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ISS London Fireside Chat With Yandex Co-Founder & CTO Ilya Segalovich – Transcript

Immanuel Simonsen — Thu, 16 May 2013 09:31:54 +0000

In this week’s much anticipated keynote at ISS London, Chris Sherman and Andy Atkins-Krüger were talking to co-founder and CTO of Yandex, Ilya Segalovich, about everything from user privacy to search personalisation and Yandex’s international operations and ambitions.

Here’s a modified (and summarised) transcript of the fireside chat.

What Makes Yandex Different From Other Search Engines?

Ilya: We try not to focus so much on what makes us different from others, but rather how we can improve the user experience and add value to our customers’ lives.

There seems to be a fairly widespread perception that Yandex is purely a Russian copy of Google? What is Yandex doing to overcome that perception?

Ilya: It’s important for me to stress that the perception inside CIS (former Soviet Republics) is very different compared to what it is outside the region. In Russia we don’t have to prove that we’re innovative leaders, much like Google don’t have to prove anything in most of the world’s countries where they’re the dominating force.

We’ve been the leading player for years in Russia and operate the number one search, shopping, news and payment platform – just to name some of our popular services. The environment, however, is changing within Russia and is becoming much more competitive. For many years we barely had any competition. But this is drastically changing now, with new platform and browser providers proliferating.

Yandex’s superb handling of the Russian language is less of a differentiating factor today than it used to be – how do you now differentiate yourself from Google in Russia?

Ilya: Geo-targeting is something we’ve put a lot of effort into. If you search from Moscow and we return a result from say Vladivostok, it’s just as irrelevant as a Brazilian result with shipping only to Brazil would be to a user in Portugal (editor’s note: reference to a prior geo-targeting example by Andy Atkins-Krüger). We’ve done a classification by region, which was a major differentiator when it was first introduced, as this was done some time before Google started serving geo-localised search results in Russia. On average we have 3-5 local results in the SERP for a query with local intent.

But in general, and in line with what I said earlier, we always try to start with the true needs of the user and improve his/her experience. For example, since 1997 we have had links to other search engines at the bottom of our search engine result pages. Why? For the sheer reason that users benefit from it. If they don’t find what they’re looking for on Yandex, maybe Google or Bing can provide it.

You’ve also recently started personalising results – please tell us about that?

Ilya: We found that hyper personalised results are not what users want. Some degree of personalisation, though, did improve relevance and CTR, but only when personalisation was moderated.

Our personalisation algorithm primarily relies on a user’s search history. To put it differently, we’ll take into account what a user has searched for in the past, what his/her interests are etc. and serve up personalised results accordingly.

Can users switch off personalisation or regulate the ‘degree’ of personalisation?

Ilya: Yes, they can. But no one really does.

Online user privacy has become an increasingly contentious topic over the past few years. Who owns the data? Users or search engines?

Ilya: It’s a very interesting question – kind of a philosophical question. Or a moral question, if you will.

However, it’s not particularly clear to me what we define as data? Is the search query considered user data, for example? What exactly is tagged as data, and what is not?

As a search engine, we can choose to say that all the data belongs to us. Having said that, I think users should be able to deal with their own data. Your search history and clicks should belong to you. That’s an ethical standpoint. For example, we recently introduced the possibility for users to export their search data to another search engine, e.g. from Yandex to Google.

What’s Yandex’s approach to investments & acquisitions?

Ilya: Acquiring teams with experience, e.g. small start-ups, is an important piece in the puzzle in terms of staying innovative and competitive. We particularly need to invest in areas like machine translation and voice recognition, however, our investments are not always related to search but include many other areas where we see future potential.

What does Yandex do to help search marketers outside of Russia?

Ilya: We’ve seen an increasing number of advertisers from abroad showing interest in Russia. As a result, we’ve developed English interfaces for all of our key tools. We’ve opened an office in Switzerland to reach out to European advertisers. We’ve also set up offices in the US and Turkey.

Mobile clearly has become an important battlefield – where is Yandex going?

Ilya: Smartphone penetration is still relatively modest in Russia, though it has to be said that we are starting to see a lot more transactions from these devices.

We have a set of highly popular applications, for example Yandex.Maps which is the top maps app in Russia. We’re also aware that the user experience is very different on mobile devices. Of course, because of the significantly reduced screen size, usability becomes an area that needs rethinking. A good mobile browser, mobile interface and overall web experience therefore are top priorities for us. You don’t want to pinch and zoom for every bit of information you’re looking for. Yandex.Shell for Android, which is an intuitive interface that makes it easy to customise your various screens on Android devices, is one such example of our efforts into mobile interfaces.

Let’s look internationally for a moment. You launched in Turkey recently. How is that venture going? What are you doing to conquer that market?

Ilya: The idea was; if there’s a monopoly where a single player commands 97% to 98% of the entire market — in this case Google — there’s room for a good alternative. And while our impact in the market is not happening at the speed we initially was hoping for, we are seeing marked increases in returning Turkish users to the Yandex search platform, indicating that we’re gradually making inroads.

We have small successes in many areas in Turkey, and awareness is gradually building. More importantly perhaps, we have learned A LOT from our Turkey experience; from tackling the complex Turkish language, the first language outside of the Cyrillic region, to growing our understanding of what it takes to successfully enter a foreign market.

But for us to go somewhere, there has to be business in it. Potentially we could do 20 different languages. But how do we monetise it? There simply has to be a business purpose for us to follow through internationally.

As you begin to move more aggressively internationally, what’s your strategy for competitors striking back at you in the markets you’re entering?

Ilya: For us it’s exciting. We don’t have any fear of the competition. In fact, we welcome it. From a user perspective, competition is always positive as it inevitably raises the bar.

Do you look towards Baidu and what they do? Could China be a potential destination?

Ilya: Well, I like Baidu’s Box Computing as a concept. But China is a separate case. Things are very different there. Censorship, government protection, user behaviour, etc.. It’s not really a destination that’s appearing on our radar at the moment.

The Rising Global Ambitions Of China’s Tech Giants

Immanuel Simonsen — Fri, 10 May 2013 16:11:16 +0000

With a population that exceeds 1.3 billion, you’d think Chinese businesses have their hands more than full catering to this market alone. While this happens to be the case for most companies, China’s leading tech forces are increasingly eyeing expansion opportunities beyond the country’s domestic borders to keep up past years’ exponential growth rates.

Certainly, if you are to judge from the statements made by a wide array of China’s top tech CEOs, most of these companies aren’t falling short on their global ambitions. So far though, moves made into international territory by online giants such as Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba, have been sporadic and indecisive. However, considering the unprecedented growth that has taken place in the online sphere over the past decade in China, who could really blame them for focusing almost exclusively on their rapidly evolving domestic market?

The most recent estimates put China’s online population at a whopping 600 million, making it the world’s by distance largest online market by user count. Albeit impressive, if you do the maths, this actually paints a picture of an online market that is anything but saturated, with more than half of the country’s population having yet to come online.

This, however, hasn’t stopped UCWeb – China’s most popular mobile browser – from recently announcing an international offensive in which the company is planning to invest RMB 3 billion ($488 million) over the next three years in an attempt to gain a similarly dominant position in vast emerging markets such as India, Brazil, Russia, Indonesia and Vietnam, the Financial Times reports.

UCWeb’s “modest” objective, the FT further notes, is to acquire 1 billion users by 2016, of which half should come from outside of China. This would mark an increase in new users of 150 %, up from 400 million today (300 million domestic users; 100 million international).

Indeed, this ambitious international bet by UCWeb poses the interesting question of whether we’ll soon see other big Chinese tech players follow suit with full-blown international market entries?

To answer this question, we’ll have to look towards two emerging developments, which essentially are working against each other when it comes to deciding whether to pursue international expansion or not.

1. Decreasing internet growth rates encourage international expansion

Despite the vast growth opportunities that still exist, prior years’ precipitous surges in internet penetration have come to an end. In its comprehensive 31^st statistical report on the development of the Chinese internet, CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center) concludes that internet user growth has decelerated rather notably over the past year and is expected to further contract going forward.

A comparison of Baidu’s 2011 and 2012 full year financial results support this trend (note: in this specific case there are other external factors, such as increasing domestic competition, that have impacted on Baidu’s performance; however, it’s still indicative of a cooling domestic internet climate).

Annual revenue and profit increases of around 50% would probably excite most business execs, but in Baidu’s case it’s actually an alarming development compared to the prior year. And while year-on-year growth deceleration is inevitable as markets mature, a continuation of this development would make a compelling case for international expansion.

2. When you’ve got something very valuable, you should hold on for dear life

A maturing market, on the other hand, also implies intensifying competition, market sophistication and rising consumer trust – ultimately creating a foundation on which ecommerce can flourish.

The potential of Chinese netizens’ rapidly improving consumer trust in ecommerce is certainly not lost on multinational companies in the West. In fact, most of them have realised that they simply cannot afford to ignore China unless they want to see the competition sail away with the prize. The move, however, is complicated — and in some cases even made impossible — by a protectionist government that heavily favours the well-being of local Chinese businesses.

