International

August 18, 2008

Search Around the World: UK & Europe

I have wandering back into the light and now my favorite panel is here! I'm going to dedicate this recap to our awesome BC Europe team because they, like the panelists, have awesome accents (and wicked SEO skills).

Moderating the panel of awesome is Jonathan Mendez (RAMP Digital). Our speakers are David Radicke (Radicke eCommerce), Anders Hjorth (Relevant Traffic Europe), Marie Dumesnil (Viking River Cruises) and Mike Grehan (Acronym Media).

Jonathan gets us started with the interesting note that, on a percentage basis people search more online outside the US than in the US.

David Radicke is up first to talk about the German market. He's from Berlin. Google has a total monopoly in Germany; it's 90 percent google then Yahoo, MSN, Google through T-Online, Web.de and AOL. Germany is the second or third largest market in Europe. His own client Google Analytics metrics show that Google has 96.66 percent of traffic. Omniture shows the same: less than three percent of searches from other engines.

Why does Google dominate?

• Google search was really good when it entered the market
• The biggest ISPs/portal never had their own search engines.
• The early very good German Search engines failed, were acquired or folded during the Dotcom crash.
• MSN and Yahoo never gained a foothold.

The Adsense/Adwords is even worse. Yahoo and MSN never had an AdSesnse program for publishers outside of search, MSH STILL doesn't haven't their own sponsored links.

The only competition for AdSense is Vibrant IntelliTxt
Yahoo has some bad portal distribution.

What can be done? Nothing at the moment. Does it matter? Not really. It's easier for SEMs to optimize for.

The downside of course is that the market might turn against Google and the index is probably the most spammed because there's no other options.

Social media: Local companies are very strong, much stronger than the US companies like Facebook and myspace, etc. Facebook just launched in Germany a little while ago.

Meinvs, studiVZ, Yigg--all important social media sites.

There's a lot of local search competition but there's no real program for businesses on the Google Maps.

Book search is doing well. [Oh my god, he talks fast.]

Price comparison isn't good and is full of spam, Google Checkout doesn't exist. Germans don't like it or use it.
News is hosted and paid for by Google.

He doesn't see the Google dominance lessening at all and thinks it will build elsewhere too. Social media will also continue to grow.

Jonathan thinks that international marketing is much easier than US marketing.

Anders Hjorth steps up to talk about Europe more broadly.

Languages: Many many languages and several character sets: Latin, Greek, Cyrillic

You'll want to get his slides because I can't copy all the information he's going through. He does note that though Irish is the national language in Ireland, you'll probably want to focus on English marketing unless you're targeting a very niche market. Belgians should be marketed to in French and in Dutch, not just one or the other.

He has SO much information on his slides.

Google is dominant everywhere. Yahoo is losing marketshare most places and Live is gaining. Ask, Miva, Mirago are all minor players.

In every case, most of your budget should go to Google. In Norway there's a local engine that deserves attention too.

Local search engines, mostly backfilled by Google, are important. Altavista is still alive in Europe.

France: 60 million people, 25 million online (94 percent broadband).

People search: 30 percent of searches are people related. (Spock.com) Social Networks: Ryze, LinkedIn, Xing (DE) Viadeo (FR)

Digg and Yigg are popular. Scoopeo is local to France. Kudos in Norway (?)

Challenges of international: user constraints [browsers, currency], language preferences [know which language is appropriate], cultural dimensions [ex: Spanish is used in many countries but there's cultural impact on how it's used].

Do your keyword research in the language, don't translate to the language. You need to focus on cultural aspects. Get experts in each country on your team, both for PPC and for SEO. To succeed: Local teams, local keywords, local structure.

I cannot emphasize enough how much you need to see all his slides.

Marie Dumesnil is up next to talk to about the French market.

Her numbers are a little higher than Anders for internet penetration. 54.2 percent of households have Internet acces. 38 percent of media consumption was web-based, more than TV (35%). Google has 91 percent dominance.

Many of the most visited sites are French specific Web sites (Orange, Free, PagesJaune, Coupains d'Avant.fr). 2008, French businesses planned to invest 29 percent of ht eir resources in search marketing (22% in 2007)

French searchers are looking for entertainment more than the US markets. YouTube, jeux (games) and meteo (weather) top the list of search terms.

Seasonality differs between countries. Travel is different (they have five weeks of paid vacation). Social networks are booming and the traffic is huge compared to the US. Skyrock is the big one, then copaindavant (which is like Classmates.com for France).

How does the French language impact your search results? "Coupe" (as in the car) in US is "Coupe" with an accent over the E that I don't know how to do. (whoops). If you leave off the accent, you're searching for haircuts.

Mike Grehan is wielding some kind of wooden stick. He's going to explain. It's a story that starts in Canada. And it involves a grizzly bear. Um. Mike, you're scaring me.

Clearly this is going to be a very SERIOUS presentations. Mike's next statement: "Most English people live in a castle. This one's mine."

The average UK family: the father is a chimneysweep with a weird cockney/Australian accent. [Image of Mary Poppins cast]

Search Engine Optimisation: With an S
Behavioural: add in the odd U where it doesn't belong

More seriously: It's still all Google in the UK. 82 percent market share

e-consultancy does a survey every year:

The most common PPC services

1. Keyword Research
2. Landing page optimization
3. ROI tracking and analysis
4. Competitor research

The organic side:

1. Keyword research
2. Competitor research
3. Landing page development )Tie)
4. Copywriting (tie)

How much do UK firms spend on search?

9 percent are spending more than 1 million pounds annually on paid search
One in six spend more than 50,000 pounds in search.

Mike, why do you have entire paragraphs on your slides?

[In the Czech republic, Google doesn't dominate]

In the UK, Microsoft Adcenter converts better than Google in Paid search. It wasn't a small study, either. (Apparently.)

Q&A

Do the other German speaking countries (like Austria and Switzerland) go by the same rules?

They're small markets, very small. Austria bundles with Germany, Switzerland has more languages so it's a little more complex but both are very small and you have to be very local with them.

Do I need to host in the country or is Google Webmaster Tools good enough?

David: Get the .de domain. Don't just rely on the Webmaster Tools. You need to capture the .de domain anyway because otherwise someone will poach your domain. I think the hosting isn't as important as the top level domain.
Mike: In the perfect world, you need to host in the country you're working in. But it's not a perfect world and you have to do a work around.
Anders: I think the TLD is the most important. If you have a .com you'll be okay, then the IP address that local, that would help but get the local TLD.

Searcher behavior: We find that German visitors convert less? Are French users younger (as implied by the entertainment searches?)

David: Germans don't use credit card much, so that will lower conversion rates, but even in Germany it's lower conversion rates. They spend a lot of time researching.
Marie: I think it's cultural mostly. They have time to look for entertainment comment online.
Anders: I don't think it has to do with age.
Jonathan: In the US it's not kids searching for games. It's people at work.

What kind of measures do you see Google taking to continue their growth?

David: Google doesn't have to do much to keep dominance and grow. They don't even have to be good. Yahoo and Microsoft are destroying themselves. Googlemail is hugely successful, they just have to be there and they grow by their own sheer size. There's nothing to stop them really.

How do you explain the 3-6 month ramp up time in SEO? Is there a PPC disadvantage with the weakness of the dollar?

Mike: Show them missed opportunity. Show them what they could have made. You can get conversion data from e-consultancy and Microsoft.
David: If I'm using Euros to advertise in the US it doesn't matter because you still have to convert the dollars back to Euros. It all equals out.
Ander: We generally recommend that you look at it as investing. With the weak dollar, you want to invest in the US. In US companies, I would suggest reducing Euro spend. Don't try to push people who aren't ready. If you have to go into a company, go in and find a local shopping engine and try to fulfill all of their criteria to get indexed in those engines. That's a good test drive. The second question on conversion: it's a complex thing and measuring it is even more complex. Germans are very strict in the rules and, they'll do the search at work but they won't do the transaction online, so we'll send them an email so they can complete it at home.

What's the most bang for our (well-SEOed for the US) site's buck? [B2B]

David: Put it on the landing page that you can ship worldwide and make it clear that it's easy. Maybe have a German bank account so they can transfer the money. Have a German phone number where people can call. Take away the road blocks more than going out and creating a new site. It's not a language problem B2B.
Mike: I think having a .co.uk site will get you a better ranking. Concentrate your link building around .co.uk sites.

Is duplicate content a problem across languages?

Anders: mostly a Google problem. In the past there would be a conflict between a Canadian French site and a French French site. Webmaster Tools helps that too.
David: I wouldn't advise having two Web sites for the same country. [ie, country.domain as well as domain.coTLD]

[Travel industry question]

Mostly the answers are very specific but David mentions that Germans in particular are very hesitant about giving their information online. Also that Europeans like to book packages instead of each piece separate.

Does the .co.uk domain name convert better than .com?

