With international SEO, a little goes a long way.

I have been fortunate to have traveled internationally rather extensively in my life. Early in my career I worked for a very small company that was acquired by a very large one. At the time, there was no such thing as video conferencing or the internet and we (the product marketing staff) were asked to visit a lot of different areas in the world to discuss 3D modeling technologies.

It’s ironic because the intensive traveling actually inspired me to start Viewmark. It was just a coincidence that new digital delivery platforms emerged, like CDs and the internet, that helped solve the intrinsic burdens associated with global product marketing. In essence, the new digital communication mechanisms allowed anyone to “have their cake and eat it too” by making it easier to sustain professional relationships around the globe without sacrificing significant time with family and friends.

Still, I can tell you from personal experience that there can be a lot of value in immersing yourself in a foreign country. Any American who has worked in Europe for an extended period of time will tell you that making an effort to speak the language of the country you are in goes a long way, but I readily admit that many of the responses to my attempts came back in English.

This reminded me of an experience I had in Sweden many years ago. It was in the late 80s and I was on one of those whirlwind marketing tours of Europe. I arrived in Stockholm after a long week on the road and decided to take a quick swim. The solarium was on the top floor of the hotel and when I entered I found that everyone was swimming naked. This is not commonplace in the States, but I said to myself, “When in Rome do as the Romans do”. After taking a short swim, I settled near the entrance, then several Americans walked in. Stunned with my appearance, they ask me, in English, if there was a sauna in the area. All I remember was responding with the only words I knew at that moment “Krona, Krona, Krona”.

In some ways international search works the same way. We have found that regional search engines like, Baidu, Naver, Yandex, etc. favor results for web pages where the titles and descriptions can be easily deciphered in the native language of the search engine and the major search engines have country specific sites where the results focus on links that are written in the country’s main language.

There are published reports that show the US percentage of global search traffic at 22% and if we add ~11% for countries around the globe that use English as their first language (UK, Australia, Canada, etc.), we can surmise that only one third of the world uses English when searching on the internet. Note: This is not to say that only one third of internet users will read English content. We feel this is significantly higher.

When a user arrives on your web site you can easily detect their language preference. Translation firms use spreadsheets or APIs to integrate content into their systems for localization and the costs for doing so are relatively low. At the same time, content management systems give you the ability to seamlessly provide the localized content on your web site.

International SEO is not one size fits all, but a little can go a long way! We have seen double-digit percentage increases in a company’s overall search volume by simply localizing page titles, meta descriptions and message bundles. The question to ask is: How global is your company and how well are you prepared to leverage the international search opportunities that are currently available?

VIP – Are you part of the link paparazzi?

It can be fun to draw analogies between the real world and cyberspace. For most people, the acronym VIP means “Very Important Person”. The media, and especially the tabloids, focus a lot of time and effort on following their every move. We all seem to get in on the act; for example, when someone knows a VIP there always seems to be a tendency to name-drop them whenever possible.

In cyberspace, I think of VIP as “Very Important Page” and the analogy to a very important person can be made in an eerily similar way, but keep in mind, search engines don’t understand human traits like infatuation. Traditional advertising concepts like “celebrity sponsorship” are not familiar to search engines and don’t really work very well.

I’m glad search engines don’t seem to get “star struck” like humans and try to concentrate on web pages from topic authorities instead of the celebrity sites. It makes the search engine optimization (SEO) process a little bit more predictable. However, many web site owners and search engine marketing (SEM) firms still seek out web pages with high page rank (PR) in an attempt to get a link placed to their web site from them.

This reminded me of a time in my life when I was required to travel coast-to-coast a few times a month on business because our New York 3D graphics firm had been acquired by an engineering software company in Los Angeles. Well, I quickly became an American Airlines Advantage Gold Member and was upgraded to first class on just about every flight I took. As a result, I flew with the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Keith Richards, Whitney Houston, Andy Williams, and Frank Gifford to name a few.