These high barriers to entry are slowly eroding though, meaning that Chinese companies sooner or later will have to allocate more resources to defending their home turf from being overtaken by eager aspirants from abroad looking to capitalise on the financial goldmine that China truly is.

These two developments combined — decelerating internet growth rates and increasing interest in online China, particularly from abroad but also at home — put leading digital Chinese companies in somewhat of a dilemma: To go global to counter cooling domestic internet growth? Or to keep all troops within the borders of China to focus fully on keeping foreign and domestic competitors at bay and tap the vast potential that has, rightfully, yet to be tapped?

UCWeb aims for both, and I have a funny feeling we’ll see similar ambitious moves from other Chinese tech giants soon enough – if not this year, then in 2014.

Bastian Grimm On International SEO And Schema.Org: ISS London Interview

Gemma Birch — Tue, 07 May 2013 14:25:53 +0000

At the International Search Summit London next week, Bastian Grimm will be tackling the topic of schema.org and discussing its international implementation and benefits. In a preview to the event, he gives us some insight into what he’ll be speaking about and why it’s important for international marketers to utilise schema.org effectively.

Bastian, what role is schema.org playing in international SEO? How is it changing things?

One of the most important things is that – especially for Google – schema.org does make things so much easier for them… back in the days they actually had to parse and match particular excerpts from any given site. Take zip codes for example: They’re totally different per country, even just German zip-codes can be just five digits long or contain a prepended “D-“; if you’d have to build and maintain multiple patterns for a single item per country and language, this is not scaling so well. With schema.org on the other hand it’s pretty simple: A pre-defined structure, easily scalable (as well as extendable) which allows search engines to actually understand each and every item. And surely it also enables them to potentially weight items differently from each other – on a per query basis. To put things straight: For search engines it’s a major win! They can gather way more detailed info with a lot less effort.

Are there major differences in the way it’s being implemented across different markets?

Together with the guys from Searchmetrics (a big thanks to my buddy Marcus Tober!) we’ve been compiling a lot of data – which I’ll be bringing exclusively to ISS London – and what we found is that their definitely are differences. So we we’re trying to get a feeling on how schema.org is used per country, what the most popular implementations are, how many queries actually do return schema.org enriched results and much more. Let me put it this way: You should not miss ISS this year!

You’re travelling the world a lot at the moment. On your travels, are there any particular differences that you’ve noticed between search in different countries?

That’s true – I was luckily able to spend a lot of time in Singapore, Thailand, Australia as well as New Zealand. One thing I found to be pretty remarkable is just how pretty damn good Google is with their geo-targeting stuff: Having set google.de as my start-page I’d been, depending on where I was, redirected to “another” Google (without really noticing) plus they changed my default language to English. I mean don’t get me wrong: Google does this stuff for years (and it’s nothing really new) but this really stood out to me; No matter where I was, I just found the stuff I was looking for – including the proper local results (like restaurants, tourist spots, etc.) which doesn’t work well if you’re not on the proper geo version of Google.

Why attend the International Search Summit?

The thing I always liked about ISS is really the focus on all things international: Right now there are a lot of different conferences out there – however ISS is the only one purely dedicated to international search. In my opinion it’s a must-attend event if you’re working in more than a single country since especially mission-critical topics like localization, geo targeting, etc. are always part of ISS. So I’m really looking forward to this years’ London-edition!

ISS is taking place as part of SMX London at Chelsea Football Club on Tuesday 14th May. There is still time to book your place! Register and save 15% on your pass with the discount code ISSEB.

Google Launches New “x-default” Attribute At The International Search Summit Munich

Andy Atkins-Krüger — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 20:11:14 +0000

John Mueller of Google Switzerland announced at the International Search Summit last week the launch of a new hreflang attribute known as “x-default” — along with a number of tips of global website managers which we will cover today.

For those of you who have not come across rel-alternate-hreflang annotation before, we have written about this many times in this blog. Put simply, Hreflang is an optional signal you can give to Google at page level (in the head, header or sitemap) that a page for one region is equivalent to a page in another region, in effect describing your international network to help search engines better understand it. The key effect is ensure that the correct local URL is displayed to searchers in a given region.

As if setting existing “hreflang” attributes weren’t enough to worry about, now “x-default” gets added to the geo-targeting mix. Soon, those of us working on the markup for international sites will be leaving our domestically-focused colleagues feeling rather confused!

To explain its use, “x-default” is the attribute you specify in the hreflang string, so “ ” would instead become “ ” noting that this might apparently conflict with region or language parameters or domains in the URL. You would use this on pages that you would expect to be delivered to users in multiple regions.

Just last week, I saw a fresh blog post on international SEO published which said that you should set the meta language tag, yet didn’t even mention “hreflang.” As you’ve probably read many times by now, you do NOT need to set the meta language tag — you should, however, be aware of the uses of the hreflang attribute, as it is a very a helpful solution for multinational and/or multilingual sites.

“X-Default” Is A Tool For Country Pickers Or Geo-Selectors

Let’s get back to “x-default.” Google has identified that there is a gap in its hreflang solution related to what they refer to as “country pickers.”

What John means by “country pickers” are those URLs where a dedicated tool exists for a web user to select a region, country or language. In fact, we typically don’t define these website tools as “country pickers” because it’s very rare for global sites to geo-target merely by country. One might go so far as to say that if a global site only includes countries in their list of regions, they must be doing something wrong.

In the graphic above, each flag represents a local website — the blue men, webpages. Ideally, they should all be linked together as a network to maximise the SEO benefits of being “global.”

It makes much more sense to think of “regions” or “geos” as the country and language combined. So, for instance, “French-speaking Belgium” would be a region or geo just as “French-speaking France” would be. And whilst we’re here, best practice in our view is that you should do this just the same if your targeting is language based.

Best Practice Is Not To Use Neutral Languages

In other words, if you’re targeting “French” as a language, you should really say which flavor of French you’re offering. There is much less risk in using this more specific kind of targeting than in trying to use a “neutral” language catch-all which, in actuality, often presents users with a something vaguely foreign. (Can anyone tell me what “international English” is?)

The problem with hreflang attributes in their pre-”x-direct” form is that they have to specify, at the very least, one global language — and, more typically, a language plus a country. What do you do if you have a map containing all of your different regional sites that you wish to make available in every market, for users who are trying to figure out which version they might want to use?

If you added a hreflang attribute, you would likely restrict a specific version of the site to certain users — those speaking French, for example. Or, you would show them a localised mylocaldomain.fr version of your site when you actually needed to show them a dot com or some other generic location where you’ve placed a map of the world.

When To Use “X-Default”

So since “x-default” is useful as an alternative to the “de_de” style coding of hreflang, it can help in the following cases:

Where generic country and language selectors are used commonly across the site
For redirecting homepages
For homepages where the language adapts either automatically or through user selection
To designate a preferred generic version

I have a funny feeling that there will be additional purposes found for the new “x-default,” although personally I have not come up with any just yet!

John Mueller explained that one of the reasons behind the launch of this new attribute is that many webmasters who have adopted hreflang attributes have been choosing to “noindex” the geo-selector pages in order to make them inaccessible specific regional targets. This means that whilst hreflang is helping to identify how the webmaster’s network is structured — with hreflang acting as a “link” (in the non-href sense) between two pages with equivalent content — the benefit of hreflang to Google is much reduced if the top level network is broken due to being marked “noindex.”

When To Use 302-Redirects Instead Of 301s!

John’s presentation also included an explanation of when it would be preferable to use a 302-redirect to a 301 — specifically, when dealing with caching issues and network proxies. In other words, a 302-redirect makes sense when the URL represents a temporary copy of content that actually sites substantively somewhere else. As always, the redirect targets must remain crawlable and indexable.

Webmasters who adopt adaptive language approaches were asked to note that especially if they automate that, there should be a dedicated URL for that content.

On a final note, John pointed out that Geo-IP databases used to auto-select a language or country are often incorrect and in any case it’s a much better solution to let the users choose. This is particularly true from a crawl perspective as John said, “Googlebot usually crawls from the US, so don’t cloak!”

I’ve also noticed that even Google has moved nearer to this approach for its own geo-targeting and it works much better. So whilst I was reading some webmaster tools guidance in German last week, a banner alongside was suggesting I might prefer to read it in English. (Actually, I wanted to see how it had been expressed in German as I was at a German-speaking conference).

Yandex Soon To Be Russia’s Largest Media Company By Ad Revenue

Immanuel Simonsen — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 14:37:28 +0000

Russia is undergoing radical transformation these days, growing ever-wealthier and increasingly opening up for international trade and collaboration, most noticeably demonstrated by last year’s accession into the WTO after 18 years of negotiation.

While a multitude of factors are contributing to the rapidity with which Russia is transforming, at the root of it is a dramatically changing media landscape where the internet is spreading like a wildfire meanwhile state-run TV channels (and TV in general) are decreasing in importance and influence.