Mike: No, it doesn't make that much of a difference. I think people pay more attention to the headline.
David: If it's a brand name with a .com in it, you should STILL buy the local TLD. Even eBay.com, people will look for eBay.de.
Anders: People add the country to their searches so, yeah, it might have an impact.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 08/18/08 at 4:04 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in International, Pay-Per-Click, SES San Jose 2008, Search Engine Optimization, liveblog

August 6, 2008

Doing it like YouTube: Hosting and optimising video

Editor's Note: Late start today for the guest bloggers, something that's entirely my fault I assure you. In order not to delay further, I'll get out of the way. Everyone welcome Kate to the blog.--Susan

Loading multimedia into video sharing sites such as YouTube, Google Video and MetaCafe can help to get your videos ranking in blended search results. But what happens if you want to host media on your own site to get that itsy bitsy ad sense revenue and some bit of ho hum traffic, but still want it to be available for indexing by search engines? Today we look at a couple of ways that you can create a page that will support the video optimisation process.

At SMX Sydney, Danny Sullivan covered the history of search where search 1.0 was based on keywords, search 2.0 was based on links and search 3.0 will be making search more vertical; understanding what we click on, what we visit and delivering personalised results including blended media types to users. Google wants to know when a video may be more relevant than a website; like searches on an artist or song name, "How To", "top tips" or even Product Demos, and serve it up from within their SERPs.

Videos don't necessarily rank in all indexes even though it might be the same search engine. Consider the search in Google.com from Australia and the same search made in the United States; different results will show. From our research we have found that blended search results are somewhat scarce in Google.com.au (search Australia) with less than 1% of searches resulting in a blended result and in Google.com.au (search the web) only around 10%. Google.com for similar search's showed on average around 20%; an indication that either the quality of digital media is higher in the Google.com index or the technology is more mature. Whichever way you look at it, blended search is here to stay and cannot be ignored. It provides an opportunity to extend your online reach and brand awareness through object centric media such as video.

Checklist time: what do you need to make your video rank

If you are serious about ranking your hosted videos take some time to look at the kind of blended results appearing for your keywords. As search engines are mostly blind to the content of your video, you have to tell them what the video is about by including relevant keywords on your video landing page and ensuring your Meta data tells a similar story.

Copy YouTube

You know videos get indexed when they are up on YouTube so why not take a design leaf from their book and apply it to your own website.

Title - You enter one for your video when you load it: Did you know it appears up to 4 times in the source code of a YouTube page (the <title>, the Meta title, the 'on page' title, and once more in the java script).

Description - You write one that accurately describes your video: YouTube repeats it at least twice in the code (Meta description and then again in the on page description). Google has even said creating a transcript of the video is recommended - don't make them guess.

Tags - UGC Keywords: YouTube asks you to 'tag' your video to help them with internal site search, these tags are automatically adopted for the Meta keywords, they appear twice in the javascript and then again as a link on the page. Before you finish your video landing page on your own site ask yourself - do my keywords appear at least 4 times in the source code? This is the ranking environment and you got to be in it to win it.

Name the video file: think about these things the way a search engine would - if your keyword is "Activities in Paris" loading vid123885.wmv may be less successful when all else is equal than paris-activitys.wmv (although paris-activities-things-to-do-france-porn-paris.wmv may be overdoing it just a bit)

www.mywebsite.com/video/keyword: Customize the URL of the page that houses the video to aid those ever important backlinks. Once everyone else has linked to you using your keywords check that your own site keeps to the same rules.

Map it for Google to find it: Set up your Video Site Map to enhance and extend your XML loving as per the Webmaster Guidelines. This will help ensure that your videos are indexed by Google video and the best bit is that you can re-use your title and description you spent so many hours obsessing over earlier...

Even though Google owns YouTube and so could be said to hold it a cut above the other video sharing sites, in reality the videos loaded here are still susceptible to spam just like any other page online. Spiders are trying to work out what content will be useful and YouTube video pages are crawled and assessed just like the rest.

Kate Gamble is an analyst with Bruce Clay Australia and enjoys the finer things online such as clean code, fascinating blogs, friendly comments and some of the worst search jokes around. She is a Twitterer, a Digger and an all round social media marketer. She started SEO Sydney with some of the best in the business and looks forward to the day when Search Engine Optimisation Analyst becomes an easily recognised job description in pubs around Australia.

Kate has worked on a wide selection of blue chip corporate websites in Australia including industry leaders in travel, jobs, legal services, financial services, software and personals. Kate is completely gadget centric and when not with her Iphone or laptop you will find her riding her two horses in the national parks around Sydney.

Posted by Guest Author on 08/ 6/08 at 1:40 PM | Comments (1)
See more entries in International, Search Engine Optimization

June 4, 2008

International SEO

Jeffrey K. Rohrs is moderating. Our speakers are Andy Atkins-Kruger, Managing Director, WebCertain; Kristjan Mar Hauksson, Director of Internet Marketing, Nordic eMarketing; Cindy Krum, Senior SEO Analyst, Blue Moon Works, Inc.; and Ian McAnerin, CEO, McAnerin International, Inc.

Ian McAnerin will present first. Internationalization revolves around domain, language, culture, and geolocation issues. Geolocation is the identification of a Web page as belonging to or being relevant for a particular country. Country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD, including .ca, .cn, .uk, .mx), IP address and link analysis are all aspects to consider in International SEO efforts.

If you have multiple domains connected to a single page, Google's only going to choose one domain to display. The way it chooses which to display is the link weight on the page, opting for the page with more links. If you want to be geolocated for a particular country and your site is .com, have your site map point to the ccTLD, but make links within the site .com. Display URL tactic: the key is to use a park and not a redirect for your multiple domains.

Language and culture issues include local terms, different types of spelling, popular culture references, translation issues and vocal culture issues (for example a Japanese company called Up the Creek). When translating copy, consider language issues and follow the Symantec Expression Equivalency Document (SEED):

Original English > English SEED > Chinese SEED > Chinese Document

The original English must be broken down into dry bullet points. This is translated into the second language. That document is turned into marketing copy by a marketer working within the second language, in this example, Chinese.

Linking issues:

• Too many links. For example, Asian sites are often full of links because there are many characters required for content.
• Nofollow, first anchor text counts
• Strategic internal linking is an excellent way to deal with multiple languages
• Language switching:
  • No surprises
  • Clear indication of target
    • Same page, different language
    • Different language site

Andy Atkins-Kruger is next and says he has a personal interest in languages. Some of the most important search engine brands outside the U.S. are Rndex, Baidu, Seznam, Naver, Najdi.si, and NetSprint. He says he's got ten important factors in international SEO to share.

1. Have your site coded in UTF-8 (Unicode). This allows your site to be translated to languages from around the globe. It is backwardly compatible with Ascii. It encodes up to four-byte characters.
2. Don't translate your Meta tags and page Titles. Make them all individually planned to adjust for plurals, prepositions, special characters, etc.
3. Adopt a global PR strategy. There are many PR portals for different languages. It generates links and helps build your global presence.
4. Manage your 301s. Some problems include: the typical global site has hundreds of links going to "page not found", domains around the globe are incorrectly set and several meta-refreshes are present.
5. Keyword URLs can be an issue.
6. Source local links.
7. Use a smart geo-selector. The bigger the site and the more countries and languages to deal with, the more likely to be issues.
8. Expert keyword research. What do you do if there's no direct translation?
9. ccTLDs (Ian covered this)
10. Language and content - content is king. It's important to have enough content on the page. The process is: Spidering > Language detection > Language dependent processes > Indexing and query response. Have good, clean language and make sure you're using the write character sets.

His closing thought is that international SEO has risks so it's always good to start with a low-cost pilot.

Jeffrey says that Kristjan Mar Hauksson went to a school that had gates to keep out polar bears. Awesome! He's up next to dazzle us with his Icelandic accent. Along with ccTLD, IP address and link analysis, he lists inbound links are the four elements to consider in the "concept of region."

Americans often think of Europe as one country, but that's obviously not the case. He says that "glocal" is localizing the global marketing. He says that it's important to understand the impact of culture, like the unlucky number four in Japan. ccTLDs can be purchased at Europeregistry.com. There are sometimes rules specific to countries. For instance, in Norway a company can only own 20 domains. He says it's good to remember that Google is growing in market share in Europe.

The impact of languages and culture should not be underestimated. By understanding culture and languages you can adapt better, succeed in your efforts to localize, get more sales and respect. Showing an interest in communicating in the native language boosts interest in your company. Inbound links are also very important. If you are targeting Germany and you have no German inbound links, this takes away a big part of your regional credibility.

The engines are getting better at localizing and understanding the impact of culture. At the end of the day, though, it's a question of ROI. All of his company's studies have shown that taking seriously all four elements of the "concept of region" has had significant returns.

Cindy Krum is talking about the challenges to multinational brands and how they can be addressed with site architecture. Different languages, currencies, measurements, seasonality, search engines, e-commerce laws and marketing aesthetics are all issues.

