According to Inside Facebook the fastest growing European country for Facebook in September was Turkey. Although Turkey is not technically part of the European continent it is applying to become part of the European Union. Turkey also [...]]]> According to Inside Facebook the fastest growing European country for Facebook in September was Turkey. Although Turkey is not technically part of the European continent it is applying to become part of the European Union. Turkey also has the largest number of users after the UK – although growth of users has pretty much stagnated at just 1.46%.

Four countries topped 10% growth in September namely Germany, Austria,the Netherlands and the Czech Republic.

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Via Adage, ComScore has revealed the Google share by market showing the Google domination in many markets alongside discrepancies such as Korea where Google has a dismal share of the market. Western Europe has stronger Google shares than [...]]]> Via Adage, ComScore has revealed the Google share by market showing the Google domination in many markets alongside discrepancies such as Korea where Google has a dismal share of the market. Western Europe has stronger Google shares than the US but the Mountain View monolith is most powerful in Brazil, Turkey and Italy.


Unfortunately, with China and Russia missing – the picture is somewhat one-sided.

Google Share by Market – ComScore

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According the MasterCard Turkey, the number of purchases Turkish internet users have made online at non-Turkish websites has increased more than 20% while the value of purchases increased 46% between 2005-2006.

The most popular online shopping destinations for Turkish people [...]]]> According the MasterCard Turkey, the number of purchases Turkish internet users have made online at non-Turkish websites has increased more than 20% while the value of purchases increased 46% between 2005-2006.

The most popular online shopping destinations for Turkish people have been USA, UK, Germany, Singapure, Israel, Canada, Austria, Hong Kong, Belgium and Ireland based websites. And the most popular products bought from the websites abroad have been Books/CDs, Clothing, Toys and Cosmetics.

It is a clear example to why businesses should not underestimate the importance of a global internet marketing strategy.

Another interesting finding of MasterCard’s survey was that only 11% of Turkish population has made a purchase online in the last 12 months and the most purchased shopping items have been flight/travel tickets (36%), social activity tickets (34%) and books/dvds (15%) in 2006. The most purchased products in 2005 have been electronic goods. The change is believed to be due to the fast development of the budget airlines industry in Turkey.

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I am not going to give you some statistics about which search engines are popular in Turkey… Google is top as in the UK and Yahoo and MSN come after that. Other so called search engines like rehber or iyi [...]]]> I am not going to give you some statistics about which search engines are popular in Turkey… Google is top as in the UK and Yahoo and MSN come after that. Other so called search engines like rehber or iyi net are just a few simple directories. So, Google is the key and main search engine like in many other countries..

I was fascinated to see one of my trial Turkish websites (actually SEO playgrounds), www bankahesap com, to rank at 6th place for the keyword of “bank account” soon after the crawl of the website at Google Turkey. If I would have the same success in the UK, I would receive too many calls from banks’ and affiliate networks!

It seems that the Google algorithm for ranking of websites in Turkey is either less functional to score the quality of the websites or there is such a mess of SEO disabled websites, and so less competition all over the internet in Turkey. The latter is much more possible.

The key reasons for this website to rank in the first page quite easily are:

- keyword in the domain name
- keyword in the title
- keyword in heading
- keyword density within the content

The said ranking is achieved even without having a single link to the website…

This leads me to remember that currently in the Turkish internet world, there is a great potential for commercial websites which normally have got many links but lack the onsite SEO optimisation elements such as the ones listed above.

The other thing is that most of the website publishers have been used to utilise only link farms and link exchange mostly with the intention of driving traffic only and obviously the value of such links has diminished or vanished.

There is currently hardly a mature SEO consciousness in Turkey. Even the first website on top for the search of the keyword “SEO”, which is a DMOZ listed SEO expert’s website, has got extremely irrelevant external links and contents: look at www.seot. net (check “lazer epilasyon” link in the bottom). Google seems to be appreciating an SEO expert’s (!) SEO website, that has got content on laser epilation obviously to monetise with AdSense and many laser epilation links (obviously sold out), as the authority website…

I believe the main reason for this SEO website to link on top is because it is the only website using the keyword of SEO in its title in the DMOZ Turkish regional section’s search engine optimisation section (Other external links to it are coming from very irrelevant websites such as a wedding website). Other experts (!) at DMOZ listing seem to have forgotten to anchor link their website when listing at DMOZ (DMOZ Turkish SEO Section).

Turkish internet landscape was used to be a black hat SEO arena for several years… Most of the websites have been using extreme keyword spamming for example and although they seem to have realised it as the sole reason of their websites’ removal from Google index, there are still lots of websites who do that at least in meta titles…

These lead me to make my final point: there is a big potential in the Turkish internet marketing for SEO enthusiasts mainly because:

- Less SEO conscious, so less competitiveness
- Google has hired Turkish speaking search quality specialists who will be eager to hunt dodgy websites
- Current link building strategy has heavily depended on link farms and link exchange which is a bad practice.
- There are still many available domain names to be included the target keywords
- Turkish pay per click (mainly AdWords) understanding has not developed sufficiently yet. Website owners seem to be reluctant in paying for each click. When owners or businesses say they want their website on top, most they mean the natural search results.

Now, I am wondering what will happen to my newly created and newly DMOZ submitted Turkish SEO website :SEO Arama Motoru Optimizasyonu (Turkish).

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