The new edition of International Search Summit will be held on 13th May, 2010 in London: the key topic will be Innovation in Search.

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 International aspect of the Search World.

The Spring edition of International Search Summit 2010 is a full in-depth conference day about the latest new of International SEARCH. An unique opportunity to meet the most important experts and specialists of Multilingual Search 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 SEARCH issues including tips and advices on “how to run a Global SEM Business” by Steve Capone (Nokia), “How to integrate Twitter into your international marketing strategy” by Oscar Carreras (Hotels.com), “How to create an effective global Facebook strategy” and “How to Advertising on social networks”,” How to integrate video into international campaigns” from Bruce Daisley (YouTube), “Trends and tips on mobile in Europe”, “What do non-Latin IDNs mean for international marketers”, “Real-time search – How to manage your reputation in multiple languages”

International Search Summit, Innovations – 13th May, 2010. The Barbican, London.
February Early bird rate £140

International Search Summit – INNOVATION Agenda

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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

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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

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What Brian the wise dog says (“you can’t speak Italian just because you are wearing moustache”) is a big truth that can be applied even to Web Marketing: to reach your international target you need a strategy a bit more sophisticated than… wearing moustaches!

Why would you invest in a multilingual web marketing strategy? The reasons are many and they have been widely discussed (have a look at the top 10 reasons to go multilingual online).
The most obvious and banal it’s also the most important:

with a multilingual web marketing strategy you can dramatically expand the number of potential users and customers.

According to a new research performed by the China Internet Network Information Center at the end of June 2009 there were 338million internet users in China, a 13.4% jump since the end of 2008.
In the European Union there are over 400million internet users (the 40% in the so called FIGS – France, Italy, Germany, Spain).

Localising your online presence means not missing the chance to reach a massive Non-English-Speaking number of users around the world.

Having a localized online strategy is sometimes the only way to enter a market via (important) local channel: being visible online in China and Russia means to rank in Baidu and Yandex which are the big guys over there. And ranking well (or even ranking at all) in these “local Search Engine” with an English website… well it’s just not going to happen. And even if it happen it’s likely that Chinese, Russian, Italian people will search in Chinese, Russian, Italian…

This lead to the next point: is a translation enough? The answer is no.
Translator are in the best case making nice smooth perfect translation of the content provided, in the worst case they are just translating literally, word by word the English version with sometimes ridiculous results. But having your website optimised for the same keywords in different languages is not (not always at least) effective. People around the world are searching different things, in different way, using different keywords that may not be the ones that a perfect clean translation can suggest.

Translating is not localising. And the difference between these two terms in an industry largely based on keywords is huge.

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