how they should deploy and, worse, that when they deploy the recommendations, it has no effect whatsoever. Yet we mustn’t forget that Google is introducing this for a reason, even if the reason is somewhat opaque.

John moves the subject along by providing a list I’ve never seen before from any of the Google speakers on the subject and which helps to set the recent changes in a more understandable context.

Google’s Geo-targeting Factors Ranked By Importance

He lists the factors which Google uses to determine the correct geo-targeting of sites and pages as:-

• ccTLD
• webmaster tools
• server location
• Rel-alternate hreflang
• Other signals

This is a very useful list because it does a number of significant things. Firstly, it re-affirms the fact that ccTLDs continue to have the greatest level of important appearing at the top of the list and meaning that these continue to take precedence over the newer Hreflang tag option.

Webmaster tools is also shown in second place to ccTLDs — exactly where it should be in my opinion, but many newbies to international SEO continue to think of that as the first and most ideal option for Google. However, Hreflang tags have taken a slot above “Other signals”, which is now where “language” must reside.

Keep It Clean Guys

The usual question crops up of whether you can use subdomains or folders and John takes the opportunity to reiterate that it doesn’t really make much difference between the tool, “As long as you’re maintaining a “sauber” separation between countries and languages.

A questioner asks about the fact that the using the geo-settings in Webmaster Central, Google’s webmaster console, John explains something which many web masters had figured, namely that it typically takes around a month for Webmaster Central’s geo-settings to take full effect.

He is then asked if the regional location of a server within a country has any bearing on geo-targeting or location placement and confirms that this has no bearing whatsoever.

Whoops A Little Disagreement

Then a slide appears what says that “Language is not geo-targeting”, giving the example of French being a language which people could possibly wish to view in many parts of the world, not just in France.

I disagree with John on this one — and the example is misleading. It is possible to geo-target the speakers of single country languages such as Polish or Korean and for many this would be the least cost route to reach their audience, as well as potentially capturing emigrants from that country in other locations. Of course for the world languages such as French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic and so on, then the point is true.

He continues by explaining that It is not possible to target regionally, for example there is no setting or method for targeting “Asia”.

Who’s At Fault For Landing On The Wrong Pages?

On Thursday, I will say to John that he did make me chuckle with his next point. Instead of automatically re-directing users who are “Landing on the wrong pages”, he suggests using a banner which says “Did you mean to visit Switzerland?” The reason it made me chuckle is because, by implication, it means that the users of Google or the publishers of sites in Google, are actually the ones who’re at fault for causing landings on incorrect pages. Google’s algorithm is not at fault! Nice one!

It is important to have just one language per page — and particular attention has to paid to templates that are not translated whilst the content is as this is a situation which presents Google with particularly tough challenges. Pages with small samples of keywords in another language can cause problems — such as a German site promoting Spanish properties — because Google tries to establish the main language on a page.

He didn’t explain, but the background to this is that the first thing Google has to do when it indexes a page of content is to decide what is the principal language of the page as the remaining indexing processes are highly language dependent. Getting the language wrong at the first pass will mean that things do not go well down the line.

When Google Definitely Does Ignore Meta Tags

Language meta tags and language code references or variables, Google ignores. They are not a good signal because so much content is copy pasted without these settings being adjusted.

Automatic translation causes significant problems for search engine-related content. I also had to smile when John included “Google Translate” in his description as one of the culprits — with the intention I guess of giving a balanced and fair message.

Text in pictures and flash is difficult to recognise, which is something SEOs have known about for years, but localised websites in multiple languages often forget the images and banners with the result that content appears incorrectly on the page. Google still does not do much with this kind of content — which means that for certain difficulties it provides an opportunity to present content which it would be inappropriate for Google to index. An example would be a message that said “Are you looking for Switzerland or Germany?”

Unicode Helps to Avoid Gobbledygook

Cross linking to different language versions is desirable, as this helps Google’s algorithms to see the complete network as such and give it its proper values. John also warned that Google doesn’t accept “accept-language” requests.

Unicode or UTF8 avoids characters which are specific to a particular language looking like gobbledygook and difficult for Google to recognise — noting that Google has algorithms to recongise differences such as “ü” or “ue”. For non-German speakers, the “ü” can be correctly replaced with the “ue” — some years ago Google did not recognise these two versions as identical producing different sets of results.