The precipitous rise of the Russian internet is, quite frankly, breath-taking, and last year’s announcement that Yandex had surpassed Russia’s largest TV station, Pervy Kanal, in terms of monthly visitors definitively put the last bit of doubt concerning the Runet’s exponential growth into demise.

The writing is surely on the wall! As Russians flock to the internet, so will advertisers.

While TV remained the by distance biggest medium by ad spend in 2012, according to the Communications Agencies Association of Russia, the leading players in that category will soon see their previously so impenetrable kingdom be overtaken by Yandex.

This became clear when Pervy Kanal this week released its financial results for 2012, demonstrating yearly ad revenues of 28.2 billion Rubles ($896 million). This is only marginally higher than the 28.1 billion Rubles reported by Yandex for the full year, and with internet penetration marching on unimpeded, coupled with advertisers increasingly finding value in the digital medium, it’s only a matter of time before Yandex becomes Russia’s largest advertising platform – across all media!

That said, it seems it will take some time for online to surpass TV as a whole in Russia, as can be seen below. This in turn demonstrates Yandex’s extremely dominant position on the Runet, where it earns an impressive 1 in 2 Rubles spent on online advertising.

Source: Own Elaboration, Data by CAAR

3 Obstacles To Ad Copy Translation

Fleur Depriester — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 07:31:40 +0000

Following my last post concerning the limits of translation as applied to ad campaign keywords, I would now like to go on and examine how problematic translation can be when it comes to ad copy, again with English-to-French translation as focus.

I will here tackle 3 main obstacles to ad copy translation, all somewhat interconnected : length issues, adaptation of calls-to-action, and dynamic keyword insertion.

1 – Length issues

A lot of the difficulties encountered when translating ads from English to French emerge as a result of character limits. Indeed the translation of an English text into a romance language will more often than not end up larger than the original. Not only do words tend to be longer in French than in English, but you can also expect an increase in the number of words used passing from English to French (typically of around 15%), which can be explained by evoking some differences in the ways both languages function.

Lexical gaps are perhaps the most eloquent culprits here. The ideas conveyed in some English idioms will often find their way into French through lengthier expressions. Translated with relative structural fidelity, phrases such as « early-bird prices » or « price match guarantee » might not result in patent nonsense but they would not resonate with a French audience. Getting the exact same meaning through in your ads would involve some amount of paraphrasis, which, coming at the expense of other relevant info and depriving the ad of its momentum, is likely to make the copy less appealing.

But some syntax differences between French and English might be of greater consequence for the character count than occasional idioms. There is arguably a certain elasticity in the way the English language works not equally enjoyed in French, which allows for some space-saving structures.

For instance English nouns can with relative flexibility be used as verbs or adjectives. You can thus form noun strings such as «London hotel weekend offers», whereas the French language requires the use of prepositions to cement it all: « offres d’hôtel pour weekend à Londres ». Similarly, you will often get away with omitting articles in your English ads. « Find hotel today » does not strike as too awkward. However, in most cases French will not grant the same licence ; the article is needed, lest the phrase should read very clumsy : « Trouvez un hôtel aujourd’hui ».

These prepositions and articles are short words but, including the spaces, a two-letter article effectively uses four characters of your limited allowance. Considering their frequency they do make a sensible difference in the character count.

And since we’re talking about small things, let’s mention that extra space before exclamation and interrogation marks which is needed in French (not necessary in Canadian French), accounting for another precious character.

2 – Calls-to-action

The difficulties in translating calls-to-action bear a close connection to character limit. Some calls-to-action are especially hard to fit because of the nature of the verbs they require.

The issue when translating user-engagement call-to-action verbs such as « learn » or « read » is that, as much as you can end your English ads with: « Learn more here » or « read more », French only allows you to use the verbs « apprendre » or « lire » if they are followed by a prepositional clause : « apprenez-en plus sur nos offres » (learn more about our offers) « Lisez-en davantage sur nos produits » (read more about our products).

To use these verbs therefore entails constructing phrases that are notably longer than the source expressions, and somehow dropping the impetus too. The translator may need to resort to non verbal calls-to-action : « plus d’infos ici » (more info here) or give up the imperative : « en savoir plus ici » (to know more here), « à découvrir ici » (to discover here).

Direct response call-to-action verbs such as « buy », « purchase », « get », or « shop » can also lead to some translation obstacles. Some can be accounted by the nature of French verbs. You will not get away easily with literally translating the omnipresent English call-to-action «buy now » for instance. The verb « acheter » needs to be followed by a direct object. For instance « Achetez votre ticket » (buy your ticket).

Other obstacles will be the result of lexical gaps. To mention but one, the verb « shop » is a tricky word to translate in online contexts. The equivalent French expressions only apply when talking of shopping in physical stores. « Faire les magasins » (to hit the shops) implies visiting several shops, while « faire les courses » (do the shopping) refers to your regular supermarket expedition to get milk and washing powder, and will not fit all kinds of businesses.

Another challenge will be to convey the sense of urgency carried by the short words « now » or « today ». It can be harder to prompt to immediate action using the French equivalents « maintenant » and « aujourd’hui », which take up a bit more space. The words « ici » (here) or « vite » (quick) are often used to keep within limits.

3 – Dynamic keyword insertion

Dynamic keywords insertions are hard to adapt in many languages. Translating a phrase at first glance as uncomplicated as « Buy {keyword} now! » is actually not so easy in French, due to the existence of genders and the need for articles before nouns. Thus « Achetez {keyword} maintenant ! » will read clumsy in all cases, whereas « Achetez un {keyword} maintenant ! » will read well with some keywords, but read like a grammar mistake in many other cases, according to whether the keyword happens to be feminine or masculine, singular or plural. To make dynamic keyword insertion work in French will require a neutral construction that allows for a maximum number of cases, something which is not achievable through translation.

In order to make French translations of ads fit the search engine template, a translator will often have to make sacrifices that may not lead to the most convincing copies… Often, creating persuasive ad copy will require you to step away from your English ads, work with native speakers with a solid understanding of PPC, and simply forget about translation.

5 Key Insights From comScore’s 2013 Europe Digital Future in Focus Report

Immanuel Simonsen — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 10:40:06 +0000

Keeping track of trends in an ever evolving digital age and gathering reliable data to inform business decisions can be a time-consuming and often times expensive undertaking.

As this even holds true for companies that operate in a single-market, you can probably imagine the complexity that piles up when catering to an international audience.

Luckily for you, I’ve compiled 5 key insights from comScore’s recently published Europe Digital Future in Focus 2013 report, which contains a treasure trove of insights into how Europeans navigate the digital landscape across devices and web properties.

If you do business across Europe, I strongly recommend you to go download the full report, but for now let’s take a look at a few particularly interesting findings.

1. The global perspective – international markets make up an ever-larger chunk of the global web

The US’ global digital domination has been waning rapidly over the past decade and a half. As of December 2012, comScore estimates that US internet users make up a ‘mere’ 13% of the global digital audience, compared to 66% back in 1996.

Moreover, while the US remains the world’s single-largest ecommerce market at the time of writing, various reputable sources find that China is on track to surpass the US as the global leader later on this year.

Expect this trend to intensify as the internet really starts to pick up in developing and emerging countries.

Source: comScore Europe Digital Future in Focus 2013

2. Russia solidifies its position as Europe’s biggest online market by user count; Watch out for Italy

Only outpaced by extremely strong internet adoption growth in Italy, Russia distances itself as Europe’s largest internet market by user count, up 15% over December 2011. Internet penetration in Russia, however, is still modest and further underlines the market’s great potential.

Source: comScore Europe Digital Future in Focus 2013

Much like Russia, Italy has been off to a slow start in terms of digital adoption, yet it’s somewhat surprising that the boot-legged country comes out as Europe’s fastest-growing online market. But despite last year’s rapid growth, Italy’s online population remains significantly smaller than similarly sized countries like the UK and France.

Additionally, and perhaps a more interesting metric, eMarketer research shows that while a lower percentage of the Italian population may be online compared to some of its comparable European neighbours, average spend per online buyer is second only to the UK in Europe. Now, couple this apparent willingness to spend big with modest internet penetration (still sitting below 50%) and you’ve got yourself some potential.

3. The UK is +10 hours ahead of European average in terms of engagement; Turkey once again among top 3

The UK consistently takes up the top spot as Europe’s most engaged online audience in terms of time spent online. In fact, UK netizens spend as much as 10.4 hours more online per month than the average European.

Also, for those of you who haven’t followed comScore’s ongoing tracking of the European digital landscape, it may come as a surprise that the UK is followed by Turkey in second place.

This is not an isolated case, though; Turkey has for quite some time been among the top three European nations for online engagement.

Source: comScore Europe Digital Future in Focus 2013

4. Vast differences between Europeans when it comes to ’search frequency’

If you’re a frequent reader of this blog, you’ll know that search patterns often differ tremendously between countries. Normally, authors will point to language constructs, regional language usage and culture as differentiating components – all of which are indeed valid in their own right.