My colleagues were all excited about it since they got to hear a lot of interesting stories about the celebrities, but for me it was just too much time away from family and friends. Interestingly, search engines would have probably considered my Hollywood anecdotes valuable information if my business was celebrity gossip, but they certainly would not have indexed them in relation to engineering software design.

There are many instances where a link from a specific type of web site can quickly move your rankings higher in the major search engines, Sites like Wikipedia, Academic and Professional Associations deliver much higher value than any celebrity site ever could. Search engines pay very close attention to how sites link to you and how you link to them.

So this brings me back to the VIP analogy. Of course it is important to have links from sites with high PR value, but I believe it is more important to concentrate on links that are from authority web sites from within your vertical industry or community. Soliciting a link just because it is located on a web site with a high PR value is like grabbing a camera, jumping on a motorcycle and joining the link paparazzi.

One picture is worth a thousand words, but a video subtitle is worth a thousand pictures.

Many years ago I worked for MAGI (Mathematical Applications Group, Inc) in Elmsford, NY. The company was a pioneer in computer generated imagery and 3D modeling technology. In 1966 they started developing software based on the concept of tracing radiation from its source to its surroundings. Eventually, the software was adapted for use in computer generated imaging by tracing light instead of radiation, making it one of the first systems to implement the concept of ray tracing.

The software was a solids modeling system, in that the geometry was a series of solid primitives (boxes, cylinders, extrusions, etc.) along with combinatorial (Boolean) operations. The combination of the solids modeling and ray tracing made it a powerful system for generating high quality images like those seen in the movie “Tron”. The graphics and engineering application side of MAGI, called MAGI/SynthaVision was started in 1972 and finally sold to Lockheed in 1985 to be integrated with CADAM.

At the time, CADAM was one of the most widely used CAD/CAM systems on the planet, but considered by most to be just a computer aided drafting system. I remember traveling around the world speaking on the subject of solids modeling. I often used the expression “if a picture is worth a thousand words then a solids model is worth a thousand pictures” since we could make an infinite number of pictures from a single 3D model.

I did a little research on the saying and found that Fred R. Barnard originally created it when he coined the phrase “One look is worth a thousand words.” Printers’ Ink, 8 December 1921, p. 96. He changed it to “One picture is worth a thousand words” in Printers’ Ink, 10 March 1927, p. 114, and called it “a Chinese proverb, so that people would take it seriously. It was immediately credited to Confucius.

This got me thinking about how search engines have a hard time building context from web videos. Unfortunately, spiders can’t watch a web video and extract the relevant information like humans can. Metadata can provide an overview, but is fairly limited in size. Well, this lead me to the video subtitle and the possibility of using an XML document to feed the subtitle to the video, as well as the search engine.

There are several methods for identifying spiders visiting your website. Once you’ve identified your visitor as a spider crawling for keywords and phases, you can replace the video on the page with the exact “word-for-word” account contained in your video subtitles. Clearly, you would NOT want to abuse this technique since search engines have been known to verify user agent delivery implementations and there are a variety of tools to view your website as the search engines do to validate your results.

This method seems to be particularly powerful for localized content since video subtitles are commonplace in foreign countries, but you’ll want to translate your page title and Meta description too. The cost to translate a video script usually comes out to be somewhere between $0.25 and $0.35 per word so providing the context of your video in multiple languages is very reasonable today.

So this brings me back to the old saying “One picture is worth a thousand words”. I wondered if Mr. Barnard were alive today if he would agree with me to reprint it for Internet users as “One picture is worth a thousand words, but a video subtitle is worth a thousand pictures”.

Search, Branding and the Bottom Line

A relatively new phenomenon for every company’s marketing arsenal can be found with search engines. In most cases, people think of search as a way to take advantage of a working transactional model. After all, it is hardly rocket science to build predictive models from conversion analysis of searchers visiting your web site. Most companies can tell you, with varying degrees of certainty, how much additional revenue should be generated from any increased level of search traffic.

It is even possible to ascertain the average number of searches across the major search engines for any specific keyword or phrase in a given month. Less common, but perhaps more important, is to be prepared for increased searches from other marketing vehicles driving search. It would truly be a shame to have competitors capitalizing on your other campaign drivers through search. In practice, this could be handled by dayparting increased P4P spending for the days and hours following the ad broadcasts.