John stressed the point that the Hreflang tag is a page level signal — not site level. It also has nothing to do with ranking but means that the pages are “swapped” in the results to show the right content at the right time to the right user.

John Müller will be speaking at the InternationalSearchSummit.com on Thursday of this week.

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For decades it was the media companies that largely controlled the tools through which consumers were told what to buy and where. With the mass popularity of the Internet consumers now have the ability to generate, curate and distribute content [...]]]> For decades it was the media companies that largely controlled the tools through which consumers were told what to buy and where. With the mass popularity of the Internet consumers now have the ability to generate, curate and distribute content to their peers in real time. As a result they can also effectively co-author the stories that brands tell and do seek active engagement from the brands that they use.

While associating themselves with their favorite brands on social media platforms, and even while checking information online, consumers may have totally different expectations than what the brands owners perceive. A recent study by Yahoo! and BBDO involves the information collected from more than 1000 consumers and brand marketing professionals.

The study divulges that 96 percent of the consumers want to know the exact product price, product features and proof points from a brand. In comparison only 86 percent of marketers feel that this information matters to consumers. Similarly, while 58 percent of the consumers actually want to know about the history and the eccentric or quirky details of the brand, only 41 percent perceive that consumers look for such details.

As per the study, 45 percent of the consumers look for interesting online stories about the brand but only 41 percent of the marketers believe that they do so.

The biggest discrepancy lies in the concept of sharing – the one quite directly related to social networking sites and other review sharing platforms. 91 percent of the consumers admit that they like to put their views about brands online and share it with consumers but only 56 percent of the marketers feel that this matters to consumers!

Apparently, it is time for brands that want to enjoy a good presence in the market to have a better understanding of the consumer psyche. They need to know how important the concepts of sharing and social media are for the Internet savvy customer.

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As a board member of SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Association and a multilingual internet marketer, I need to weigh in on many things when I consult my clients and one of them is what search engine to choose [...]]]> As a board member of SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Association and a multilingual internet marketer, I need to weigh in on many things when I consult my clients and one of them is what search engine to choose to market through.

As a SEMPO board member, I also need to be aware of things such as the FTC’s investigation into Google and this prompted me to think “how can an organization like Google be reviewed, how can a company that relies only on its IP (intellectual property) be examined without having to yield and explain their algorithm and what is then left when the chef has given the secret spice in the award winning recipe?” Not much.

There are so many search engines out there including Yahoo!, Bing (now powering Yahoo! in many locations around the world), Ask and some regional ones such as Baidu in China and Yandex in Russia. You are actually likely to find literally hundreds of them.

Why then do most of the internet users around the globe start their online searches with Google? What makes Google better (or worse) than its competitors?  What is it that makes Google so special that even in languages that are considered hard to crack, such as my native language Icelandic, is Google superior to home-made engines that should at least give Google some contest and a run for their money?

In simple terms, Google gives the people the answers they’re looking for – it may be the latest news, information on a product or process, or the sellers of merchandise or services – but Google has everything in its massive database, everything needed to fulfill the needs of the user and they return, in most cases, the most relevant results based on my experience and tests conducted regularly at my company.

Google algorithms actually seem to understand what the users have in mind and do return relevant and excellent search results. But how does one define excellent search results? Perhaps, you can wind back to 1996 when search on AltaVista and Ask Jeeves comprised short tailed queries. You had to search manually through pages and pages of results before finding anything that made sense for you. It was Google that changed all that. Thanks to its superior search algorithms, you rarely need to go beyond the results of first page for any search.

Companies such as Microsoft and Yahoo have been gunning for Google’s level of search relevance for years. Certainly they do have access to talent for developing great algorithms but still Google continues to rule and is the favourite search engine for all.

There is a lot of hard work that goes behind Google results you are so accustomed to. The search engine makes up to 500 changes to search algorithms every year where each change aims to give better and more relevant results to users. It knows that users come to search engines to help them sift through all the information on the web and not every site can appear at the top of the results.

Certain websites complain that frequent changes in Google algorithms cause them to lose their ranking and traffic. But Google does provide huge information to websites on the techniques to improve their own performance through tools like the Google Webmaster Tools.