However, turns out the frequency with which Europeans search also greatly differs.

In this regard, the average online Turk conducts almost 3 times as many monthly searches as the average connected Dane! And more interestingly perhaps, the amount of time people spend online doesn’t always correlate with how many searches they carry out.

To stick with Turkey, its online population appears to make a disproportionately high amount of searches – even when factoring in their high online engagement. Conversely, people in the Netherlands are well below the European average in terms of monthly searches, despite being among the top 3 most engaged online populations. If you take a closer look at the data, you’ll find that there are many such deviations.

Source: comScore Europe Digital Future in Focus 2013

5. Cross-device usage remains super fragmented

A topic of great interest in marketing circles these days is cross-device media consumption. And for good reason!

Unfortunately, however, the far majority of articles out there don’t go deeper than the “multi-platform is huge – get on or get left behind” sort of approach. That’s a shame since comScore’s data indicates that, while consumers in general are becoming more platform agnostic, the extent to which multiple devices are shaping the online experience remains hyper fragmented.

For example, if you’re targeting the UK, it’s indisputable just how critical a multi-platform strategy will be to achieving your business goals. Heck, nearly one third of all UK page views in December last year were on mobiles and tablets!

However, out of the 18 European countries for which comScore provides individual reporting, only three are seeing more than 20% of total internet traffic being generated by mobiles and tablets. In Poland and Turkey, for example, more than 95% of all traffic is being driven by PCs.

Now, should this impact on your approach to multi-platform on an international scale, I’ll ask you rhetorically?

Device Share of Page Views Across Countries in Europe

Source: comScore Europe Digital Future in Focus 2013

As always, over to you. Are you surprised by any of these findings? Do they correlate with other data you’ve come across on the web? What’s your own experience in dealing with European markets? Best practices? Pitfalls to look out for? It’s all up for debate in the comments section below.

Yahoo Japan To Integrate Curated Content Into Its Search Results

Immanuel Simonsen — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 11:28:03 +0000

Keeping abreast of recent trends and developments can seem a monumental task thanks to the unprecedented circulation of information on the web these days. Therefore perhaps, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that searchers and content “distributors” alike have welcomed content curation sites with open arms.

In an attempt to ride the wave of this trend, Yahoo Japan — Japan’s leading search engine — and NHN Japan have announced a partnership that will see the former integrating curated content from NHN’s highly popular Naver Matome platform into its search results.

Naver Matome, which in many ways bears resemblance to sites like Scoop.it! and Storify, has made an astronomical leap over the course of the past year, with growth significantly outpacing both Facebook and Twitter. To be more precise, the content curation service reportedly attracts around 41 million monthly visitors and accumulates more than 1.2 billion page views per month.

In a joint press conference, the two internet behemoths disclosed that the project will commence later this month and also shed a tiny bit of light into how the collaboration is likely to play out in practice. Apart from giving much greater prominence to curated content in search results, Yahoo Japan is planning to set up a separate tab that only returns Matome results. This search function will also be implemented on Matome’s website to improve the user search experience.

Needless to say, this development makes content curation for Naver’s Matome platform an important variable in the overall SEO strategy for the Japanese market.

Tried And Tested Tips To International SEO Excellence

Immanuel Simonsen — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 10:51:10 +0000

Image credit: Stock.xchng

Are you already catering to an international audience? Or maybe you’re contemplating international expansion as a means to grow your business?

Whichever is the case, there’s a multitude of factors that come into play when you’re operating globally. Here are some tips and general guidelines that will help you conquer the beast that is international SEO and ultimately succeed on foreign shores:

1. Run PPC campaigns to unveil local search patterns

PPC can be an incredibly cost-effective marketing tool for obtaining valuable market insights in unknown territory. Which search terms are being used? Which ads are being clicked? What converts? What doesn’t? These initial insights will serve as a brilliant starting point for defining and developing highly effective SEO strategies in the locale.

Check out this article for 5 essential tips for global SEM success.

2. Research keywords, don’t translate them

Oldie but goldie – and for good reason! Despite the avid attempts here on the site and elsewhere, it appears the large majority of businesses still put their international faith in the hands of either machine translation or, if the stakes are slightly higher, sheer translation.

However, as there’s no such thing as a one-to-one relationship between keywords, relying on direct translations is bound to result in a great deal of missed opportunity. Follow this approach and prepare to end up targeting useless keywords with little to no search volume in the locale.

Instead, use the insights you’ve obtained from your local PPC campaigns to support and validate the keyword researches carried out by natives in Google’s, Baidu’s and Yandex’s respective keyword tools.

If you’re still not convinced, you might want to read this post.

3. Have natives write up content around your targeted keywords

Once you’ve got your initial set of keywords for the locale, it’s time to map out where to deploy these. In a post-Panda and -Penguin era it’s particularly important to create natural, high-quality content that resonates with users in the locale, so have natives write up some solid content around those keywords.

Avoid keyword stuffing and machine translation at all costs, however, if money constrains you from localising or translating deep-level pages, ensure to at least disallow robots from crawling those pages by using the robots.txt file.

4. Geo-targeting will make or break your international adventure

Geo-targeting remains one of the most challenging, yet most important issues when it comes to international SEO. And while there are many different ways to skin a cat, the advice below is tried and tested:

4.1 Host in the country you’re targeting

Hosting in the country you’re targeting is a geo-signal for Google and also allows for faster load speeds.

4.2 Choose a local domain structure

A thorough analysis and evaluation of your site structure before you expand can save you a great deal of trouble down the road. A ccTLD structure (e.g. .de, .fr, .es), however, will generally benefit you in so many ways.

For one, local domains serve as the strongest geo-targeting signal in Google’s algorithm, meaning that your country-specific sites are much more likely to reach their intended audiences.

Secondly, local searchers find ccTLDs to be significantly more relevant, which in turn dramatically increases your likelihood of achieving higher CTRs and ultimately rankings. Moreover, the local domain approach helps you keep a shorter, simpler and cleaner URL structure.

“But hey, I’ve read several places that hosting and maintenance costs can quickly run out of control with a local domain structure?”

Truth is it isn’t really as expensive as some say – not for global companies or those with international aspirations anyway. If you belong to the latter group who have yet to make leap, I assume you’re contemplating international expansion because you’re already doing well in your domestic market and have sufficient free capital to fully support your foreign adventure?

Either way, chances are that this investment might pay off in one of two ways (or both):

Your performance in the locale is stronger due to greater perceived relevancy, as mentioned above.
As you reduce complexity and signal more clearly to Google which sites go where, you’re also more likely to not end up spending most of your time figuring out how to implement hreflang tags and other technically tedious issues to make your sites display in front of the right audiences. Time is money, as they say.

“Ok, ok… but you have to build authority separately for your sites then?”

Correct. Compared to a subdirectory structure, ccTLDs require greater effort in terms of building authority because you basically start from scratch.

But let me, rather rhetorically, ask you this: You’ve managed to gradually build authority in your domestic market since you first started out, haven’t you? Why would you assume that succeeding in international markets requires any less effort? Going global is no easy feat. In fact, the presumption that it’s easy happens to be one of the primary reasons why so many companies fail on foreign soil.

4.3 Don’t always set a geo-target in Google Webmaster Tools for subdomains or subdirectories

While you may by now have detected my enthusiasm for local domains, I can appreciate that restructuring your entire global setup can seem too big a hassle if you’re already trading internationally through a subdomain (es.example.com) or a subdirectory (example.com/es) structure.

If that happens to be the case and your services are geographically restricted to a certain country, it can serve you well to set a geo-graphic target in Google Webmaster Tools.

For example, if your site www.mydomain.com/de only takes orders from German speakers in Germany, it would make sense to set Germany as the geo-target for that site.

However, say you accept orders from German speakers in Switzerland and Austria as well but don’t have sites targeted specifically at these countries, then setting Germany as the geo-target would only limit your reach and worsen your performance.

4.4 Use hreflang to help Google serve up the right page, but don’t implement it unless a need has been identified

Ensuring that the right page is displayed to the right audience is of course the end goal of all your geo-targeting efforts, but sometimes it happens that Google confuses which page to serve up – even if you’ve followed the steps outlined above.

This nagging issue of Google showing the wrong page when you have a perfectly adequate, country-targeted version is particularly prevalent when you target multiple countries that speak the same language.

Let me explain.

Let’s say you have separate pages targeted at the United States, the UK and Australia. Apart from currency and shipping options, these pages are identical. A common scenario could then be that your US (www.example.com) page has more authority than its UK (www.example.com/uk) and AU (www.example.com/au) equivalents and thus ranks when users search in the google.au or google.co.uk country domains.

When implemented correctly either as mark-up in the or in XML Sitemaps (the latter is significantly easier), you essentially let Google know that these other versions exist and that you’d like them display in their respective local Google domains instead of the US version.