Three architecture options:

• One site - sub-domains and subdirectories
• Multiple sites - a site for every country
• Blended

The one site approach can be grouped by language or keyword.

Benefits:

• Easy to set up
• Links and traffic point to one domain
• More pages in the index
• Flexibility with messaging
• Grouping by language prevents duplicate content
• Country specific hosting option

Disadvantages:

• Home page in wrong language = confusing
• Home page only ranks in one language
• Grouping by country risks duplicate content

If you take this approach:

• Specify target country for each in Google Webmaster Tools
• Redirect country specific domains to appropriate sub-domain or subdirectory
• Internal and external links should be language appropriate and with country specific domains
• Language Meta tag, HTML language and local address

The multiple site approach means you have a separate domain for each country.

Pros:

• Low start up costs
• Add sites one at a time
• Rank well in multiple country specific search engines
• Country specific hosting

Cons:

• More sites = more sites to update
• Multiple sites = multiple SEO efforts = harder to rank in .com
• Forced to target countries instead of languages

Some tips for this approach include:

• Target country in Google Webmaster tools
• External links should have appropriate anchor text and country specific domains
• Link your multiple country sites carefully and logically
• Language Meta tag, HTML language and local address

If you have an international site on the .com, you can use a blended approach.

Advantages:

• Most realistic for world wide presence
• Can start with .com and build country specific sites as needed

Disadvantage:

• Most costly to create, maintain and update

Tips for implementing the blended approach:

• Specify countries in Google Webmaster Tools but not the international site
• Link your multiple country sites carefully and logically
• External links should be logical. Keep the international on the international site and country specific on country specific sites
• Let users know you are taking them to another site
• Use Java translation and IP sniffing on the home page

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 06/ 4/08 at 12:59 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in International, SEO, Search Engine Optimization, liveblog, smxseattle08

April 21, 2008

SEO Weekend Update

Why Even Hire A Search Engine Optimization Company

There's an article over at Search Engine Journal today that asks why people would hire a search engine optimization company or bother training someone in-house. SEI is nothing more than some tag optimization and link collecting, right? Oh heavens. Not this conversation again.

If you don't think having someone trained in search engine optimization is valuable to your team and that you can do the whole thing yourself with minimal training, well...then you're both delusional and a really bad SEO. It also proves that you've never tried to rank a site for any type of competitive keyword. Get your site ranking for a non made up word and then we'll talk.

SEO isn't easy. Can you save yourself the money and learn to do it yourself? Maybe. Motivated people can teach themselves to do virtually anything. Like how to jump off buildings without getting hurt. However, don't you have a job already? Learning how to do search engine optimization the right way takes a good amount of talent and dedication. That's time that you're not spending on your core business. If you don't realize that and you think SEO is just about optimizing Meta tags then you know even less than you thought.

If you're trying to save money, cutting corners with mediocre SEO isn't the way to go. That may actually cost you more when you fail to capitalize on the target traffic you would have received with a smart SEO campaign. Hiring a good search engine optimization may actually prove to be far more cost effective.

Is Failing At Web Analytics The Key To Success?

At WebMetricsGuru the question is whether failing at Web Analytics is often the key to success later on. It's like a geekier version of the chicken or the egg

I don't think it's "failing" that's the key. The key is using Web analytics. That initial failure is just the natural process of things. You're not going to be perfect right out of the gate; that's how you learn and make improvements and come away with a better Web site.

I don't think you can have a truly successful site without the help of Web analytics. Analytics show you how your visitors are interacting with your site, where they're running into problems, where valuable advertising dollars are being wasted due to no traffic, etc. Web analytics programs give search marketers the ability to track call to actions and to understand the conversion funnel in ways that you can't always see when looking at sales alone. It basically allows you to make tweaks to your site while leaving the light on. You can't fix something you don't realize is broken. And the more stuff that gets fixed, the better your site is going to perform.

Search Marketing Budgets Increasing In Europe

Over at Search Engine Watch, Greg Jarboe reveals that UK search marketing budgets are beginning to increase as search marketers across the pond begin to see the value of a healthy Internet marketing campaign. According to Greg and the UK Search Engine Marketing Report released today, 63 percent of UK businesses plan to increase their paid search budget, while 61 percent plan to increase their search engine optimization budget. I'm sure Rory De Niro and Marie Howell of Bruce Clay Europe are glad to hear this. ;)

Key takeaways from the report:

• One in ten companies surveyed is spending more than £1 million annually on paid search.


• Since 2007, the proportion of companies conducting paid search (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) exclusively in-house have declined.


• Correspondingly, the proportion of respondents outsourcing to an agency for both disciplines has gone up.


• The proportion of agencies offering landing page optimization has increased from 71% to 76%, making this the second most commonly offered service.

Fun Finds

Marc Hausman wonders if it's ethical to follow two of his employees on Twitter. Personally, I think that's territory better left unexplored. Why make everyone paranoid? There's a reason I have my Twitter account protected. :)

The Guardian reports that Google is the most powerful brand in the world. Because we didn't know that already. Thanks.

And just a reminder: I'll be heading down to Long Beach tonight for the SMX Social Media Marketing event that begins tomorrow and goes through Wednesday. If you're in town, make sure you track me down and say hello!

Posted by Lisa Barone on 04/21/08 at 4:18 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Analytics, International, SEO, Search Engine Optimization

March 17, 2008

Search Around The World – Part 2: The UK and Europe

Back from a most stressful lunch. Sigh.

Speaking at the Search Around The World panel we have Andrew Girdwood (BigMouthMedia), Thomas Bindl (Refined Labs GmbH), Sebastian Langlois (Aposition), and Joost de Valk (Onetomarket). Marie Dumesnil (Viking River Cruises) is moderating. I’m actually pretty excited about this one, so no witty banter. Let’s just jump into it.

[Okay, I lied; one piece of witty banter before we start: Joost de Valk is way, way cute. It just needed to be said. Finished.]

Andrew Girdwood is up first. Welcome, Andrew!

Most people are familiar with the UK. The cultures are similar. Brits love their mobile phones (but talk on them with funny accents). Text messaging is really popular and broadband penetration is really high. They have newspapers that cover the whole country, not just a segment. UK users are really confident online. They’re not scared to give their credit card information to a brand they recognize.

The UK population is growing (increased by 8 percent since 1971) but aging (declining proportion under 16, more over 65).

Andrew shares some of those “old fashioned” laws that are still in effect in the UK. For example:

• All English males over the age 14 are to carry out 2 hours of longbow practice a week supervised by clergy.
• In Chester, you can shoot a Welsh person with a bow and arrows inside the city walls and after midnight!

Hee. Excellent.

A question was asked to UK searchers: When you search Google you often get two sets of results, a large set on the left (meaning organic, but this wasn’t clarified for responders) and a smaller set on the right (PPC). In your experience, which results tend to offer the best Web pages? More than 80 percent of respondents said that the left (organic results) offered the best results. Only 6 percent in 2007, and 4.66 percent in 2008, answered that the paid search results gave the best results.

At SES London, several of the speakers stated that the UK is about 2 years behind the US at Search. Andrew says that’s rubbish. It’s Google-vision in the UK even more than it is in the US.

There are some differences:

• Google paid agencies in the UK to bring people to AdWords. This created two types of PPC agencies – the optimizers (add value) and the discounters (agencies that did nothing but accept the big spend). Google has since removed this practice. Some of the very big players may soon be dead players. It will change the landscape in the UK.
• Search hasn’t taken off in London because London wages are 5-10K more expensive. It’s harder to find people and it’s taking them longer to get their grip on search.
• The FSA: A body that is supposed to regulate financial companies like banks. Reporting paid links to Google is a drip, drip, drip effect. In the UK, if you have a bank that is competitive to one of your clients, all it would take to cause them grief is an email to the FSA. They’ll get on the phone, call the bank, and World War III would break out in online marketing.
• UK: There are money issues. People use difference currencies. Multi-currency transactions are difficult to manage and track.
• Contracts: Contract lengths between search agencies and clients are a lot shorter in Europe than they are in the states. Many places don’t hold their clients in contracts at all so they can leave at any time.

Internet issues that concern the UK public

• Child Safety: Growing calls to adopt a US-like “amber alert”.
• Privacy and Data Security
• Social Networking at work and as a recruitment issue

Two English Laws to know:

John Doe: The term comes from 18th century law. Lets court proceedings go ahead even when the identity of the person is unknown. Once a Court Order has been obtained, it is possible to go to the ISPs or even the search engines to prevent them from entering sensitive information on a blog

Spartacus Order: The person responsible for anonymous activities must come forward and make themselves known for court or be in Contempt of Court. Wow.

Thomas Bindle is up next.

Facts about Germany:

He starts off by pointing out Germany on a map. Hee. Good to know, Thomas, good to know. They have 82.3 million people and at least two of them are in the SES NY audience. They have 53 million people online and $49 billion has been spent online (in 2007).