The reason this doesn’t work so well in reverse is that search is mostly a “pull” mechanism for your clients. Today, television, radio, and direct mail are mostly “push” mechanisms for you. Considering campaign timelines, it is hard to imagine a pull mechanism like search driving a push mechanism like television.

A less quantifiable use of search is for branding purposes. Someone once said, “Brands are created like birds create nests”. In any given day you are exposed to numerous product advertisements, expert advise from family and friends, as well as, inquires you make using search engines. All these events makeup your perception of a specific brand.

Measuring the affect that search has on brand is challenging to say the least and some companies are more suited to utilize brand building techniques than others, but all companies can benefit by using search to better define their brand in one way or another.

It is safe to say that customers are not thinking about your products all of the time; however, during these times, there are numerous opportunities to present your company in subtle brand defining ways through search. A direct correlation between application content and transactions can be established using both quantitative and qualitative methods.

Subdomains – Do you have a “One Page Wonder”?

When we start the process of building a web site the URL nomenclature always seems to come up. Sometimes we research and buy a new domain name, other times we create a new directory under an existing domain name and then there are times when we use a subdomain.

Clearly, your site’s URL strategy will have a major affect on how your web pages appear in the search engines results pages (SERPS). Here’s an example; for a long time we used subdomains when implementing blogs for our clients. Later, we changed our strategy to use the domain hierarchy because we found that the latter was more effective at increasing the page rank for the root domain through the natural propagation of inbound links to the blog (as a directory).

There are cases where we just can’t use the company’s domain name; server access, backend software, content updates, etc. and sometimes it’s just easier to build the web site on a subdomain located outside the company’s normal IT infrastructure. To accomplish this, all you need to do is to get a CNAME (subdomain) on the company’s DNS server and point it to an IP address located on an alternate network.

Recently, there has been a lot of talk about subdomains being treated as directories by the major search engines. My guess is that the search engines are trying to make sure that subdomains are providing unique content and that they are not being exploited for higher SERP rankings. This got me thinking about how search engines evaluate web sites in the same way as we critique our favorite bands.

Like many people, I have been actively listening to music for most of my life and in that time I can remember many songs that I would now say fall into the category of “One Hit Wonders”. Every generation has them, songs like: “The Macarena” by Los Del Rio (1996),  ”Tainted Love” by Soft Cell (1982) and “Kung Fu Fighting” by Carl Douglas (1974) all come to mind.

Wikipedia characterizes “One Hit Wonders” as short-lived novelty songs deliberately written to cash in on a fad. Early on, I bought into the commercialization of music and actually bought several albums from some of these bands. I think I may still have an Iron Butterfly album in the attic somewhere. I guess we are all young and naïve at some point in our lives.

So how does this relate to URL nomenclature? Well, if you want to get traffic from organic search to a web site and you are using a subdomain, a good rule of thumb is to make sure that the content is unique in nature and there is an adequate level of substantive content. Think of the bands that have passed the test of time, they typically have their own style and many memorable songs accredited to them. Search engine algorithms are like web site critics, in that they attempt to identify valid web sites in a similar way to how we evaluate our favorite bands and their music over time.

Now this isn’t to say that subdomains can’t be used as single pages. Just like a “One Hit Wonder” can sound really good and make an artist and their record company a great deal of money, these “One Page Wonders” can be very visual and achieve their business goals; however, when planning these types of web sites don’t expect any search engines to ever rank them very high and consider the fact that you’ll need to use paid advertising to promote them.

Who you know, what they say and reciprocality

Search engine crawls are kind of like meeting your cousin periodically. When you meet there is always a tendency to exaggerate your recent accomplishments in an attempt to impress them. Everyone likes positive information to propagate about them throughout their family. Unfortunately, search engines (like cousins) aren’t easily fooled and embellishments can sometimes work against you.

