Following an article he published on his must-read SEO blog we had a discussion about the most important ranking factors in Google.

In this article he claims that on-page SEO counts a “miserable” 15% in terms of ranking factors while links counts a massive 70%… Despite I have to recognize the power of links coming from authorities sites, being a big fan of landing pages and on-page optimisation I have to disagree with Oscar Carreras. Having a website well optimised will not only increases the conversion rate but it will make the site ranking better, increasing the CTR.
I know where Oscar is coming from though: before to join a very well known travel site he’s been the head of the glorious spam link building team here at WebCertain (where we use to call him “Señor Oscar Carreras“) and he’s the biggest expert of international link building I have ever met. Still I think that he should revise this percentages: even though nowadays everyone is mad about Links and Social media stuff, I really believe that a good old boring On-Page Optimisation is the basic of every web-marketing campaign. Think about it: your pages are the playground where you can freely test, change and eventually improve your site performance. Off-Site factors most of the time depend on someone else.

Anyhow, the reason why I decided to publish this “article” is to see… how high I can rank for the keyword Oscar Carreras, using ONLY on-site SEO techniques.
Oscar Carreras, is the targeted keyword and it appears in a prominent position in the title tag, it appears in the meta description and in the meta keywords. You can easily find Oscar Carreras in the url, in the alt tag, in the main heading and, obviously, I have mentioned Oscar Carreras few times in the content.
Of course this is a wordpress template so I am a bit limited in what I can do but let’s say that the on-page optimisation is acceptable…

I promise I won’t do any link building to this page (I assume some links may come naturally), I may submit it to Twitter or Facebook a couple of times just to let Oscar know about it but that’s it. It’s an honest experiment. Let’s see how high I can get in the SERP for Oscar Carreras!

And let’s see if my good old friend Oscar Carreras will take the challenge and try to rank for the keyword Davide Corradi, using ONLY off-site SEO techniques!

9th February 2010 – First Ranking Report update

Bookmark It

The 4th edition of International Search Summit will be held on 19th November, 2009 in London: the key topic will be International SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).

Despite nowadays everyone is acknowledging the importance of International Search Marketing, the most important International Search Marketing Conferences all over the world (SMX, SES, PubCon) are dedicating no more than a couple of sessions to Multilingual SEO, International Link BUilding, Localisation etc..

The Autumn edition of International Search Summit 2009 is a full in-depth conference day about International SEO. An unique opportunity to meet the most important experts and specialists of Multilingual Search Engine Optimisation and take your international search engine marketing to another level.

The conference will be packed with over 15 sessions covering a wide spectrum of International SEO issues including international usability, global PR, search in Europe, SEO in Japan, SEO for Baidu and the Chinese Market and SEO in Latin America.

International Search Summit, SEO – 19th November, 2009. British Library in London .
Full Price: £495. Early bird rate £250 available until 16th October

International Search Summit – SEO Agenda

Bookmark It

1 – Content
Be sure that your content is correctly localised. This is the first and basic action to take. If your content is not localised your chances to rank in a local search engine are really little. In some case are equal to zero. The difference between “Translation” and “Localisation”, duplication issue and other content related factors will be the subject of another post.

2 – Title tag
Page title is of paramount importance for the search engines to understand the subject addressed in your web pages. This is even truer if we are talking about multilingual websites. Be sure the title tag of each page of your website is targeting unique localised keywords.
Some languages have some specific requirements: if for titles written in western languages is widely accepted the limit of 69 characters, for some languages using double bytes characters (eg Chinese) this limit should be considerably less, around 35 characters. As usual, make sure your important keywords occur early in the page title.

3 – Description Meta Tag
A good description is likely to appear in the search engine snippet: Be aware that a copy that may works well in one geographic location may not work as well in another. it’s important to catch the attention of your local potential visitors: different cultures may require different writing styles.

4 – Language Meta Tag
Not the most important factor to consider in your on-page optimisation but one of the easier to implement.
eg: page in English in UK:
<META HTTP-EQUIV=”Content-Language” CONTENT=”en-GB”>
Here is a listing of the ISO 639 2 letter language codes

5 – TLD/Sub-Domain/Sub-Folder
Probably the most frequently asked question ever about multilingual SEO.
There are basically 3 different possibility to indicate the geolocation of your site:

• Local TLDs (Top Level Domain: .it, .co.uk, .cn etc)
• Sub Domains
• Sub Folders

Which one is the better? There are different factors to be considered:
- with the Sub Domains or Sub Folders solution you have the possibility to concentrate your link building campaign on one main domain (normally .com).
- The local TLDs gives you a considerable advantage in penetrating a local market. Personally I find more effective this second solution.
In case you are going for the Sub Domain or Sub Folder solution remember to specify the geographic location in the Google Webmaster Tools.

6 – Geo Selector
No matter if you are using a local TLD, a Sub Directory or a Sub Folder solution: having a cached, crawlable Geo Selector it’s a must. Try plain text links instead of images and javascript. Cookies based Geo Selectors where you have different languages sharing the same urls or system that automatilcally detect and select your language are really not the way to go.

7 – Hosting Location
Quoting Vanessa Fox:
“For domains that are not country-specific (such as .com or .tv), search engines use the geographic location of the server where the site is hosted to determine country”. No need to add anything.

8- Localised Files Name
It is a best practice to localise and possibly to insert some localised keywords in the files name with some important exceptions: you got to take into account that writing urls with Chinese, Arabic, Cyrillic characters many people using non-Chinese or non-Arabic non-Cyrillic keyboards will not be able to use your website.

9 – Local Contact Information
whenever is possible include in your website a physical local address and a local contact phone numbers. Search engines might use this information to determinate the area you are targeting.

10- Local Incoming Links
All links are good, some links are better.
On Site optimisation is important but Inbound links from local TLDs website or directories would increase the overall prominence of the site and would give it a competitive advantage in that particular local market
To find out how many links are coming only from a particular TLD you can use the expression:
link:your website site:.TLD

Bookmark It