Contrarily, in the UK there are 60.6 million people, 41.5 million people online and they’ve spent $53 billion on the Web.

Search Engine Landscape: Google has 95-98 percent market share. Yahoo is also there. Ask is holding on. And MSN is barely on the chart.

Local search is almost nonexistent in German, it’s still growing.

State of SEM/SEO Industry

• 94.1 percent of advertisers use Google.
• 48 percent of advertisers do PPC inhouse
• Tracking is used by over 80 percent
• CPx and conversion rates are KPIs.

Language Barrier

Thomas gives us some English/German phrases and makes the audiences repeat the German back to him. Shockingly, people actually do this. I didn’t, of course, but other people did.

A Nice Car: Ein Schones Auto
A Nice Tree: Ein schoner Baum
A Nice Flower: Eine schone Blume
Book, Books: Buch, Bucher

There are also special characters in Germany that people in the US aren’t used to, but are really cool. You want to keep all of this in mind when doing keyword research.

Sebastian Langlois is up next to talk about France.

There are many differences with search in France, especially with how they use search engines.

The first difference is a cultural difference. With an office in London and most of their business in Paris, Sebastian knows that they look at things very different. SEM is very important in France.

In France, there are more than 30 million people connected. The digital economy makes up only 6 percent of the GNP in France, as opposed to 14 percent in the United States. Many people in France use search engines, 37.34 use search engines several times a week, while almost 50 percent use it several times a month.

Search Engine Market Share in France: Google is the biggest with 87 percent, then MSN (3 percent), Yahoo (3 percent), Viola (2 percent), and others (5 percent).

There are three ways of considering queries in Google in France. You can type in Google, you can ask for results in French, or you can do something else that I apparently missed. Most people use the default and just type it into the French version of Google.

The top subjects in France are entertainment, computers, and business. Not much different than in the States.

Distribution of queries: Importance of long tail: You need 1, 157 top queries to have 15 percent of the traffic generated. The top 11,000 queries are worth only 30 percent of the total traffic.

After leisure, women look for holidays the most, while men look for technology. Internet users who don’t use search engines for important budgets are rare.

Cell phones aren’t used a lot for search in France. Only about 2.41 percent said they’ve used a phone to find information via search engines. Users between 45 and 54 say they don’t look passed the first page of results. Women are less likely to go to the second page compared to men. Simon says this is proof that French women are less patient. Watch it, Sebastian!

Special French Search Engine Issues

• Words accentuation: Usage. If you put an accent on the word, it may change the meaning of the word. Aside from accentuation, the French word for “diaper” is the same for “making love”. [Joost jokes that if you’re using the same word for diaper and making love, you’re clearly doing something wrong. Nice.]
• Polysemy: Many French search engines try to analyze the word environment to try and understand the meaning. There are specific search engines based on natural languages.

Next up is Joost de Valk.

He also starts off by pointing out the Netherlands on a map. This is all very handy because I am teh suck with geography.

He pulls up pictures of windmills, tulips, a marijuana leaf and wooden shoes and says that’s how people know the Netherlands. Hee.

Internet penetration rate is 87.8 percent. That’s 16 percent more than the US. They’re #2 in the world. A lot of people are online.

Their online spend is $6 billion. They’re the 4th largest market in Europe.

The Dutch SEM market is fairly small. There are less than 100 SEO consultants (he jokes there are only about 15 you can trust) and there are less than 500 paid search consultants. It’s a small, but highly competitive market.

Search engine usage: Google (93 percent), Vinden.nl (2 percent) and llse (1 percent and they carry Google ads).

Dutch is half German and English. It’s easier to speak then German. It’s spoken by 15 million people in the Netherlands. Six billion speak Flemish, a dialect of Dutch. The paid search campaign you’re running in one language will NOT work in the other.

Stemming is one of the anomalies in the Dutch market. For example, a single tree in Dutch is “boom”, while more than one tree is “bomen”. You have to target both.

They have Marktplaats.nl: It’s their biggest online marketplace site. That’s where a lot of the local search queries go. They’re not done on Google.

Spam is everything but it’s more stupid in Dutch. If you do bit of no frills spam and you do some aggressive link buying, you’ll rank. The controls are a lot looser. People are still doing link farms. You notice link farms a lot sooner because there are only something like 2 million Web sites out there.

[My apologies for the lame coverage of this session. Lisa had some trouble with the accents. She promises to work on it.]

Posted by Lisa Barone on 03/17/08 at 12:22 PM | Comments (2)
See more entries in International, SEM Events, Search Engine Optimization, liveblog, sesny2008

December 6, 2007

International and European Site Optimization

Another quick intro: Dixon Jones is moderating this panel which includes Michael Bonfils, SEM International, Andy Atkins-Krueger, Web Certain Europe Ltd, Thomas Bindl, ThomasBindl.com, and Kim Frederiksen, Addvisors Copenhagen.

Got all that? Good, here we go with the session of cool accents. Michael Bonfils isn't here yet. He thought this session was at 3. Oops.

Kim Frederiksen is first up.

When it comes to marketing you need: More business. Better business. Cheaper business.

He brings up a luxury condo site. They did a good job stateside and locally but it was hard and expensive. So they discussed how they could get more, better, cheaper business.

More business:

There are a great many millionaires who aren't in the US. They're a hot market because a lot of them invest in real estate and 30 percent of those are investing in overseas property. They have 23 percent more buying power as well because of the weakness of the dollar. They can afford more expensive properties as a result.

Better business:

The traffic was 65 percent from the US versus 35 percent from the rest of the world but 40 percent of new clients can from the US and 60 percent in new clients. US clients averaged about $400,000 less in sales than International clients.

Cheaper business:

Strangely there weren't a lot of competitors. Averaging $.40 per click, they got position one in Denmark and Russia but for $3.00 per click on average they only ended up in 4th position on average in the US. So they were able to get the business cheaper and it was better business.

Thomas Bindl is next. He wishes us a good evening. He's from Germany and it's nearly 11pm there. He also speaks quickly, softly and kinda mumbles. I feel sorry for the people in the back.

He puts up a map of Europe pointing at Germany. It's in the middle, y'all. Very good beer and food. There are 82 million people living there. Their GDP per capita is about $31,400. They have 52 million people online and they spend about 46 billion Euros spent online. Lots of opportunity there.

Google is incredibly dominate there, even more than here. About 93 percent marketshare. CPCs are usually a little lower but not much.

Of course, you should always speak the language. For language, make sure your translations are accurate: A nice car and a nice tree have only ONE word in common, not two.

11 million .de domains. If you're thinking about going into Germany get a .de, don’t use a sub-domain. You'll need a local contact but there are companies out there.

Credit cards are just becoming popular in Germany (also Italy and France.) Make sure they have an alternative way to pay.

Get familiar with the legal requirements for ANY international market. You want to build trust and not get sued. Put your addresses on there.

The late (well, tardy) Michael Bonfils is up next to cover Asia for us. He doesn't have a cool accent but he does say that the being late thing is typical. He goes over his bio which I linked above.

Like any one campaign, you start with an assessment then you plan then you implement and organize.

Assessment phase:

Step one: Assess the usability of your translated site. Pay international college students in pizza to review your site. What works here, might not work in Asia.

Step two: Analyze your competition

Step three: Research the Asian market

• China: 162 Million users, 45% female, 54% male and overwhelmingly 18-24 in age.
• Japan: 69.9 percent of the population online--89.1 million people. Women, 20-35, have 80 percent of the purchasing power.
• Korea: Incredible infrastructure, most are online.

Planning Phase:

For ecommerce, start with Japan then Korea and China. If you're branding, start with China then Korea then Japan. You start with China because they'll create a knock off otherwise.

In Japan, Yahoo has a much better reach (65 percent) with lower quality conversions.
In China, it's all about Baidu
In Korea, Naver and Yahoo have 80 to 85 percent of the marketshare. Google has 1.5 percent market share.

KEY: Make well-localized keywords, adcopy and landing pages! Do not use an unnatural mix of English and the local languages. Think of how funny but not trustworthy "Engrish" signs are.

Trust building and face to face interaction is HUGE. Putting a face on the brand is very important.

Monitor your local competition. You're starting at a disadvantage. Look for an edge.

Implementation Phase:

For Japan: Use Yahoo/Overture Japan and Google. Get a .jp domain (co.jp, or.jp, ne.jp). Hosting there is good too. Include contact info. Be international but Japanese.

For China: Start with Google through their interface. For Baidu, They have a minimum implementation fee of $3-5000. WIRE prepayment of funds is the only way to pay. They only have Chinese speaking support. They have a tough validation process. Definitely get .cn (.com.cn if you can). You need to host in China. There are gateway issues otherwise.

Analytics-wise, Baidu and Yahoo provide no impression results. Google Analytics is available. On Baidu, the paid listings are mixed in with the organic and studies suggest that the users don't know the difference.

