Archive for November, 2009
The world is only getting bigger. The U.S. Census Bureau’s Population Division estimates the world’s population to be as of May 27th, 2008, 6,670,328,109 (source) – that’s almost seven billion souls roaming this earth. And how can seven billion people on one tiny little planet possibly communicate with one another? Language in its written and spoken forms has been the pinnacle of human achievement and has made our ability to connect with one another possible (I know some of you believe that your wife’s stare after you refuse to do the dishes communicates volumes, but that’s an entirely different language all on its own). In 1999, the Ethnologue cataloged 6,500 living languages and currently only 6,000 of them are still in practice (“Languages of the World”). Of those 6,000 languages, the top-ten languages used on the Internet today are as follows:
- English
- Chinese
- Spanish
- Japanese
- French
- German
- Arabic
- Portuguese
- Korean
- Italian
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To master Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in the English language is difficult enough, but what to do with sites that cater to English and Spanish-speaking visitors? And what happens when you have a site in both languages that targets multiple countries (i.e. America and Mexico)?
To begin, you want to find a hosting company that is native to the country the site was designed to primarily serve. This is imperative. Furthermore, you need to ensure the domain name is properly registered for that country. If you have a primarily English site dealing with real estate in Denver, Colorado, it is best to have yourdomainname.com (or .net or .org). In Canada use .ca and for the U.K. use .co.uk (same goes for Australia – .com.au)
If you want your Spanish-speaking friends to view condos in downtown Denver, then you would create a Spanish subfolder on the site, such as yourdomainname.com/spanish/ and put the identical content that is now translated into that folder.
Now, there is some debate between setting up subfolders and creating an entirely new site completely in Spanish due to better search engine results when using the two separate sites scheme. However, if the site is hosted in America (or another host country with the content bearing the host country’s language), and is relevant to that country, it is not only quite appropriate to use the subfolder approach – it is recommended.
On the contrary, If we are building a site in which the content is not country/language specific, the recommended course of action is to build separate sites. Host one site in America with the English language content and the other site in Mexico or Spain with the Spanish language content. You would then build links to each site and almost treat them as separate entities. Should someone wish to visit the Spanish site (or vice versa), provide a link between the two sites as a translation.
One word regarding translations: when translating your site, do not – I repeat, DO NOT – rely on mechanical means of translation. Spend the money to hire a person to translate your site, preferably one that lives and works in the language-speaking country so they may be familiar with the native cultural dialects and norms. One mistranslated word and your site could easily go from selling real estate in Denver to insulting someone’s mamma. It is just as important for a website to communicate correctly as it does effectively.
This article is just a brief beginning to a tumultuous topic. The thoughts and reasoning of the SEO community-at-large continue to change on a pretty regular basis when dealing with multiple languages and optimization. Ultimately, it comes down to what the visitor needs.
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Cyveillance says that it has uncovered a search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning campaign that has affected more than 260,000 websites.
The scam targets Google search by getting browsers that are linked to sites that attempt to download malware onto their machines. The company said that the common string albums/bsblog/category has been posted in many URLs of several blogs. This inputs several results that lead to malicious sites.
“Readers can simply copy and paste the destination URL into your browser to direct it to the desired Website; you would be taken to [a] boring but otherwise harmless blog posting like those pictured earlier in this discussion,” the company explained. “The attack only happens when the compromised blog site determines that you arrived by way of Google by checking the HTTP referrer.”
Cyveillance said that the infected sites utilized rogue blog publishing to automatically generate new posts with titles like “las vegas rental no credit check” or “uninvited song lyrics alanis morrissette morissette.” These poisoning campaigns are detrimental to legite SEO operations.
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1. Submit Complete Forms.
All three local search centers include a wealth of information that’s of use for people doing searches (i.e. your prospects!), so be sure to fill out each form completely (the hyperlinked “Google”, “Yahoo” and “Bing”, above, will take you to each).
For example, if you have a bricks and mortar storefront, you can indicate your operating hours. If your site then appears in Google’s 10-pack listing and someone clicks on your listing, it will say whether or not you’re open for business – in real time.
Also be sure to choose the appropriate categories for your business – and yes, you can choose more than one. Choosing more than one category helps ensure you site is shown in local searches for those categories (nevertheless, show restraint: only choose those categories that genuinely refer to your business).
As you can see in the screen shot below, Spa Bar, a day spa in San Francisco, has included its operating hours but is listed for one category only.
Its competitor, Tru Spa, also located in San Francisco, lists its operating hours and six categories, as you can see in the screen shot below.