See below an implementation example in XML Sitemaps for a ccTLD structure:

The hreflang tag can be implemented across languages and domains, and the above is just one of many scenarios where it could make sense to apply it. However, for the sake of the length of this piece I won’t regurgitate what others have already said, but instead direct you to some good sources:

Maile Ohye of Google gave a session on geo-targeting and the hreflang tag at the International Search Summit last week, which took place alongside SMX West in San Jose. Andy Atkins-Krueger has written up some key takeaways from that session here.
Pete Handley was one of the first to provide implementation test results, and his article still holds up as a good resource on the topic.
A relatively long-form piece by Saijo George on the Search Engine Journal.
A video á la SEOmoz’s Whiteboard Friday providing some thoughts on hreflang.

4.5 Build a local QUALITY link profile

Google also analyses where your incoming links are originating from and uses it as a signal to determine local relevance. Therefore, you’d want to focus your efforts on building a solid local link profile however challenging it may be.

Creating awesome local content is definitely a good start, but that alone won’t always cut it. As in your domestic market, a strategic and sustained effort into outreach is necessary to thrive – and arguably even more so internationally since your brand awareness will likely be lower in these markets.

Think about online influence a bit as if it were the US economy – a select few make up an extremely disproportionate share of total output. So when jotting down your local influencer list, focus on quality rather than quantity, or put differently, it’s less about how many incoming links you can stack up and more about getting the right people/properties to link to you (cf. Google Penguin).

Use social influencer tools such as Klout to identify your targets in the locale. Once you’ve got your list of people and properties to target within your vertical, add them on social media, share their stories, link to them in your own blog posts and gradually make them aware of your digital existence.

5. Include a geo-selector – don’t auto-redirect

While a geo-selector — you know that neat thingy which allows you to easily switch country when you’ve ended up on the wrong version of a site — may not as such be included under the geo-targeting umbrella, it’s an essential component in any international digital strategy

If your site is currently auto-redirecting based on a user’s IP address, please go change that immediately. Not only will some users find it extremely frustrating to automatically be redirected to a site which they potentially don’t understand (or just don’t prefer), it will also inhibit Google’s crawlers – which are predominantly US-based – from discovering your sites outside the US.

Instead, offer the user choice and allow crawlers access to your multiple site versions through a geo-selector.

Recommended read: Geo-selectors can take many shapes. This article looks at some of the different options and how your choice of geo-selector will impact on usability and SEO.

6. Optimise for Baidu in China, Yandex in Russia

Although Google’s global dominance is indeed mind-boggling, the search behemoth isn’t ruling the roost everywhere. Such is the case in two of the world’s most attractive online economies, China and Russia, where Baidu and Yandex hold around 75% and 65% market share respectively.

While Google seems to have definitively outplayed its role in China, other local search engines, such as Qihoo 360 Search and Aliyun, are emerging. Watch out for this space as disruption in some way or another seems inevitable.

Moreover, if South Korea is a potential target for your business, be aware that Naver is the search engine of choice in the highly developed Southeast Asian country.

Recommended read: Webcertain’s Search & Social Report (free download) will provide you with recent insights into the search and social media landscape in 34 countries across the globe.

7. Join Leading Local Social Networks

Along the same lines, the likes of Facebook and Twitter aren’t dominating the social space in each country on the planet, despite gradually making inroads into markets previously dominated by local social players.

Though the social media landscape still remains more fragmented than that of search, it’s clear that there’s a strong correlation between resiliency towards foreign search engines and social networks.

In other words, the few countries where Google doesn’t dominate also happen to be the ones where Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have yet to become market leaders. Heck, in China these networks aren’t even accessible due to government restrictions.

A few from China include: Sina Weibo (Chinese Twitter), Tencent Weibo, Renren, Qzone, WeChat (IM app)
Russia: Vkontakte, Odnoklassniki (Twitter seems to be the new hot social star, though)
Recommended read: Webcertain’s Search & Social Report.

8. Accommodate for preferred payment methods & display prices in local currency

Payment methods differ tremendously between countries – even seemingly similar countries. In fact, 60% of all online cross-border transactions are not completed because the merchant trader doesn’t provide adequate payment methods for international payments, notes Julian Wallis from Ogone Payment Systems. Having local solutions in place is key to boosting conversions by increasing familiarity and thereby reducing perceived risk.

In relation, displaying prices in local currency can prove a significant trust-builder. Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC), which automatically offers your customers the choice of paying in their own currency by identifying where the payment card has been issued, is an effective solution to dealing with this.

Recommended video: Julian Wallis on international and cross-border retailing.

9. Create a Google+ Local page if you have a physical address in the local market or are planning to set one up.

Besides migrating Google Places to Google+ last year, Google’s introduction of its Knowledge Graph means that your local company listing(s) is given much greater weighing and thus helps you in your pursuit of occupying more shelf space in the search results. Compared to the little effort it takes, it’s extremely rewarding.

10. Watch out for cultural colour connotations

Colours have culturally assigned meanings and values which widely differ as well. Red, for example, is typically associated with danger in the West, whereas in many Eastern countries it symbolises prosperity, festivity and good fortune. Conduct research into this before replicating your Western website design in far-away markets.

11. Choose a CMS that supports UTF-8

Most Content Management Systems support UTF-8 these days, and Google has long been using Unicode as the company’s internal format for all the text it searches and processes. Make sure to use this format to avoid mangled characters across languages and character sets.

Follow these rules, or guidelines if you will, and you should be well on your way to creating a solid, high-performing international digital presence.

Now over to you! What important aspects have I missed out on when it comes to international SEO? Which of the above do you find to be most important? Conversely, are there any which aren’t that important?

Photo credit: Ko:(char *)hook via photopin cc

Yandex Launches Visually-Enhanced Ads On Its Ad Network

Immanuel Simonsen — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 12:14:26 +0000

Whether you’re running campaigns on the Yandex Advertising Network or participating as a publisher, yesterday’s announcement that Yandex will be offering integration of images into its contextual ads could prove beneficial for everyone involved.

From an advertiser’s perspective, the option of adding images into contextual ads could improve click-through-rates and lower cost-per-click, and most importantly perhaps, visually-enhanced ads have the ability to support positioning and branding efforts in a way that pure text ads simply don’t.

A picture is worth a thousand words, as they say, and for foreign businesses that have just made the leap into Russia and whose brand awareness is low, visually enticing ads are more likely to not only grab a visitor’s attention but also convey a message that goes beyond a few lines of ad copy.

For publishers, well-performing ads equal higher revenues, however website owners can easily opt-out of showing images in the ads at any moment.

“Advertisements with images can be placed on popular Yandex services including Yandex.Maps, Yandex.Weather and Yandex.Fotki, while sites in the Yandex Advertising Network are set to join the program on March 28″, the company writes in its press release.

Limits to Ad Campaign Translation – From Useless Keywords to Missed Opportunities

Fleur Depriester — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 11:15:53 +0000

With the minimal text involved in PPC ads, ad campaign translation may seem a relatively low-cost way to reach new markets. Using a well performing English campaign and putting a good translator on the task, translating keywords, negatives and ads should be a straightforward process with all chances of success… Shouldn’t it?

This article examines the obstacles typically met in ad keyword translation, looking at the specific case of English to French renditions, and exposes the shortcomings of a method that takes a campaign in one language as a model to emulate.

Despite the areas of overlap between English and French, a French translator will be lucky if they avoid these common obstacles when given a list of English keywords to turn into their own language.

From useless keywords….

Your cheap hotel ad group for the UK will probably feature as many synonyms of the word “cheap” as the search data suggests you to use, and perhaps include the English keywords listed below, all boasting some local search volume in phrase match.

Now give this keyword sample to a conscientious French translator, and they might get back to you with something similar to the following translations:

Here the translator has taken care to retain the nuances in the original English keywords. Some expressions such as “hôtel bas coût”, used as translation for “low-cost hotel”, might not sound terribly idiomatic, however nothing too shocking. The suggestion makes perfect sense, and is as faithful as can be to the idea expressed by the original keyword.

The same translation was proposed for the adjectives “economic” and “economical”, the French adjective “économique” seeming the best match to both words.

Now let’s have a look at search volumes:

A bit disappointing? Maybe getting rid of the circumflex accents will yield better results in terms of search volume:

Still, 3 out of 9 translations do not show any searches – 3 translations which are probably not going to be of much significance in your campaign.

Providing direct translations to a list of keywords will in most cases lead to a substantial amount of terms which yield no search volume at all. Distinct English keywords will also commonly lead to identical translations. And oftentimes the translation effort is not rewarding all the way.

…To missed opportunities

A translator will apply themselves to provide translations that reflect the nuances between the different original terms they are given. But there is no such thing as a perfect equivalent in translation. For one thing, the translator could here have decided to translate “cheap hotel” differently. Using “hôtel bon marché” for instance, which, after all, does not fit “inexpensive hotel” any better. They could also have used “hôtel prix bas” instead of “hôtel bas prix”, “hôtel à prix abordable” instead of “hôtel abordable”. Or they could have used “hôtel peu coûteux” or “hôtel low-cost” instead of “hôtel bas coût”…

From this observation we can anticipate the risks posed by the translation of keywords in terms of missed opportunities. There may indeed well be ways of searching for cheap hotels in French which do not find any direct equivalent that would typically enter search engine queries in the English language.