Korea: Make it complicated. Google and iPods do terribly in Korea because they aren't complicated enough. Get a .kr domain. If you want a North Korean domain, it's .kp but...good luck.

Andy Atkins-Krueger is up next to wrap everything up. Yay!

He offers a few mistranslations. Again, be careful how you do translations!

There's rapid growth all over the world. Don't underestimate Africa. Kenya is providing free broadband access.

Which markets should you enter? Do an analysis: Is it feasible, how competitive is it? What's the audience? And what's the market? If you look at those three, you can pick the more promising first.

Do your keyword research first, them build a glossary for the translators, THEN do the translation so that the keywords are built in.

Think about navigation issues for languages. Local companies for Arabic speaking countries switch the navigation to the right side because of how the language is read.

What do you do if there is no direct translation? Make sure that you're conveying the message even if you have to give up what your word is?

When do you run in English or the local language? If you're using English keywords, you can do a local language creative but NOT vice versa.

The long tail still applies outside of English speaking countries. From the shortest tails to the longest by language families: Romance, Scandinavia, English, Dutch/Germany, Portuguese. (also toward the end, French Canadians.)

You need local links. You NEED local links.

Google's new geolocation tool isn't really working yet in their experience.

The number of people who use the "Pages from" radio button depends by country and query. In some cases it might be VERY important to have that local ccTLD.

[Envision a cool slide of search engine market shares mapped by country in Europe. Google is everywhere.]

His theory is that social networks aren't going to go global with quite the same ease that search did. They don't translate as easily. Social sites tend to be locally based and not known outside their area.

Q&A

Will English become the global internet language for commerce?

Andy: He doesn't think that's going to be the case. There are more speakers of other languages than there are English. What happens more is that words get adopted with different meaning.

Thomas: China is going to be going in the opposite direction. The Web used to be mostly English, now they're creating their own content. People like interacting in their own language.

Better tools for keyword research internationally?

Pretty much they all agree that Google and Yahoo work best overall with a slight preference for Google.
Kim: For Europe, Google's sandbox is the best.
Michael: Asia, too.

If you're shipping internationally from Germany, would you recommend still having the .de domain or should you have a .com? What sort of links should you be targeting?

Thomas: If you're looking for people who already have interest in Germany, the .de makes more sense, I think. If you're trying to get people who aren't aware, try a .com. I don't think there is a 100 percent solution.

Andy: I'd be inclined to go with a .de domain because I think people associate the domain with the language. However you can't pick .de as English in Webmaster tools so maybe go with a .com instead.

We have a Bavaria-based client. We have a .de but we wonder if we shouldn't get a .eu?

Thomas: I'm not a big fan of .eu domains. I'd secure it but wouldn't use it and I'd stick with .com instead. It's just not popular enough yet.

Andy: "I wouldn't touch a .eu with a barge pole."

Posted by Susan Esparza on 12/ 6/07 at 12:54 PM | Comments (1)
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November 21, 2007

SMX London Day 2 -- Diagnosing Search Problems

Guest Author Marie Howell of Bruce Clay Europe continues her excellent recap coverage of SMX London.

I wanted to dip in and out of the different tracks available and so I attended a Fundamentals & Tactics Track, moderated by Andy Atkins-Kruger of WebCertain, which introduced a truly excellent panel of experts to discuss diagnosing search problems.

Dixon Jones from Receptional began the presentations (whilst wearing a white tie and a white hat as a counter offensive to a comment in a bar recently about the black trilby he was sporting) by discussing the most fundamental issue affecting many sites: that of duplicate content. He introduced how lots of people think they haven’t got duplicate content issues on their site but, in actual fact, they have. He discussed the perception of getting penalised for duplicate content, getting your brand / domain getting split between different versions of the same URL. Dixon covered some of the reasons for duplicate content:

• Blogs
• Tracking URLs with (source= )
• Alternative domain names: more than one domain pointing to their web site.
• www vs. non www
• Session IDs - when you try to make a SEO friendly version of a URL incorrectly
• Scraped or syndicated sites
• When the Search Engines mess up – e.g. 302s on Microsoft right now

He went on to talk about the different types of redirects: 301 vs 302 and ‘named and shamed’ the Royal Mail and demonstrated how a series of incorrect redirects are causing numerous difficulties for the domains.

Matt Paines from XSEO picked up the baton by looking at the 3 main hindrances to ranking – as, at the end of the day it is all about ranking and anything that gets in the way of ranking is perceived as a problem.

1. Crawler accessibility – does the site have a cache? (Has it been crawled?) Ensure that the site is linked to in some way, the Search Engines need to be lead there.
2. Page relevance
3. Site credibility

Matthew "Chewy" Trewhella, Customer Solutions Engineer at Google was up next looking at Google Webmaster Console and sitemaps. With a beautiful, clear presentation style, Chewy showed how the two tools can help you to spot simple configuration errors and how the analysis tool of the robots.txt file can help– i.e. if there is a wildcard in the wrong place, Google may stop indexing your site. Within the Webmaster Console, he demonstrated some of the features, such as being able to inform Google which canonical domain you prefer - www and non-www – which helps you to get started whilst you fix your issues.

Jake Bailie of STN Labs didn’t do a formal presentation but picked up on the issues raised by the other panellists. He listed out the 6 ways to easily generate duplicate problems including tracking URLs, printer friendly pages and core architecture.

His Golden Rule is to have unique content on sites supported by one corresponding URL. Do not use this URL to track visitors, toggle displays, etc. The URL is solely to identify the location of the content. He continued his advice encouraging attendees to do the fundamental housekeeping: to make sure Title tags are unique, to try to get a <h1> on every page (although don’t be excessive with it), to have a good link structure, use simple anchor text, not to use Flash for primary navigation.

He also picked up on the earlier point of crawler accessibility and discussed this in terms of large corporate sites. He suggested that you only want to give a sample of every level of your site tree on to the search engines via your sitemap and let them find the rest. Never use 302 redirects, he advised. Other people do; let them. And fire your host if they won’t let you do 301s.

A superb, informative and lively session with much frankness and helpful suggestions from the panel, much interaction with the audience and expertly moderated by WebCertain’s Andy A-K. An enjoyable session which was well worth attending!

Posted by Guest Author on 11/21/07 at 11:44 AM | Comments (0)
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November 20, 2007

SMX London Day 2 - Search Marketing for Financial Services

Guest entry from Marie Howell, Bruce Clay Europe.

Marie sent along her observations for the first panel of Day 2 of SMX London. As the week goes on, she'll cover more from last week's inaugural London show.

The morning kicked off with the Case Studies track looking at Search Marketing for Financial Services with great input from panellists Gillian Muessig of SEOmoz, Chris Cathcart of Bigmouth Media, Jonathon Beeston , Efficient Frontier and Aisling Blake, Interactive Return and excellent moderation, as always, from the delightful Danny Sullivan.

Chris Cathcart from Bigmouth commenced with his presentation on working in general with financial institutions and the importance of setting manageable objectives and timelines, naturally, understand the individual company proposition. Those of us who work with large financial organisations understand it is not just about loans and credit cards, it could also be sharedealing, CFD trading, credit insurance, or one of a plethora of financial services. Chris stated an essential fact of our business: it is vital to understand your client and his business. Chris then went on to suggest a vital shopping list / consideration list:

• Do not make assumptions about the client business.
• Who are key stakeholders?
• How will conversion be measured?
• What constitutes success?
• How regular is reporting required?
• What will communication structure be?
• How will campaign changes be agreed?
• What other parties are involved and can we share data?
• How does company sit within current marketplace?

He then went on to stress how uccessful planning = successful implementation and that spending the extra time in the planning phase delivers much better ROI. Chris discussed how it is necessary to refer to objectives regularly; meet agreed objective dates; evaluate reporting / available metrics; communicate effectively with the whole team; capture campaign status regularly and stick to the plan. With that last point, I would agree to an extent: yes, stick to the overall plan, but within the plan-do-review cycle to ensure that the plan is adjusted to take into account external internal and external variances such as a new branding campaign / traditional media campaign, a fluctuation or news within that market sector, etc.

In his clear, detailed presentation, Chris stated that “review time was not relax time” - an excellent statement – where it is important to address if the objectives are being met? Can we see new objectives? Etc. The review logs performance of the campaign as a whole and allows a detailed look at progress; to investigate and understand success;
investigate anomalies / variances; look at marketplace movements – e.g. seasonality;
patterns for PPC– anything capitalise on – times of day / week greater traffic. During the review, the client will ask:

• Were objectives / targets met?
• What went well? Not so well?
• Why?
• How can we avoid similar issues?
• What can we improve on?
• What is the campaign evolution?

Chris reiterated the Plan – Do – Review mantra:

Plan – sets precedent for do and review – don’t be scared to ask questions of the client.
Do – clear communication between campaign team – more discussion, more actions agreed
Review - use reviews to power future planning.