2. Ask all of your customers to give you a review – on multiple sites.
Customer reviews comprise a major component of the local search algorithm. And, as you can see in the screen shot below, Google is now including a link for “Reputation Trend,” which links to a trending analysis on the review site Judy’s Book.
This means it’s becoming increasingly important that you become very strategic about getting your customers to leave reviews for you – on multiple review sites.
In this shot for Luminous Day Spa, you can see that Bing is pulling information from the CitySearch directory, including “menu” and “reservation” hot links, and it’s showing that the spa has a rating of 9/10 (we’re not sure how that is calculated).
Other review sites you’ll want to consider include:
Local review sites for your city/region – These include CitySearch and Yelp, to name just two popular review sites.
Travel sites — Fodor’s and HotelTravel.com are two popular sites.
Health sites — Doctor Oogle, Health Grades, No More Clipboard, and Health Profs are a few popular sites.
Google Reviews – Anyone with a Google account can leave a review simply by clicking on the little “comment” icon that follows any search engine listing (provided the person is logged in to Google).
Yahoo! and Bing Reviews – The review function works similarly to Google’s.
3. Upload your own images.
Although all three search engines let you upload images, you can upload more than just one or two to Google’s local business center. If you don’t upload your own images, you leave to chance exactly what image Google is going to show – which could be unflattering, to say the least.
For our day spa example, many of the spas used photographs of people getting facials and massages or images of their interiors. You can also upload your logo and YouTube videos.
Rich content is now one of the most important techniques for driving consumers to websites from natural search results.
Speaking at the ‘Connect to Content’ session at World Travel Market, Frommer’s Unlimited general manager Joel Brandon-Bravo said natural search had become the biggest battleground for travel companies.
He also estimated that website content requires about half the investment of cost-per-click advertising.
Frommer’s conducted research among eight of its clients to reveal the content costs about 17p per visitor. This compares to the average cost-per-click in travel search of 33p according to US figures from Efficient Frontier released in the summer.
Market figures show 70% of people click on natural (organic) search results.
To get to the 17p cost per visitor, Frommer’s divided the total investment in content against the number of unique visitors brought to a client’s website from natural search. The sample of eight clients included online travel companies, hotel sites and airlines and looked at a mix of syndicated content, custom content as well as a blend of the two.
Brandon-Bravo also talked about the importance of integrating content properly within websites.
“Investing in content is a bit like buying a gym membership, you have to use it. It’s about integrating that content with your products and really making it work. If a customer has to do more than a couple of clicks they are just going to go away.”
Recent research carried out by Frommer’s shows travel companies plan to increase their online marketing budgets next year with social media, search engine optimisation and online content – the three hot areas for investment.
More than three quarters of respondents also said the cost per visitor across their online marketing mix was under US$5.
A tech startup calling itself Leapfish has thrust itself into the search engine market, billing itself as an entry portal into “the living web,” potentially shifting the ground under the feet of search engine optimization (SEO) professionals.
Leapfish’s flagship product is a customizable homepage, which Search Engine Watch describes as being similar to iGoogle. Users can create their own startup pages using a simple graphical user interface to arrange and position various pre-set widgets, predominantly those offering access to Twitter, Facebook and numerous other social media networking tools.
The new search portal has drawn widespread interest from all corners of the world of search marketing, including search engine optimization (SEO). Leapfish adds a new variable into the way in which web users view social media content, and could hamper Google and Microsoft’s expected moves into the social search market.
The two internet giants recently signed separate deals with Twitter to index the popular microblogging service’s content. Search engine optimization (SEO) professionals are still trying to figure out exactly how the “real-time web,” as Leapfish calls it, will affect SEO campaigns.
Lost in the widespread hoopla over Google’s acquisition of mobile phone advertising firm AdMob was the company’s concurrent purchase of VoIP provider Gizmo5, which Search Engine Land’s Greg Sterling says will make Google Voice a stand-alone service.
Sterling writes that this could put the search giant into direct competition with VoIP market leader Skype, which boasts a worldwide user base of 480 million people. Search engine optimization (SEO) professionals must monitor Google’s move into the VoIP market closely, to ascertain what sort of SEO opportunities present themselves once Google Voice goes public.
Google already offers a Goog-411 service, effectively extending parts of its search functionality onto the mobile platform. This, coupled with the increasingly rapid adoption of Google’s Android cell phone OS, could give the company a solid bridgehead into the mobile market, creating new fields of opportunity for search engine optimization (SEO).