If we look at these:

The direct English translations of those terms do not encounter any search volume in the UK. It seems unlikely therefore that these French terms could be generated starting from a list of English keywords to translate.

Let’s add to this all the keyword variations that can possibly be entailed by the adding and removing of accents and prepositions, by the switching between plural and singular, and by changes to the order of terms: chances are some interesting keywords will never make it to your email box.

Lost efforts and missed keyword opportunities are hard to avoid when relying on translation. Finding the valuable keywords for your campaign will require you to hold the language of your target market as a system apart, and to enquire into search patterns without the initial linguistic bias of a campaign that is already running, no matter how successfully.

5 Essential Tips For Global SEM Success

Immanuel Simonsen — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 18:09:25 +0000

It generated substantial buzz in the search marketing industry when eBay last week published research that overall deems SEM ineffective. Especially large scale companies that already enjoy a high degree of brand awareness will find little to no value in the advertising channel, the company argues.

Several PPC pundits have since fired back saying that SEM isn’t the problem. Rather, they say, eBay simply ’sucks’ at the discipline. And admittedly, the plethora of examples they provide to support their case don’t put the online auction and shopping giant in a particularly flattering light.

While I won’t delve into the issue any further, I’m convinced that search engine marketing can deliver substantial returns and support overall business objectives if managed properly. The sad reality, however, is that far too many companies continue to struggle with getting the most out of the channel. For international businesses this especially holds true since there’s an added layer of complexity in having to deal with multiple markets, languages, and cultures.

So without further ado, here are 5 tips to get you on track for global SEM success:

1. Keyword Categorisation Is A Central Task. But Research And Selection Should Be Done Locally

Getting the right categorisation for your keywords is essential for international campaigns. These categories are ideally defined centrally and will remain unchanged across markets. There are several advantages of a fixed approach, such as consistency and unified reporting. This in turn will help you more accurately benchmark country performances, save time and money, and ultimately result in a better, more focused end result. Remember, it’s easier for everyone to work within a single framework. Simplicity breeds understanding as the late, great Steve Jobs once said.

However, simplicity is not an invitation to be “lazy” or taking the path of least resistance. It’s been pointed out time and again, but translating lists of English keywords is being utterly oblivious to the often striking differences between languages and subsequent search patterns across markets. The approach is backwards and broken for so many reasons and — contrary to common perception — counterproductive and potentially damaging to your brand. With this in mind, keyword research and selection should always be carried out by a native speaker with a decent understanding of PPC.

2. Get The C-Suite On-board

“It’s all good chief, but we simply haven’t got the budget to employ native keyword researchers and copy writers. And generally we face little to no support from the people with the purse strings .”

Well, if your resources are too scarce to employ natives, at least do yourself the favour and run a visual verification on Google Images to ensure that your locally targeted keywords and ad copy aren’t misleading (or absolute gibberish) to the searcher. No better way to burn through the little budget you do have than by serving up ads that completely fail to meet consumer expectations.

But here’s another (and better) idea, though. In fact, I’d go as far as saying that you’d be doing yourself a much bigger favour by following the approach below, which will help you overcome initial economic constraints and a general lack of support from the C-suite:

Set up two identical ads – one in English and the other in the local language of the country you’re targeting.

Allocate the same budget for the two ads and compare performance.

Now if you really want to prove your point, go create a single localised landing page and analyse how it stacks up against its generic English counterparts. Of course, for this approach to work your local language landing page will have to be on the money as far as translation goes.

If you do this and don’t see any notable difference in performance, you can call me Al.

Joke aside, my point being: What is the one thing that all C-level execs understand? Numbers, am I right? Prove the impact on the bottom line and get the budget you deserve. And if it so happens that this budget won’t stretch as far as to taking on new employees, several multilingual search agencies will be up for the task without you having to break the bank.

3. No Universal Best Practice for PPC – Thorough Testing Imperative for Consistent Global Success

Once you’ve hopefully made a convincing case to the people with the purse strings and got yourself some more budget to play around with, greater testing needs to be undertaken.

Even in the single market PPC is far from an exact science. The fact that there’s no magic recipe for doing PPC may be a tough pill to swallow, but unfortunately that doesn’t make it any less true. Now, add to that linguistic and cultural differences when expanding globally and you can multiply your uncertainty levels by a thousand. Consistently delivering great results on a global scale thus requires even greater devotion to testing.

A/B testing is arguably the most common way of doing this. Multivariate testing is another method where you have multiple versions of the same ad, however all ads carry identical elements – to a lesser or larger extent. For instance, you may decide to change the description only but keep the title and URL. Similarly, you may change the title but keep the URL and description.

Play around with it as you find appropriate, but be careful not to draw definitive conclusions based on results from small sample sizes.

4. The A’s of Writing Ad Copy

Having said there is no universal best practice or guarantee for PPC success, there are of course some general guidelines that seem to work universally. These include:

Adequate ad for keyword & landing page: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Have multiple ads and landing pages within the same campaign.

Action terms: PPC can be applied to many different scenarios, but it’s generally targeted at users deeper down the conversion funnel. Including clear calls-to-action like “shop”, “buy”, “join” etc. is essential.

Attract attention: Include symbols and local trust anchors in the copy ($, €, AM/PM, etc.).

Ad environment: Thorough analysis of the competitive environment in your vertical in the local market is of the essence for writing effective ad copy. You may find that average CPCs, CTRs, ad depth (how many ads are shown for your targeted keywords) etc. differ notably, even between seemingly similar countries/markets.

5. Use PPC insights to inform & shape SEO strategy

Finally, PPC can be an incredibly effective marketing tool for obtaining valuable market insights in unknown territory. Which search terms are being used? Which ads are being clicked? What converts? What doesn’t? These initial insights will serve as a brilliant starting point for defining and developing highly effective SEO strategies in the locale.

If you stop treating SEO and PPC as were they two separate entities, soon enough you’ll discover the tremendous value of deploying a holistic approach to global search marketing.

While no guarantees can be made, following these tips will get you off to a good start.

International Search: Do What The Data Tells You

Gemma Birch — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 14:36:07 +0000

With only 3 days to go until the International Search Summit San Jose , we’re looking forward to a full day of international search marketing content and discussion, with a host of expert speakers from the world of global search.

One of those speakers is Mel Carson from Majestic SEO, who’ll be speaking on the use of link intelligence to gain a global competitor advantage. Here Mel gives us a sneak peak into what he’ll be sharing at ISS, and what he predicts for global search in 2013.

What is the “big thing” in international search in 2013?

It’s that, wherever you are in the world, more and more people are now using different devices in different contexts, so your search campaigns, SEO, landing pages etc… need to be optimised for not just the device, but also the place and mood the user might be in while searching. The research I’ve seen shows that people from different countries use devices in different ways and in different contexts, so it’s all just getting a lot more complicated.

In what ways can link intelligence support international search activity?

The possibilities are endless if you get creative. It can help compare competitors in very different locales, identify emerging markets in which to invest, assess the global reach of an influencer you’re targeting, and it can help predict things like elections. Marketers are missing a trick if the practice is not part of their research phase.

Is there any data that is often overlooked, but is actually very valuable?

It’s not that data is overlooked, it’s just that people don’t think laterally about how to use it. We talk about “big data” blah, blah, blah, but we’ve always had lots of data. It’s only now people are talking about slicing and dicing it in different ways for different means. Majestic is a perfect example of a platform that can transcend its uses for SEO and can take, for instance, PR teams into a whole new league with influencer discovery and blogger outreach. I think businesses really need to sit down and invest in effective tracking and data analysis and then actually take some action when the data tells them too.

If you could give one international search tip, what would it be?

Don’t just think about international search just in terms of language, but think in terms of device, context, culture, motivation and do what the data tells you to do. Investing the time in understanding each country profile will pay off hugely. Way more than if you just throw up a bunch of translated “one size fits all” templates.

What will attendees take away from your session?

How link intelligence can help you keep pace with, if not exceed your competitors’ strategies, and how to use the data creatively beyond just SEO.

Why should people attend the International Search Summit?

For me ISS is the de facto conference for learning about multinational search, what’s hot and what’s next. There’s a reason you guys are so successful at it!

There is still time to book a place at ISS @ SMX West! Join us on Thursday March 14th – and even save 10% with the code WS-ISS10

Game On! How Yandex Uses Sports Rivalry To Succeed In Turkey

Immanuel Simonsen — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 14:01:22 +0000

When Yandex expanded into Turkey in 2011, the company proclaimed that it was aiming for 20% of the Turkish search market. Russia’s leading search player might still be a far cry from achieving that objective, but it is gradually making inroads into a heavily Google-dominated market through clever, locally relevant marketing tactics that should serve as inspiration for other companies with international aspirations.