Chris concluded his presentation by stating that not meeting targets is not a crime if you learn and take actions for the next review (month / quarter).

Danny next introduced the powerful Gillian Muessig, President of SEOMoz, who discussed the financial case study of the Avatar Financial Group. Although not a company with which the UK / Europe are familiar with, the company and the excellent work Gillian and her team did for the organisation set a very high standard and benchmark what customer service means.

For those who are not familiar with Avatar Financial Group, it is a national lender in the US. In 2002 it was an unknown entity, by 2004 – thanks to Gillian - it was top of the game.

Avatar makes loans for construction, land, etc. When a construction project is 80% complete (or greater) and a bridging loan is needed, they are a private lender who can help out. Apparently in the US banks are not allowed to help out at this stage of a project and only private equity firms, such as Avatar, are able to undertake this ‘higher risk’ lending. SEOMoz did print media for them, created a corporate identity, a web site, etc. and worked with them under a profit sharing agreement. She then listed some of the ways to work with financial clients:

• Search
• Social media
• Email marketing
• Melding traditional and search media

Within Search, they also did Link Building, which was a learning curve as they bought bad links and had to then repair the damage caused by that. They also created reciprocal links, but it is important to remember - who is your friend, who isn’t, why not? They linked, for example, to major aggregators within the industry.

Within Social Media they created link bait - what qualifies as relevant to individuals. For instance, the site was created in cakephp – they included a ‘how we created the site’ which interested the php community who then linked to it. They put this onto the financial site. Gillian and her team also worked to find vertical market communities and wrote articles under the name of the CEO / President of company.

They undertook email marketing for the client, which was a struggle and not something they do as core business and they worked to refine a system that worked, there, too.
The final part of the process was to meld traditional media and search media. Initial search successes were bringing calls. Unfortunately the calls weren’t converting so Gillian had an extra line put in and has the calls forwarded to the SEO offices. They answered the phone as if they were the receptionist and this allowed them to get the data they needed and, where Avatar was not the most appropriate lender, could recommend the brokers on to other companies. This soon gave Avatar the name as the company which could help. Traditionally, hard money – non conforming loans which charge higher interest rates – was seen to be the province of hard edge, grumpy men. Suddenly Avatar became helpful, passing leads to someone who could help. This earned them a great reputation and Avatar became the first stop for brokers.

In concluding her highly intriguing and intelligent presentation, Gillian identified the main lesson learned from this client: success is dependent on performance in all sectors. Avatar had nothing for 18 months then SEOmoz picking up the phone was what started to turn campaign around.

Jonathon Beeston and Aisling Blake went on to make their superb presentations using MotleyFool.com and Rabodirect.com as case studies to conclude an interesting and very informative session.

As an audience we want to hear about the successes of clients and how campaigns can go from strength to strength, after a little thought, time, care and ‘pro-activeness’. Although I have heard Rand speak many times – and thoroughly enjoyed his sessions - I have never been fortunate enough to be able to attend one by his ‘boss’. For me, Gillian Muessig gave one of the best presentations of the conference and I was thoroughly impressed with the way she was open, honest and frank about challenges in the project and how she, ultimately, overcame them with this client to a resounding success.

Posted by Guest Author on 11/20/07 at 9:25 AM | Comments (0)
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August 20, 2007

One Billion Searchers

Hang in there, folks. It’s the last session of the day. Then we all get naps, and maybe even food. Huzzah for food!

This time my favorite Brit, Mike Grehan, is moderating the One Billion Searchers panel with speakers Stephen Noton (Adverted Internet Advertising Agency) and Bill Hunt (Global Strategies International).

Mike starts things off saying that search is in China. It’s an interesting place because it’s one of the few places where Google isn’t the leader. It’s actually, “Google, who?” China has its own search engine and you can’t overtake the country overnight.

[Seriously, Mike, help a girl out and s-l-o-w d-o-w-n!]

Thankfully, Mike is done (love you, Mike!). Up first is Stephan Noton to talk about understanding users in China.

Searchers in China are very different than users in the States or elsewhere. Twelve of the top 100 China Web sites include numbers. Why? Because there are 13,500 Chinese characters. That means if you were designing a keyboard to have one key per character there would be more than 13,000 keys! Even I don’t want to type on that. Stephan says this is why so many businesses have adopted the number platform. Sounds smart to me,

Stephan shows the audience the (really, really long) Google ad that was issued when Google officially changed its name launched out there. If you want to know what it felt like, stare at the wall for 10 minutes.

The home page for Google China is very different from the one here in the United State in that as soon as you start typing the search box drops down to offer a guided search (search suggestion). Again, this goes back to the fact that there are so many characters. It helps users to find information a lot quicker.

Two products Google is currently testing are:

Popular Searches: Breaks down popular searches by category, allowing users to click to navigate to the search results page. Instead of having to type in [this week’s biggest music performers], Popular Searches would just display “Justin Timberlink”. Yes, Stephan really did call him Justim Timberlink. Heh.

Website Directory: This is a list of Web sites based on categories and services. It’s algorithmic based, which means it isn't just a static list.

Stephan talks about Tom.com, which is one of the top 10 Web sites in China. It has tons and tons of links on the page without a search box above the fold. They know users are coming here as a destination site, not to search.

Stephan identifies Jianfei Zhu (who is in the audience) as the Matt Cutts of China. He monitors all Chinese./Japanese/Korean algorithms for spam. He has a blog at gooblechinawebmaster.com. It’s in Chinese but you can use Google Translate or another service to translate it. Hmm, might be worth it.

Since they use guided search in China, it makes search engine optimization a little easier because search marketers know off the bat what queries searchers are using Also you can use Google China’s Popular Searches function.

He says that the long tail China doesn’t really exist because users don’t do as many searches as we do. They rely more on the guided search.

Next up is Bill Hunt

China is one of these interesting things, says Bill. It’s definitely a market that’s growing like crazy. He’s a little surprised there aren’t more people in this session (me too, actually. There are only like 25-30 people here!).

China is paying attention to search. If you go to a conference the entire first row is bloggers. Yeah, what’s your point, Bill? :)

Bill lists a bunch of the issues he’s faced in China

• It is tough and also an advantage to being a foreigner in China. When you come in to speak, if you have any kind of credentials you’re treated like a rock star. Apparently this applies to known bloggers, as well. Sweet! Being a foreigner you can get away with not knowing the customs, but that ends quickly.
• Budgets are small from local companies.
• Can’t make changes to the site due to WW restrictions.
• Some large (international) companies in China are more sophisticated than their (US) corporate HQ.
• Clients are very particular about their contacts in your company.
• Allowing the client and interactive agency to save face. Things are very much relationship based.

Relationships are everything. They are absolutely critical to success. You have to be introduced to the right people at the right places. Many Westerners underestimate this. It’s about who you know and how well you know them. Who do you work with?

Your employees will make or break a deal in the long run. Most of the advertising out there is branding. It’s not about trying to convert. If you do decide to tap into the Chinese marketing, make sure you’re willing to be flexible and do things their way. Don’t go to dinner and ask the host not to bring anything out with a head still on it. Hee!

The search marketing community in China is growing vapidly, as indicated by the doubling of search conference attendees. Bill has seen a 10x increase in requests for China projects.

Sophistication of Adoption: Blending between scams and more advanced than USA. Bigger companies are in many cases more advanced than their US HQs.

Demand for Information: Traffic to search blogs increasingly significantly
Increase in Chinese centric blogs and content. 1000+ companies offering search services. About 10 to 15 agencies really stand out.

Trends:

• Many agencies offer PPC as search engine optimization.
• SEO is simply Meta tags optimization or black hat.
• PPC is 2 to 3 steps from actual buyers.
• Integrating more advanced techniques.
• Social media optimization is being announced.
• Deep and broad partnerships.

Recommendations for marketers:

• Check the credentials for the people you’re meeting.
• Confirm they are doing the work and they’re not outsourcing them.
• Establish goals and document them in contracts.
• Do periodic checks of the quality of the ads and the effectiveness of campaigns.

Agencies should pick their teams effectively. Offer incentives for employees to maintain loyalty. Build your relationships with the engines and organizations like SEMPO. Pick partners well and do a lot of research on their capabilities and ad networks.

Top Online Activities in China include getting news (93 percent), listening to and downloading music (85 percent), playing online games (84 percent), and using email (69 percent).

Most users are still accessing the Internet via desktops (96 percent), though accessing via mobile is becoming trendy at 27 percent. The growth in mobile search is due to interest in Internet and availability of 3G handsets and connectivity.

Key Observations for Baidu:

• It’s the most popular search engine for lifestyle searches, not for business. Google trumps Baidu in business searches.
• Baidu’s results are overwhelmingly influenced by paid advertising campaigns.
• Baidu has its greatest reach with young lifestyle centric searchers.
• CPM advertising is most popular with Baidu.