You see, search engines (like cousins) have the ability to quickly verify your claims and tell you “who says what” through their links and contacts. This makes the whole experience a bit uncomfortable since your comments are not necessarily what you say you know, but whom you know and what they say you know.

This reminded me of a story someone told me about a famous celebrity they met and how the encounter changed their perception within their family, ultimately making them a legend. It was a monthly reunion of sorts; the individual was having dinner with his cousin. The conversation consisted of repetitive anecdotes on recent events when my friend excused himself for a quick biology break.

While in the restroom, my friend ran into a famous celebrity. He pleaded his case and asked the celebrity if they would mind acting like they knew him and saying something nice to his cousin. The celebrity thought it might be fun and reluctantly agreed. My friend went back to his table and continued to converse with his cousin, suddenly her eyes got as big as oranges when she recognized the celebrity approaching.

The celebrity put his hand on my friend’s shoulder and said “How are you, I haven’t seen you in a long time, is this the wonderful cousin you’re always talking about?” My friend turned to the celebrity and abruptly told them “Get lost, can’t you see I’m in the middle of something!” Now at first glance this might seem incredibly rude, but in terms of impressing his cousin it was remarkable.

This brings me back to search engines and how they seem to work in a similar way. You see, a link and recommendation from a highly ranked “celebrity” type site is more valuable when the link is not reciprocal. Of course, now my friend has become a legend, if not in his own mind, ours.

Tournament Draws and Search Linking Algorithms

This year I turn 55! Quite a milestone when you think about it. I can tell you a number of things go through your mind when this event occurs and I’m guessing everyone goes through some sort of “right of passage“. Having been a tennis player most of my life, I decided that 55 was my opportunity to join the 55-and-over tennis tournament circuit. I imagined filling my trophy case with hardware from my triumphs.

In my first tournament, the draw had me play a first round match late in the evening, followed with a meeting with the number 2 seed early the next morning. This didn’t seem fair, but as a newcomer I didn’t feel it was my place to complain. Well, the good news was that I won my first match, but the bad news was that I resembled a pretzel the next morning. Needless to say, I went down in defeat, but on my drive home I had a bit of an epiphany on tournament draws and search linking algorithms.

What I realized was that search algorithms actually use a similar process. You see, as an unknown, the tennis tournament directors could not credibly seed me; similarly, search engines don’t rank newly found URLs very high in their listings. Now, if I would have won my match against the number 2 seed, I’m sure the Colorado Tennis Association would gladly seed me in the next tournament. Likewise, search engines start recognizing URLs when other prominent (seeded) sites point to you.

The lesson here is that “talk is cheap” in both sports and web search. I plan to continue my quest for Colorado tennis stardom, but in the meantime we’ll plan to get as many valuable links (from seeded websites) to Viewmark as possible.

It’s the same old wine in a brand new bottle

I’d never given much thought to the expression about seeing a glass as half full or half empty, but the other night, as I was enjoying a glass of wine, I couldn’t help observing that it appeared to be at that critical point in time.

My first inclination was to grab the bottle and fill it to the top again since this would indicate that I saw the glass as half full and by most accounts this is considered the more positive approach. Then it occurred to me that perhaps the expression might mean that by seeing the glass as half empty I should moderate my consumption accordingly. If I saw the glass as half full then I would continuously consume and probably wouldn’t enjoy it as much.

In these tough times ad spends are being closely monitored and it seems like understanding that the glass is not bottomless is important. When you see the glass as half empty you tend to savor each sip more and in the advertising world that equates to utilizing your advertising dollars as effectively as possible.

On the other side of the coin, growing up my mom used to always say “Today is the first day of the rest of your life” and this expression has always been a mantra for me. Could you imagine your advertising firm saying “Today is the last day since the beginning of my life”.

In either case, knowing what “full” actually means indicates that your expectations have already been set. I like to think of it as just a glass of wine that comes from a bottle that comes from a barrel that comes from a vineyard.

So whether the glass is half full or half empty, enjoy what you have and try to facilitate a way to maximize it’s full potential. After all it’s the same old wine it’s just in a different bottle.