One of last year’s brightest initiatives was Yandex’s showcasing of its maps service in a campaign that provided Istanbul citizens with real-time traffic information displaying on large LED boards strategically placed around the city.

This year, the company seems to have put its focus on the one thing that makes the nearly 75 million large Turkish population go nuts: football (soccer). Launched on Valentine’s Day, “Futbol Aşkı” (Football Love in Turkish) is a competition that aims to increase uptake and usage of Yandex’s proprietary browser by leveraging the extraordinary passion inherent in one of football’s greatest rivalries – the clash between Turkey’s two largest football clubs, Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe.

Following negotiations which granted Yandex the permission to use both clubs’ respective brands, the company’s local team in Turkey launched customised Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe browsers that come with pre-installed quick links, bookmarks, team skins etc. for both clubs. These browsers can be downloaded on the campaign landing page (image above) which features a counter showing the score of the two sides in real-time. This score is based not only on the number of downloads but also on subsequent usage, thus providing fans with an incentive to try out the actual browser and not just leave it at downloading it.

And judging from the figures, the campaign has been hugely successful. So far, both teams have garnered more than 8 million points (+1 for each download; +1 the first time a user browses for 30 straight minutes without shutting down the session). Moreover, social buttons have been embedded within the site, allowing for easy sharing with supporters’ social circles and resulting in nearly 10K shares on Facebook, 2.5K on Twitter, and finally a mere 300 shares through G+.

The race is close as the competition goes into its final phase (ending this week on March 14th), but a Yandex spokesperson let us know that a new competition, in which Yandex search usage will become a performance variable, is about to be launched.

Will 2013 Be The Year For US Companies Going Global?

Gemma Birch — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 14:54:10 +0000

As the International Search Summit San Jose looms next week, we’ve been asking speakers at the event to share their thoughts on the state of global search and give some insights into what delegates will learn from the event.

And if anyone knows international search marketing, it’s Bill Hunt. He has been working in the field since the early days of search and has been involved with many of the globe’s largest brands to advise on international search strategy and execution. Here he shares a few thoughts on international search in 2013 and why ISS is a must-attend event for global marketers.

Bill, what so you think is the “big thing” in international search in 2013?

In my opinion is is awareness and engagement of companies to actually do it. I am seeing a lot of initiatives to make global search programs more successful and better integrated into the programs of the primary market. We have had a lot of attention to global but I think it seems to really be growing this year. If I had to pick a second, I would say the use of the href language XML site map will be big for companies this year.

What is the biggest mistake you see organisations making when it comes to international?

Treating local market search as separate projects. They have individual audits for each country even when those sites use templates that are the same around the world. This leads to a lot of wasted effort and expense.

What will attendees take away from your session?

The goal is to give them the tools and process that enables them to conduct more effective keyword research that will make the campaigns more effective as well as easier and more uniformly managed.

Why should people attend the International Search Summit?

It is an amazing event that not only gives you information but answers all of your questions. ISS has brought together the leading multilingual and global search practitioners then turns the audience loose with them with the most Q&A time integrated into the program of any event I have ever attended. If you have a question or challenge related to international search marketing this is the place to get it answered.

Ask Bill, and a host of other experts, your international search questions in San Jose, on Thursday March 14th. Check out the full agenda and secure your place. Save 10% on ISS passes with code WS-ISS10.

China Leap Frogs The World In Social Commerce

Brett Petersen — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 09:57:29 +0000

Everyone is well aware of the breakneck speed at which China is growing economically. It’s breakneck pace of digital adoption is less well known however. Many know of the speed with which Chinese consumers have adopted social media, but it the strength of mobile, tablets, and e-commerce that surprises. The thing that separates China from the rest of the world is the level to which these have combined. Smartphones and tablets flowing into the hands of more Chinese consumers every day and they are buying goods and services with these devices in numbers seen nowhere else in the world.

As the chart from GlobalWebIndex Q2 2012 data shows, nearly 75% of Chinese internet users are buying products and services online. What’s more, almost 40% are buying through mobile and tablet devices as well! It is the absolute number of people purchasing goods and services online is a staggering 379 million in China as of the same period.

Bubble size indicates the population of online buyers (all access points)

Peer-review is key to the e-commerce environment

The rapid growth of the Chinese e-commerce market is one of the most astounding trends we can find in the online space. One of the major catalysts for the growth that we’ve seen has been the integration of social features in the e-commerce platforms. At the outset, Chinese consumers had a deep sense of mistrust about online retailers in many respects, but as social features were introduced, they eliminated these concerns. This is reflected in the sheer amount of Chinese online buyers that are posting opinions and commenting about the products and services they buy online. Some 94% of Chinese consumers that buy products through mobiles or tablets are actively commenting about their purchases after the fact. For those buying exclusively through PCs or laptops online, this number rises to 97%! Compare this to 53% and 62% respectively for the US, and we can see immediately ingrained the culture of social feedback has become in the Chinese online retail space.

Leaving the rest of the world behind

China stands alone in terms of social, mobile, and e-commerce adoption. While the first-mover internet markets such as those in Western Europe and the North America still have very strong e-commerce markets, these are still PC focused, and social buying is still somewhat of a novelty. Price comparison sites and consumer reviews are important, but the trust in retailers and brands in these markets lessens the impact. In contrast, other emerging internet markets in the APAC and LATAM regions shows signs of higher multi-device buying levels, but their overall e-commerce sectors are less developed than that of China. The key takeaway from this insight is that we should be looking to the Chinese market for innovation and insight into the future of e-commerce around the world.

How Google’s Enhanced Campaigns Will Affect International Search

Steven Plimmer — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 12:41:33 +0000

There’s no doubt that Google’s newly announced Enhanced Campaigns format within AdWords will be a game changer. For international businesses, one of the obvious questions to pose therefore is “how will this affect my multinational operations?”

I think it’s safe to say that from the ground up there will many benefits and pitfalls yet to even be thought of and will only be revealed by testing in the real world. However, in general you will find some changes that you’ll find will take time to get used to and you’ll also enjoy some newfound time-saving opportunities.

One thing to be very clear on is that, right now, you will need to have separate campaigns should you be using different ad/keyword languages or different messaging of any kind depending on location or any other targeting method (other than device). This element of AdWords has not changed.

Also, this campaign setup is strictly related to Search Network campaigns – Display campaigns are changing much less radically.

What You Might Not Like

If your business is solely based on mobile traffic and so only have a mobile site, you’ll be stuck. No mobile-only campaigns will be possible. You will still need separate campaigns if you wish to have mobile ads on or off at different periods or if you want to have different creative for different targets (e.g. time or location). If you advertise currently on mobile, the way in which you structure campaigns will need to differ from other search engines in that you will need to take into account how mobile traffic has performed on each keyword and structure accordingly. If you don’t currently and don’t intend to advertise on mobile, the impact on you of these changes are pretty much entirely positive.

For the time being at least, you will not so easily be able to copy Google content into Bing or Yandex or Yahoo as you did before (if you advertise on mobile devices). A lot of analysis will potentially be necessary to get the campaigns to perform as you’d wish and in the process of upgrading from split campaigns to device-merged campaigns.

The Good Stuff

The overarching benefit Google intended was a reduced need to duplicate campaigns. This appears to have been achieved and will be an obvious time-saver – or at least bring down the scale of your AdWords Editor uploads – along with other PPC goodies like ad group-level sitelinks and individual review, reporting and control over sitelinks.

If you love data, you’re in luck since you’re going to have a host of further stats and figures to delve into at the ad group level in particular. Apart from the above sitelink-level data, there will also be the different ads by device (and by app) you will need to assess if you’re to evolve messaging plus device-level performance data to help you decide on mobile bid increments at the campaign level. Then you will want to assess geographical, time and day performance patterns to get bid increments correct for these variables (again, at the campaign level).

If you are ahead of the mobile curve, already developing apps and dedicated web designs, you’ll get a lot out of the Enhanced Campaigns since they will save you a lot of time as you avoid duplicating campaigns.

From an international perspective, you could benefit from more time-saving options that might immediately occur to you. For example, you could target multiple countries with shared languages (e.g. Germany, Austria and Switzerland) and bidding different location-based multipliers for each based on performance. (Health Warning: This will only be a sensible thing to do if the keywords, landing pages and messaging all match the local markets. Neighbouring markets may still be radically different even if they share a language.)

You can also target users that are within a configurable distance of any location you choose. So you may find benefit in:

targeting users near a border when official languages differ between countries (especially if the border is porous or if you know populations mix a lot in that area).
advertising services or products in and around airports and train stations.
driving conversions at bricks & mortar sites with mobile-only ad extensions or offer-based sitelinks serving when the stores are open.