In another article about Google Voice, Sterling notes that consumer privacy advocates are troubled by the further expansion of Google’s data indexing, saying that the extent of the data collection raises questions about the security of personal information.
Business search engine optimization (SEO) is not, according to experts, a simple series of goods that can be purchased for increased performance, but a long-term investment whose benefits are often present but difficult to see.
Writing a guest column at Search Engine Land, Damien Bianchi says that some companies have trouble understanding the costs and benefits of search engine optimization (SEO) because the results are frequently not immediately apparent in the bottom line. Bianchi compares the process to implementing a new content management system: It can be bought, but it might take years for the benefits to become fully evident.
Bianchi says that a good search engine optimization (SEO) program depends on corporate infrastructure, design, localization and content, as well as a thorough understanding of the target search engines. Analytics software and close cooperation with IT departments can also help demonstrate the value of well-crafted SEO to skeptical executives.
Bianchi – among many others – also notes that the world of the search engine is constantly changing, and that successful search engine optimization (SEO) practitioners must always be on their toes for the latest developments.
With local listing being more competitive than ever some firms are finding ways to monetize them. Mike Blumenthal just wrote a short article highlighting the most recent form local map spam. Companies are now obtaining local listings and editing the titles to incorporate such sales pitches like Get Your Firm Here Call Us or Buy This Listing. This is nothing new, people have been spamming the map listings for years.
Simply put, as Google’s Local listings get more advanced with algorithmic changes the map muddlers keep finding ways to temporarily beat the system. Don’t worry about them, their listings won’t survive for ever. I have compiled some local map spam screen-shots so everyone out there can attempt to spot and report these bogus listings.
Experts say that the most successful search engine optimization (SEO) efforts should begin before a character of code is written for a website. Every step of the way, SEO considerations must be addressed.
Keyword research, strategic planning, and a careful eye kept on web development tools are all part of the game for web designers hoping to successfully integrate search engine optimization (SEO) into their project, according to Eric Enge of Search Engine Watch. Enge also warns prospective webmasters that sites with effective SEO will require large quantities of quality content, or at the very least, smaller quantities of superlative content.
Enge recommends that two basic questions be answered before any work is done on a new or revamped website: First, what is the purpose of the website? And how does the firm that owns the website plan to market it? Poorly-planned and optimized sites are one potential consequence of a failure to answer these questions, according to Enge.
Search giant Google recently released an array of helpful tools for web developers, which could ease web design and make for more effective search engine optimization (SEO).
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SAN FRANCISCO — Google has agreed to acquire AdMob, a fast-growing start-up that developed technology to place ads on mobile phones, for $750 million in stock, the company said Monday.
Google said that the acquisition would help the Internet search company to speed up efforts to develop more effective tools for creating and placing mobile ads on smartphones and other devices, a small but rapidly expanding market.
“We see mobile as a huge growth opportunity for us,” Susan Wojcicki, vice president of product management at Google, said in an interview. “We see an opportunity working with AdMob to really accelerate our efforts in an important industry for Google.”
The all-stock deal is modest for Google, given its roughly $177 billion market value. But it is the third-largest in its history, behind the $3.1 billion deal for the advertising specialist DoubleClick and the $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube.
Ms. Wojcicki said AdMob, which specializes in placing banner ads on mobile phones, would help cement Google’s forays in display advertising, an area where it has lagged rivals like Yahoo.
As Google’s core business of selling text ads has been slowing, the company has been looking for new areas to expand. In particular, Google is hoping to replicate its success in selling Web ads in the mobile arena. Google, which already sells ads on mobile phones, offers a wide variety of mobile phone applications and makes the Android software that some handset makers use to power their phones.
Smartphones, like the iPhone and Android devices, represent a disproportionate amount of the company’s mobile business so far.
Founded in 2006, AdMob calls itself the “world’s largest mobile advertising marketplace.” The company, which has received $47 million in financing from venture capitalists and other investors, refused to disclose its revenue. But Omar Hamoui, the company’s founder and chief executive, said that sales had more than doubled in the last year. The company’s headquarters are in San Mateo, Calif., not far from Google’s. It employs about 140 people.
Google said it hoped to close the acquisition in the next several months. Ms. Wojcicki said she expected the acquisition would be approved by regulators.
“We would not be surprised if there is some regulatory review,” she said. “We think that mobile advertising is a very competitive area and we don’t see a lot of regulatory concerns.”
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ABOUT
My name is Kyle Kazak and I am the CEO and President of Kazak Media, a local Internet marketing firm that specializes in web design, local SEO, and pay per click management. We are located in Petaluma, CA, USA.