BE GLOBAL: SEO LOCAL » SEO http://www.seobloom.com When Search Engine Optimisation goes Local: Multilingual SEO by Davide Corradi Thu, 27 Oct 2011 08:50:52 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v= en hourly 1 Why (And How) The Google AdWords Keyword Tool Should Be Used For SEO – A Case Study http://www.seobloom.com/article/574/why-and-how-the-google-adwords-keyword-tool-should-be-used-for-seo-a-case-study/ http://www.seobloom.com/article/574/why-and-how-the-google-adwords-keyword-tool-should-be-used-for-seo-a-case-study/#comments Tue, 17 Aug 2010 00:51:02 +0000 Davide Corradi http://www.seobloom.com/?p=574 Yesterday, reading one of my favourite SEO Blog I came across this interesting article by David Whitehouse: “Why The Google AdWords Keyword Tool Shouldn’t Be Used For SEO – A Case Study“. I have to say that I partly agree with David, everybody knows that this tool is far to return exact results, but, still, I think that we SEOs can use the The Google AdWords Keyword Tool in several ways.

- Keyword ideas
First and most important: the Google Keyword tool is a suggestion tool. Use it to get ideas. Don’t ever think that the number of searches are real. They are not. They are hints, suggestions.

- Variations
Even if the Google Keywords Tool is not returning exact number of searches, it may be useful to evaluate different variations of similar terms such as singular vs plural for instance: I don’t belive there are 14,800 monthly searches for “hostels in London” but I do believe there are more searches for “hostels in London” (plural) than for “hostel in London” (singular). If I need to target one, and just one of these two keywords I’ll go for the plural (other factors may be considered tho).

Trends
One of my favourite features of the Google Keyword Tool. In some industries it may be really useful to know when is the highest number of searches for a certain term. Once again I don’t believe there were 1,600 searches worldwide for “hostels Auckland” last January but I do believe there are more searches for this particular keyword in January than in July.

Languages
Name one keyword tool that is decent with languages. I am sure most SEOs will say that Keyword Discovery is the best one. Well, I love it when we are dealing with English keywords but, unless they have recently dramatically improved their international database, with all the other languages it is always been a greek tragedy. And in any case let say we need a keyword research in Urdu, in Hungarian or in Slovenian: it may be not perfect but the Google AdWords Keyword Tool is the only available keyword tool for lots of languages. Obviously in this case the help of a multilingual SEO agency won’t hurt as well.

A Case Study:
Let say that our company is in need to target English speaking travellers willing to stay in cheap accommodation and hostels in Sydney, Australia.
Which keywords should we consider? Hostel Sydney? for sure but singular or plural?
Cheap Hotels ? Cheap accommodations?…what else? Let’s give Google’s tool a last chance:

I’ve typed in the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, “Hostel Sydney”, “Hostels Sydney”, “Cheap Hotels Sydney”, “Cheap accommodations Sydney” and I have selected “All Countries” as a Location and “English” as a Language.

Google AdWords Keyword Tool

The top 5 results are the following:
[cheap hotels sydney]: global average 6600 searches, top between October and February
[backpackers Sydney]: global average 5400 searches, top between November and February
[accomodation Sydney]: global average 5400 searches, top February
[hostel Sydney]: global average 4400 searches, top in November and December
[hostels Sydney]: global average 3600 searches, top in December

Can’t you see anything useful here? Not only we know (easy guess to be honest) that we need to plan our SEM strategy in order to be effective at very last at the beginning of Autumn but we have found a very interesting keyword (Backpackers Sydney) that we weren’t even considering. Further investigation will be needed but it is a good start don’t you think?

I am not here to defend Google (as I said recently I’m always very critical with the big G), and I am not saying that the Google AdWords Keyword Tool is the best keyword tool out there. It isn’t.
What I am saying is that we can find a useful way to use it for our daily SEO tasks. Combine it with Google Insights and Google Trends and it can make a decent set of tools.

Once again: it is not the invention to be important. It is the way we use it!

]]> http://www.seobloom.com/article/574/why-and-how-the-google-adwords-keyword-tool-should-be-used-for-seo-a-case-study/feed/ 4 Is someone bidding on you? Extreme Recruitment Strategy http://www.seobloom.com/article/546/is-someone-bidding-on-you-extreme-recruitment-strategy/ http://www.seobloom.com/article/546/is-someone-bidding-on-you-extreme-recruitment-strategy/#comments Thu, 01 Jul 2010 13:19:27 +0000 Davide Corradi http://www.seobloom.com/?p=546 Is someone bidding on your name? It seems there is a recruitment agency (or as they prefer to call themself head-hunting firm) that is bidding on my name. I don’t know if I am more chuffed or scared…

Someone is bidding on my name

]]> http://www.seobloom.com/article/546/is-someone-bidding-on-you-extreme-recruitment-strategy/feed/ 2 South Africa 2010 World Cup in the Search Engine Marketing Industry http://www.seobloom.com/article/495/south-africa-2010-world-cup-in-the-search-engine-marketing-industry/ http://www.seobloom.com/article/495/south-africa-2010-world-cup-in-the-search-engine-marketing-industry/#comments Fri, 04 Jun 2010 13:05:59 +0000 Davide Corradi http://www.seobloom.com/?p=495 How important is the coming World Cup in the Search Engine Market industry? Have a look at the chart below and please stand up for execution if you haven’t thought about it yet:

]]> http://www.seobloom.com/article/495/south-africa-2010-world-cup-in-the-search-engine-marketing-industry/feed/ 0 The Original SPAM That Even Matt Cutts Likes http://www.seobloom.com/article/451/the-original-spam-that-even-matt-cutts-likes/ http://www.seobloom.com/article/451/the-original-spam-that-even-matt-cutts-likes/#comments Mon, 05 Apr 2010 18:05:57 +0000 Davide Corradi http://www.seobloom.com/?p=451 The SPAM that all the Search Marketers and SEOs including Google’s engineers and Matt Cutts secretly would like to try. At least once. ;)

The Original SPAM. Succulent pieces of SPAM covered in a deliciously light and crispy golden batter.

The Original SPAM

SPAM – Video

Original Spam
http://www.spam.com

]]> http://www.seobloom.com/article/451/the-original-spam-that-even-matt-cutts-likes/feed/ 0 SEO Competition: And the Winner Is… http://www.seobloom.com/article/412/seo-competition-and-the-winner-is/ http://www.seobloom.com/article/412/seo-competition-and-the-winner-is/#comments Tue, 09 Mar 2010 02:32:29 +0000 Davide Corradi http://www.seobloom.com/?p=412 The SEO Contest between ON Site and OFF Site SEO is finally over!

For the very last time, a quick recap: one month ago Oscar Carreras wrote an interesting post on his blog claiming that off page techniques counts a massive 75% in terms of ranking factors. I didn’t agree and I challenged Oscar in this funky SEO contest: he tried to rank as high as possible for the keyword Davide Corradi using only OFF site SEO techniques, while I was trying to rank as high as possible for the keyword Oscar Carreras using only ON site SEO techniques.

After one long month of intensive spamming link building from on side and extreme On Site Optimisation from the other, Ladies and Gentlemen, the winner is…

SEO Contest: the winner is...

The final Ranking Report:

The keyword “Oscar Carreras” on www.seobloom.com

  • google.com: 1st page, position 5th (no change)
  • google.co.uk: 1st page position 6th (was 5th, lost one position)
  • google.co.uk pages from uk: 1st page position 3th (despite the site is hosted in Italy) (was 5th, gained two positions. This week only 1 out of 6 images in the images result are showing my pretty face. They were 2 out of 8 last week)
  • yahoo UK 1st page position 3rd and th (was 2nd, lost 1 position from last week)
  • yahoo.com 1st page position 5th (no change)
  • bing.com Not Ranking (was 47th)

The keyword “Davide Corradi” on www.europeanseo.org

  • google.com 1st page, position 7th (was 10th, gained 3 positions from last week)
  • google.co.uk 1st page, position 7th (was 9th, gained 2 positions from last week)
  • google.co.uk pages from uk: not ranking (the site is hosted in US)
  • yahoo UK not ranking with the correct page anymore but is ranking in first page with another page that can’t be considered ’cause it is slightly optimised.
  • yahoo.com same as above: is not ranking with the correct page anymore but is ranking in first page with the optimised page
  • bing.com not ranking (was 18th)

Ok technically me and my on site techniques won but…Shall we call it a draw? ;)

Contest takeways:

- Google is crawling, indexing evaluating pages at a terrific speed. It took few minutes to get indexed for both the pages and less than 24 hours to start ranking.

On page techniques are giving consistent results but the Search Engines (mainly Google) are “live creatures” keeping changing. Your competitors are changing. The people searching for your products are changing the way they are searching. Don’t stop monitoring and adjusting your site! It’s a false myth that On Site SEO is a one-off activity and once your pages are done there is nothing else you can do. Your pages are the playground where you can freely test, change and eventually improve your site performance. Work on it constantly. It will pay off.
SEO Contest: google.com rank
Google.com ranking evolution

- External links are the quickest way to get your site ranking: off page activities are powerful but need to be constantly performed. Your competitors will take advantage and overtake you if you stop. Don’t.

- Google is deciding the location of a website using these 3 criteria (in order of importance):

  • Google Webmaster Central Geographic target
  • TLD
  • Hosting Location

- Google is giving lots of weight to Social Media. But social media result are effimer: they don’t last. Still nowdays you can’t live without them. They are the quickest way to get the immediate visibility you need.

- Yahoo! gives lots of weight to On Site elements: My page it’s stable, ranking at the top of the SERP. Oscar’s link supported page disappeared when a better optimised page show up.

- No Follow links are followed. Big time. The vaste majority of the links that Oscar built (according with Yahoo Site Explorer) are no follow.

- Bing: No Comment.

Conclusion
On Page and Off Page SEO should play together. I reckon that as a ranking factor in Google Links count a good 60-65%. On Site Optimisation 35-40%. Social Media is something completely different. They boost your visibility not your ranking. Yet. These percentage may vary considerably: depending on the industry, the competitiveness of a certain keyword and the quality of a link, OFF Site factors may count up to 75%.

Conclusion #2
hire both me and Oscar! ;)

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