A complex but powerful example that now opens up to advertisers is one that stems from sports betting (but there could be similar approaches used in other industries):

You could have a “Bayern Munich” campaign and each match day raise your bids (let’s say 40% more) on the stadium location they’re playing in across Europe – to include Champions League fixtures as well as local league/cup games – using mobile ads to push for pre-game and in-game bets as fans are approaching the stadium.
You can raise bids too on the competing cities by less than the stadium bid (e.g. 20%) all within the same campaign (subject to language limitations).
So in this case, all you need to edit from match to match is the active ad group(s) – you’ll have already set them up ready for each predictable fixture – the ads, if you want to include sample odds, and the bid increments by location.

With the introduction of call conversions and, eventually, cross-device conversion data, we’re looking at a bright future full of potential. The above ideas barely scratch the surface.

Conclusion

It seems to me that the new Google campaign design will give us a much better tool to cope with the increasingly complex demands of effectively communicating with users who fluidly use the Web across devices and in different contexts. Personally, I’m really looking forward to this dawning new age of PPC marketing and discovering where it can take us. If you’ve recoiled in horror at the recent announcement, you’ll probably find you can, in fact, get a lot more out of your ads than you could before. So don’t be alarmed and I say lets think creatively to get as much out of them as possible.

Want International SEO Success In 2013? Invest In Localized Content Now

Gemma Birch — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 16:43:34 +0000

Targeting international markets is now common practice for many brands, with the opportunities for growth overseas just too big to ignore. With a website in 16 languages, SurveyMonkey is one such company and Online Marketing Manager Eli Schwarz is responsible for all international SEO activity and strategy.

At the International Search Summit San Jose on March 14th, Eli will be sharing his experiences of managing the multilingual SEO program for a global brand and here he gives some insight into his session, as well as the opportunities and challenges facing international marketers.

What is the “big thing” in international search in 2013?

The dearth of quality online content in many non-English languages presents a significant opportunity for companies that are willing to make non-English content investments. For example, if you were to search for the term “market research survey” in English, you would still see relevant results even on page 5 of Google. If you looked at the German translation of this term, marktforschung umfrage,” on Google.de, it is arguable if all the results on just the first page are truly relevant.

Many English language brands make the assumption that their international users speak English, and will therefore find them through English search queries. While this may be true, what would happen if these users decided that they are only going to search in their primary language or if a local company began to compete? Eventually both of these events are likely to happen, and an investment in localized translated content now will give any international strategy an advantage in 2013 and beyond.

In your opinion, what are the fundamentals of successful international SEO?

The true fundamentals of international SEO, are very similar to English language SEO: a focus on the user, quality content, and quality links. The challenge with international SEO is that as a result of not being familiar with the new country/language/culture that we (any SEO) are targeting, we don’t know our users, content and links as well as we do in English. In order to be successful at expanding into another language, it is vital that we “buddy” up with a native speaker. Anyone, even someone who is a complete stranger to the world of online marketing, can help us to better understand the new market. A buddy can help narrow down the personas of users, choose the correct keywords, and assess local link targets.

Are there any markets you’ve found particularly challenging to target? And why?

I find any market that does not use the Latin Alphabet to be a challenge. Even if I cannot understand a particular language that I am targeting with a search campaign, as long as it uses the Latin Alphabet I can do all the same research and analysis as I do in English. In non-Latin Alphabet languages, I have to rely far more on others to help me choose the right keywords and strategies.

If you could give just one international search tip, what would it be?

We recently ran an SEO survey using our SurveyMonkey Audience tool, a product which allows people to get respondents for their surveys, and one of the questions assessed the impact of poor grammar and spelling on user trust. We discovered, as we expected, that there is a significant impact on how a piece of content is perceived when it has incorrect grammar and spelling. While many brands would never think of publishing anything in English without having every I- dotted, t-crossed, and comma inserted, are they as careful to make sure every umlaut is used in German or acento in Spanish? My one tip is to localize content. Don’t just translate. If you go through the effort of translating your site or products, do it right and make sure it doesn’t look amateur to a native speaker.

What will attendees take away from your session?

I am going to go through the process I use to audit existing international campaigns and launch new ones. Attendees will learn how to do keyword discovery and competitive research without needing to actually learn a new language. Attendees should also gain a new understanding of how important closely managing their international SEO campaigns should be in order to avoid localization gaffes.

Why should people attend the International Search Summit?

While there seems to be content available for every possible tail search term in English, international is the next frontier. International SEO presents opportunities for significant growth, and the Summit will give people ideas on how to succeed far out of their comfort zone.

Passes are still available for the International Search Summit @ SMX West, taking place on March 14th in San Jose, California.

View the full agenda and book your place – saving 10% with the discount code WS-ISS10

The Added Value Of Top Rankings That SEOs Rarely Talk About – A Global Perspective

Immanuel Simonsen — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 09:48:45 +0000

Over and over research shows that the top 3 listings on search engine result pages receive significantly more clicks than listings down the ladder. Shocker, I know. But while top rankings on search engines are absolutely vital for online brand visibility, traffic and ultimately business, SERP prominence serves another purpose that is talked about and assessed less frequently.

What I’m here referring to is the impact high rankings have on brand perception. In other words, are consumers more inclined to correlate a high ranking with a strong, authoritative and trustworthy brand? Experienced SEOs will tell you yes. The intuitive answer would also be yes. But is this really so? And if yes, does it differ across countries?

According to the Consumer Barometer by IAB/TNT/Google – an insanely cool (and free) insights tool that allows you to analyse and compare the digital landscape in 39 countries worldwide – the answer to both is yes.

Leading brands are expected to be on top of the search results page

Leading companies that fail to convert their brand equity into prominent rankings will not only lose out on a large amount of traffic but also fail to meet the expectations of online consumers. In fact, Japan is the only country in the chart below where less than half of the online population expect leading brands to dominate the search engine shelf space. Conversely, more than 9 in 10 of Saudi Arabia’s online consumers expect high SERP visibility from leading brands. Consumers similarly have well above average expectations to leading brands in Turkey, Taiwan, Mexico and Argentina, whereas the online population in highly developed internet economies like Sweden, Netherlands and Germany to a lesser extent expect overall brand strength to be reflected in high visibility on the likes of Google, Yandex and Baidu.

High rankings could very well be your cheapest and fastest way to gain local consumer trust

This site talks a lot about the opportunities and challenges connected to international expansion. On the challenges side of things, one issue that pops up time and again relates to brand strength. Specifically, how do you go about doing business in a country where you (at least initially) don’t enjoy the same brand strength as in your domestic market?

Surely, it can be an expensive and uphill battle to create a strong reputation in a market where you have little to no brand awareness. Should the objective of increasing awareness come at the expense of severely reduced profit margins due to lower-priced penetration strategies? Or through a significant ramp up of your advertising efforts? Or other profit squeezing market entry strategies?

Turns out there’s another option.

According to findings from the Consumer Barometer, a majority of online consumers equate search engine placement of a brand with its importance. Put simply, the more prominent your brand is in search engine results, the more important it will be perceived.

That said, as can be seen below, there are vast existing differences between countries, with emerging markets placing greater emphasis on the correlation between high rankings and ‘brand importance’.

Largely similar to the graph above, in Germany a modest 1 in 3 online consumers say that SERP placement of a brand reflects on its importance, whereas this figure is 2-2.5 times higher in Spain, Brazil, Taiwan, Argentina, Mexico, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

Now, should this reflect on how you allocate your budgets in the locale? Of course it should.

In some countries high rankings alone won’t turn your unknown brand into a trusted provider of goods or services. In others this may suffice. High rankings are for obvious reasons – the ones of visibility and traffic that we already touched upon in the article – very important for any internet business in any country. But in some markets there’s an added value in the shape of improved brand strength so notable that achieving that top rank will make the sweet spot even sweeter. The efforts your company puts into SEO when entering foreign markets should reflect this.

Got An International SEO Question? Then Now Is Your Chance To Ask Google!

Gemma Birch — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:57:19 +0000

Take the opportunity to be part of a unique international fireside chat with Google – and get the latest international SEO advice from the world’s biggest search engine.

At the International Search Summit @ SMX West, Google’s Maile Ohye will be discussing topics ranging from geo-targeting to duplication to The Knowledge Graph and sharing insight into how to best manage them across international websites. The intimate set-up will allow delegates to ask questions and find solutions to their global search challenges.

Multilingual websites bring a raft of new challenges for marketers and at the International Search Summit on March 14th, there will be a host of experts on hand to offer practical solutions and actionable tactics. Speakers include Preston Carey from Yandex, Eli Schwarz of SurveyMonkey, Mel Carson from Majestic SEO, Bill Hunt of Back Azimuth Consulting and Webcertain’s Andy Atkins-Krüger.

In addition to the Google fireside chat, there will be sessions on managing an international rollout, using keywords to drive global business, international content strategies and implementing geo-targeting.

Ask the experts your questions, share experiences with fellow international marketers and learn new tactics and techniques to drive the global growth of your business. Sound good? Then join us in San Jose – and even save 10% on your pass with the code WS-ISS10.