What does this mean to the world? New travel opportunities for Chinese have resulted in significant to country information sites. There are a lot of opportunities to market to the Chinese if you do it on their terms and comfort level. Access to information about Chinese companies will be easier to locate. Access to information about China and Olympics.

The key to succeeding in China is relationships, patience, diligence and an open mind.

During the question and answer segment, one of the attendees asked what kinds of things are Chinese users buying online. The truth is most people in China still don’t trust the Internet. eCommerce is still very much in infancy. Online marketing is mostly for branding because people still don’t trust the Internet. Something to keep in mind.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 08/20/07 at 5:30 PM | Comments (1)
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July 12, 2007

Australia Doesn’t Like The Google

I’m not quite sure what it is, but those Aussies don’t seem to be as big as a fan of Google as we are here in the States. Too many kangaroo kicks to the head or something. Okay, okay, I’m kidding, I don’t want Des and Jeremy from Bruce Clay Australia to come kick me in the head!

But in all seriousness, it seems like every couple of months we hear about another international squabble between Google and Australia, and it’s about that time again.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) filed a federal suit against Google Inc., Google Ireland Limited, and Google Australia on July 12th accusing them of partaking in “misleading and deceptive conduct”.

What’d they do now?

Well, the ACCC alleges that Google breached section 52 of the Trade Practices Act when the engine failed to distinguish between sponsored links and organic search results for the query [Newcastle car dealers], consequently hurting two local car dealers.

Below is an excerpt from the filing:

“The ACCC is alleging that Trading Post contravened sections 52 and 53(d) of the Trade Practices Act 1974 in 2005 when the business names “Kloster Ford” and “Charlestown Toyota” appeared in the title of Google sponsored links to Trading Post’s website. Kloster Ford and Charlestown Toyota are Newcastle car dealerships who compete against Trading Post in automotive sales.”

Google has issued its boilerplate response saying they believe these claims to be without merit, blah, blah blah, and they will defend against them vigorously. You know the drill.

The first hearing in the case is scheduled for August 21 and it’ll be interesting to see how this all plays out for a couple of reasons. First, this time it’s not a small little Chihuahua going up against Google; it’s the Australian government. That’s like…a herd of Chihuahua’s or maybe a handful of Newfoundlands. [Maybe they're dingoes?--Susan] Also, the Australian government isn’t going after Google for trademark infringement like everyone else in the world, instead they’re looking at is as a trade practices problem.

Ars Technica reported that not only is the ACCC asking Google to adequately distinguish between organic and paid listings to prevent confusion, they’re also asking advertisers to stop sponsoring links that could even suggest “an association, sponsorship or affiliation with another business”. If an advertiser does create such an ad, the ACCC is asking Google not to publish it. If Google has to start monitoring and denying ads that could cut into both their resources and their profits from ad selling. And if Australia is successful, I’m not sure it’s not too long before Belgium decides to cry trade practices as well.

What? You know how those Belgians are!

Posted by Lisa Barone on 07/12/07 at 12:40 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Google, International, Pay-Per-Click, Search Engines

June 18, 2007

UK Search Engine Optimization Training A Success

As I mentioned, Bruce brought his SEO training to the UK last week and after three days of drilling best practice search engine optimization techniques into search marketers’ heads and making them chant phrases like “I shall not spam”, “Google before God” and “We heart The Lisa”, his work is complete, at least for now. Bruce Clay Europe’s Marie Howell assures me that UK SEO training was a success and that our Bruce will be safely returned to us soon. Huzzah!

My apologies to all of you living in the UK. Marie says when Bruce left he took your sunshine with him. We often say that about our Bruce, that the office is a darker, colder place without him. But you can’t have him; he’s ours.

I was able to chat with Marie this morning to get a full recap of last week’s UK search engine optimization-related events. (Chatting with Marie is fun because she’s British and frequently uses words like “positively delightful” and “tremendously”.) Marie told me that the students at last week’s UK SEO training class were wonderful and were left “keen” to tackle their own sites and sites for clients. If you weren’t there, last week’s UK training course, similar to the one offered in the States, went over the basic and advanced principles of search engine optimization, and helped give UK search marketers a glimpse into the mind of a search engine and how they work.

Early reviews of the class are telling us that people enjoyed it.

BC Blog reader Jason Rudland (Hi, Jason!) left a comment on the blog calling Bruce’s SEO training “inspirational”, while another UK Webmaster commented that “the depth of knowledge and training required [for search engine optimization] is exceptionally larger than the majority of people presume”. He argued that SEO cannot and never will be “an out-of-the-box solution” and we couldn’t agree with him more. That’s why we offer training in the first place.

Some other comments from the course:

• “The course has taken a lot of guesswork out of SEO and will help me focus and encourage …(my company).. to integrate SEO into everything…Thank you for looking after me – hospitality was great!” Online Marketing Executive, Ireland
• “I feel like I have been placed at the start of something revolutionary… my whole concept of what SEO is has changed… best course I have ever attended” IT Manager, London
• “I thought the entire course was superb… I had no prior knowledge of SEO but now feel I could make meaningful improvements to the company website… expertly done…best training course I have attended.” Resources Manager, London

We really are super psyched that UK search marketers seem to have gotten a lot out of the course. It lets us know we’re doing some right and that the class is being taught in a way that encourages learning and nothing is lost in translation to British English. - What? Like a bunch of ‘u’’s?

To everyone who attended last week’s UK search engine optimization course, we’d like to welcome you to the extended Bruce Clay family and remind you that you now have access to all our free SEO tools! Don’t let it go to waste.

And to Marie, I’d like to ask you to stop torturing me about how delicious all those chocolate desserts were! It’s not nice! (At least send pictures. Or samples!)

If you’re in the UK and you weren’t able to attend this month’s training session, keep your eyes on the Bruce Clay Europe site for info about the next UK SEO Training course. And if you do go, let me know how you like the chocolates the class!

Posted by Lisa Barone on 06/18/07 at 6:10 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in International, SEO, SEO Tips & Tricks, Search Engine Optimization

June 13, 2007

Bruce Clay's Search Engine Optimization Training Hits the UK

Bruce Clay’s SEO training course has officially taken over London in our effort to deliver top notch best practice search engine optimization training to UK search marketers. The UK training class will be in session until Friday, then its back to the States for Bruce to relive the whole thing here in California. I hope he’s mastered sleeping on planes, trains and automobiles.

Everyone wave to our fearless leader. [Hi Bruce! We miss you. I have shoes on.]

Bruce Clay Europe’s own Rory De Niro and Marie Howell are both attending this week’s UK SEO training and have assured me that though while some attendees are experiencing a mild “brain ache” from information overload, their heads haven’t completely exploded yet; they’re just a tad swollen. That’s good to hear because there are still two days of SEO training left and this ain’t no bodge job! UK search marketers are going to be stuffed to the brim with search engine optimization methodologies, tips, tricks and best practices.

UK SEO training is being held at the Radisson Edwardian Marlborough Hotel, which I hear comes complete with a three-course buffet lunch and all the desserts and chocolates you can handle. I want chocolate!

The UK is just Bruce’s first stop on this summer’s international tour of search engine optimization training. Bruce will be back in the States for California training June 26-28, and then he’s off to Cape Town Sandton, Johannesburg for South African SEO training on 9-11 July, before Australian SEO training hits Sydney on 6-8 August.

We’re very excited to be able to offer opportunities for SEO training in countries and regions where search engine optimization is just becoming a priority. Better training breeds better SEOs and I think that’s something everyone can get behind. Now if only we could get Bruce to take me along on his international sojourns. Who here thinks Lisa should be flown to South Africa and/or Australia so that she can better fill you in all the international search happenings? Hands? Please?

Fine.

To stay on top of Bruce’s touring, er, training schedule, keep your eyes on the blog or subscribe to our SEO Newsletter. As soon as new dates are set, you’ll be the first to know.

Cheers.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 06/13/07 at 4:19 PM | Comments (4)
See more entries in International, SEO Tips & Tricks, SEO Tools, SEOToolSet, Search Engine Optimization

Blogs and Social Media Forum 2

Marie Howell, UK SEO at Bruce Clay Europe attended last week’s Blogs and Social Media Forum held at The London Marriot Grosvenor Hotel and was kind enough to share her experience. Thanks, Marie!

Although certainly not SMX, nor the dizzy (metaphorically speaking) heights of Seattle, the Blogs and Social Media Forum 2 in London offered a positive day, some concrete ideas, a chance to mull over and consider issues surrounding internal and external social media, such as UK-style to UK businesses, educational establishments and enterprises. There was even a little amusement in the ‘bristling’ by a certain attendee (after one or two interesting comments about Microsoft from Sun Micro Systems!).