Google has also impacted technological innovation in positive ways. Its well-known Android mobile platform has sparked new improvements in mobile devices. Also its web browser Chrome helped to initiate innovation in the otherwise inactive browser domain.

Google’s search quality team has worked hard to develop algorithms that give better visibility to small and local business home pages. It was observed that web pages of small and medium business enterprises got buried or lost amidst big brand names on the web. But with Google publishing results based on local searches, they have better chances of reaching the top of search results. The search engine leader keeps small businesses in mind while improving and testing its new algorithms.

The biggest problem that small businesses face is that they do not have a website to reflect in results. But even they get the required support from Google through features like Google Places and Google Maps.  And Google’s new “Getting America’s Business Online” initiative is helping bring even more businesses online. This initiative actually interests me and I hope that they roll it out in more countries.

Based on what I have experienced and seems to be Google’s only consideration is to give the best answers to users’ queries – without any political viewpoints or advertising dollars. Indeed it also claims that free organic listings are clicked more often than PPC ads.

Sometimes the best answer to a query may be among one of the traditional “ten blue links.” But there are instances where it can also be a news article, sports score, stock quote, flight timing, video or a map — and Google can place it above other results if that’s what the user needs!

The bottom line is that no chef will give out their secret ingredient nor should they be forced to. The secret behind Google’s global success is that they serve their users in a simple and straight forward manner the right relevant results and while they do that they have the upper hand.

The user is wise enough to distinguish between relevant and non -relevant results.

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Last month at the SEM Conference in Oslo, Bryan Eisenberg and I were talking about the tools of the trade and he mentioned that he had put together a site focusing on collecting internet marketing  tools and it seemed that [...]]]> Last month at the SEM Conference in Oslo, Bryan Eisenberg and I were talking about the tools of the trade and he mentioned that he had put together a site focusing on collecting internet marketing  tools and it seemed that he had been doing this for some time.

The site itself is www.websitetestingtools.com and there are many good tools that you can browse through and something tells me that Bryan’s list is likely to grow fast over the coming months.

To give me head-start Bryan pointed me to several tools and one of them is a tool based on the data collected by a very popular Wordpress plugin called AddThis. The data collected by the AddThis team shows how data socializes, that is how those reading content share it.

Comparing countries like my home country Iceland and one of our closest neighbours Norway it is clear that Facebook is the biggest sharing option when users redistribute content of pages. In Iceland it is Facebook Like with some 47% and then Facebook with 25%. In Norway this flips, that is Facebook has a bigger share of 39% and Facebook Like has just over 18%.

What stands out for me is how often users print out items, Icelandic users seem to be bit “greener” when it comes to sharing content as they only use the print option in 1.88% while the Norwegians do that in close to 15%.

If you want to compare your own country to others you can to that by using the AddThis stats tool.

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The war between Interflora and Marks & Spencer has been on-going for some time now, here is a quick wrap up of the situation:

A fantastic presentation about leveraging global content earned international search marketing expert Bill Hunt the Medallion Speaker award at last week’s International Search Summit in San Jose.

In his session, Bill discussed different ways organisations can use content to [...]]]> A fantastic presentation about leveraging global content earned international search marketing expert Bill Hunt the Medallion Speaker award at last week’s International Search Summit in San Jose.

In his session, Bill discussed different ways organisations can use content to increase search traffic and conversions. Some of his key tips included:

• Develop a shared language content strategy. Identify the top keywords in each market and align common words and content from different country sites, which use the same language, to gather scale

• Map searcher intent. Breakdown searches on a keyword into categories e.g. searches for diabetes can be seperated into understand, diagnose, treat, live with and use that information to match keywords to the most relevant landing pages.

• Structure your management system to integrate global strategy with local country implementation and localise global content to make it relevant for each market.

• Make the most of all content – including template and top-level content optimisation – e.g. make sure all content on the page fully indexable, including navigations, ensure that all page titles and meta data are optimised, check that search engines are able to follow all links on the page.

• Organsations with global websites can enhance the value of their content through interlinking between sites – however should link each page to a similar/relevant page on the other country sites, rather than just including home page links.

• Develop content to satisfy a user need e.g. how to guides or product usage information.

• Compare glossary in translation memory tools to keyword lists to make sure they match up

Other speakers at the one day event, which was held as part of SMX West, included Maura Ginty of Autodesk, Andy Atkins-Krueger from WebCertain, Philippe Pieri from Cisco and LinkedIn Co-Founder Konstantin Guericke. Watch out for further posts around the International Search Summit sessions.

The next International Search Summit will take place in Munich on April 4th, followed by London on May 18th. The next US Summit will be in Seattle as part of SMX Advanced, and the agenda for that event will be released later this week.

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According to Internet World Stats there are close to 2 billion Internet users worldwide. According to same source there are around 520 million Facebook users or 7.6% of the total Internet population.

Europe has the most Facebook users or just above [...]]]> According to Internet World Stats there are close to 2 billion Internet users worldwide. According to same source there are around 520 million Facebook users or 7.6% of the total Internet population.

Europe has the most Facebook users or just above 162 million, North America comes next with around 150 million. Asia comes number three with some 93 million users, Latin America has 68 million or there about, Africa has 17 million, Oceania/The Caribbean (Australia) has also 15.6 and finally and the Middle-East have close to 11.7 million.

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Today Monday November 29th is ‘Cyber Monday‘. The biggest shopping day of the year?

Or is it Monday December 6th 2010 referred as ‘Mega Monday‘ where sales are expected to hit over €uro 1million per minute…

October 2010, IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales [...]]]> Today Monday November 29th is ‘Cyber Monday‘. The biggest shopping day of the year?

Or is it Monday December 6th 2010 referred as ‘Mega Monday‘ where sales are expected to hit over €uro 1million per minute…

October 2010, IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index is expected to increase by 16 per cent in 2010 vs. 2009 for online Christmas sales, reaching £6.4billion.

Different forecasts come from various sources. For instance, Hi Media expect the European online Christmas sales to represent over 10 per cent of the European overall Christmas sales, representing respectively €uro 32 billion of the overall €uro 313 billion.

The UK, Germany and France will represent the highest total spend for the Christmas 2010 season, accounting for 65 per cent of the overall European Christmas spend:

1. UK – €uro 77.2 billion
2. Germany – €uro 64.5 billion
3. France – €uro 62.5 billion
4. Spain – €uro 31.2 billion

Denmark, Norway and Sweden are forecasted to spend the least overall at €5.4bn, €6.1bn and €9.6bn respectively.

How strong is online Christmas shopping in Europe?

1. UK – highest in Europe with €uro 13 billion – i.e 17% of the overall 2010 UK retail Christmas sales
2. Germany – €uro 8.2 billion – i.e 13% of the overall 2010 Germany retail Christmas sales
3. France – €uro 6.3 billion – i.e 10% of the overall 2010 France retail Christmas sales
4. Spain – €uro 624 million- i.e 2% of the overall 2010 Spain retail Christmas sales

Norway will spend €uro 0.73 billion online and Denmark €uro 0.61 billion.

Pierpaolo Zollo, from Kelkoo says: “Internet sales across Europe are set to be more important than ever this Christmas, with consumers spending record amounts online, and online commerce acting as the primary driving force for overall retail growth during the festive season.”

Don’t forget to track your online audience thanks to free simple tools such as Google Analytics and make sure you run an online reputation management program.

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In a research done by Nordic eMarketing in cooperation with the eNewsPR network, journalists are found to use less than 2.5 keywords most of the time. In the same research Nordic eMarketing found that French journalists are lazier than the [...]]]> In a research done by Nordic eMarketing in cooperation with the eNewsPR network, journalists are found to use less than 2.5 keywords most of the time. In the same research Nordic eMarketing found that French journalists are lazier than the English when searching for content and Scandinavian journalists are likelier to venture outside of their ccTLD and use .COM or other ccTLD endings when searching for content through their preferred search engine.

After reviewing well over 2 million individual visits and search referrals, filtering out various media from over 40 countries and all continents, Nordic eMarketing found among other that Twitter is a poor organic referrer and Google returns close to 90% of the reporters coming through search.

Stay tuned at Multilingual Search and be among the first to get this report/white paper on the behaviour of journalists and how they search for content.

It is due to be published late October this 2010.

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