Attendees ranged from companies and high pedigree organisations such as legal practices Deloitte & Touche and the Bank of England, through to educational establishments in the form of a Scottish University and governmental bodies like the MOD (Ministry Of Defence) and various councils. Each sector, it seems, has their own social media agenda and is keen to develop their enterprises and interaction using this medium. Some have the objective of internal interaction and information delivery, others are creating blogs to support Web business, others are looking to develop brands and brand management, whilst yet others are keen to monetize this interaction with the wider community at large.

The day kicked off with a welcome from chairman Euan Semple followed by a Keynote conversational panel featuring Ben Edwards (Economist.com), Jem Stone (BBC New Media and Technology), Adriana Lukas (Big Blog Company), Myles Runham (General Manager Europe, Ask.com), and Roo Reynolds (Metaverse Evangelist, IBM). Euan introduced the concept of blogging and social media as an industry tool and then looked to the Social Media line-up for their experiences and reflections.

In general advice from the panel, Myles stressed the importance of setting aside time for blogging. He also advocated how it should be something that you choose to do because it adds value to the company and it is something that you enjoy, primarily. The panel also stressed the need for relinquishing control to employees and the wider community. Social media is, by its own definition, controlled by the community and participants, and their interaction with each other.

Ben Edwards introduced how he has developed ‘community server’ within the Economist to enhance their site. His recommendation was for companies to work closely with their operations director and to give a degree of compulsion to interaction with social media (i.e. 4 “weekly reports” required).

[Aside: but, doesn’t that defeat the object of social media – a wanting / desire to be part of a community and to share your [own] thoughts / reflections with a wiser audience? Should social media be merely an extension of the company newsletter and mission statement? If it were as prescriptive as this, it would concern me greatly! – Marie ]

Other sound bytes included developing confidence and encouraging staff and colleagues to dip a toe in the water. The audience was reminded that in conversations you might say the ‘wrong thing’ but that doesn’t stop you from communicating. With blogging, for instance, you can proofread, edit, spell check and re-edit your work before publishing to lessen the likelihood of getting anything wrong, but one should accept the possibility that sometimes things can go a little awry and it shouldn’t stop you from keeping going. From a managerial point of view, it is definitely about letting go. People need to be free to express themselves. This valuable point was carried further by Adriana Lukas when she stated that managers have to recognise that things are not going to be perfect and they have to resign themselves to that fact. She also encouraged ‘unlearning’ the corporate lingo when working in social media (I like that better!).

The speed networking session (think speed dating – not tried it, only heard about it! – crossed with a networking event) allowed the Brits, slightly more ‘socially reserved’ than our American cousins, have fun and interact within a 3 minute slot. Too much time for some people, but too little for others. Lloyd Davis gamely hosted this session and encouraged participation from everyone with excellent results – bravo Lloyd!

One of the highlights of the day for me was the open session. This was where audience members ventured a topic they would like to discuss and then they hosted that conversation with those participants who chose to attend. There were a number of different huddles covering diverse social media topics such as The Dark Side of SM, Moderation & Spam, Real World SM and Monetizing SM. [You can find photos of the Social Media session on Marie’s personal blog, SEO Biker -- Lisa]. With attendees encouraged to float between topics, it was possible to get a good flavour of each and the concerns and motivations of different verticals.

With various case studies and talks from Motoraddicts, Economist, Sun Microsystems and BUPA, quality presentations abounded and the audience was allowed into the inner recesses of the planning and implementation of the projects of these organisations However, the Economist.com’s Ben Edwards disappointed attendees by only referring to his ‘roadmap’ for the coming months and would not enlarge on the company’s strategy.

A good day’s conference, expertly hosted by a suave, eloquent and ‘cerebral’ Euan Semple, containing ideas and information to get corporate and public bodies dipping that toe into the Social Media and Blogging waters. Highly recommended!

Posted by Lisa Barone on 06/13/07 at 3:41 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Blogging, International, SEM Events, Social Media

May 17, 2007

UK Blogging & Search Engine Optimization News

Hello. I’d like to encourage our UK readers to grab a pen and come back. (Readers in the States can go get a snack and check back later. We’ll miss you.) I'll wait.

Those damn Americans gone? Jolly Sweet! There are some important dates coming up that you Brits should be made aware of.

First, if you’re of the blogging kind (read: if you’re totally awesome), there are two fun blogging conferences you should make time for.

Incisive Media is hosting the Blogs & Social Media Forum in London on June 5th. The conference will examine blogs and social media and their impact on internal and external corporate communication, collaboration and knowledge transfer. It’s good to see blogs being thought of as a viable communication tool for businesses, and even more exciting that it’s happening in the UK.

Checking out the conference schedule programme for the event. It looks more social media-oriented than blogging-oriented, but it’s still worth checking out. If you’re interested in attending, head over to their registration page. Do it soon and there’s an Early Bird Discount! It’s like getting dinner for half the cost.

The really exciting UK-based conference will take place on June 8th. The NLab at De Montfort University is hosting the Women Business & Blogging conference, which sounds like it’s going to be a really fun event. Men are invited, but the speakers are all women who will be talking about women bloggers, readers and users. Speakers include Eileen Brown (Microsoft’s female Scoble), Jory Des Jardins (Co-founder of BlogHer), and Meg Pickard (Guardian Unlimited). How great is that lineup? Girl power!

The event is being held at the Leicester Business School and registration closes on 29 May. I’m secretly hoping Bruce Clay Europe’s Marie Howell will be attending this one and will give us the full write-up. (Or that Bruce decides it’s finally time to send me overseas for some international liveblogging. Huzzah!)

In my totally unbiased opinion, the greatest search marketing-related event of all will be Bruce’s forthcoming UK SEO training course in London on 13-15 June. (Using the word “forthcoming” increases my Brit street cred.) It’s the first-ever UK training class and we’re offering both Bruce’s Basic and Advanced training, making it a fantastic opportunity for marketing managers, webmasters and SEOs to learn about UK search engine optimization and get a leg up on their competition.

Remember, the market is only getting more competitive. The only way to compete is through proper search engine optimization training. It won’t just improve your rankings; it will increase your ROI and give you the tools you need to make your site the best it can be.

And just between you and me, if you sign up for Bruce’s UK SEO training by the end of the UK business day Friday (like, tomorrow), you’ll get a £200 discount, making the training £1295 plus VAT instead of £1495. It’s a pretty good deal considering the amount of knowledge you’ll receive, plus a subscription to our SEOToolSet.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 05/17/07 at 12:27 PM | Comments (6)
See more entries in Blogging, International, SEO, Search Engine Optimization

April 24, 2007

Trench Warfare: Blogs, Podcasts and Vidcasts

Rohit Bhargava is moderating today’s Blogs, Podcats and Vidcasts panel with speakers Karl Long (Nokia), Jeremiah Owyang (Podtech), Kent Nichols (AskANinja.com, Beatbox Giant Productions, LLC) and Steve Hall (Adrants). I won’t even lie. I’m kind of excited about this one. Blogging? Trenches? Who doesn’t love some good old fashioned trench blogging? I know I do! It feels good to be with my people.

Rohit opens talking about building brand personality and how blogs, vlogs and podcasts can help marketers to do that.

[Ew, Rohit says they’re going to be taking questions from Twitter later on. Twitter = bad. Everyone go give Rae Hoffman crap about jumping on that bandwagon earlier this morning. Bad, Rae! We expect more from you!]

Rohit polls the audience on how many people have personal blogs and how many write for corporate blogs. Surprisingly, not too many hands go up. I raised my hand twice and now people are staring at me. The fact that I’m furiously typing probably doesn’t help either. To the man reading over my shoulder, please stop staring at me. Otherwise, I’ll smack you in the face with my 10lb mammoth laptop.

Steve talks about the difference between a personal blog and corporate blogs. He says corporate blogs typically have a preset agenda before they even start. They do? Bruce Clay, Inc is supposed to have a preset agenda about what we write about? I’m in SO much trouble when Bruce hears about this.

The conversation turns to creating a brand or blog personality. Steve talks about the personality of the Adrants blog and how he doesn’t mean to always be so ranty. That’s just the persona he takes on when he blogs, he says. I totally relate to that. I swear I’m not really this whiny and mean in person, it’s just the blog personality. I make fun of Susan because it makes you laugh not because I find her incredibly and unbearably annoying. I don’t think she’s a bane on my existence at all. Seriously.

Karl says that podcasts and vidcasts are more personal than blogs because people can hear and see you. Karl wants to fight.

Kent, however, makes a good point about bloggers having to work to establish the brand and uses The Simpsons as an example. He says if you watch the first season of The Simpsons the characters aren’t drawn right and the voices are off because the brands hadn’t been established yet. However, if you watch it today, everything is seamless and perfectly branded. It’s the same way for your blog, podcast and vidcasts. You have to find your voice.

Jeremiah brings up something I talked about in the Friday Recap, the idea that blogs are the new resume. Along the same lines, people don’t hand out business cards anymore, they tell people to Google/Yahoo/Ask.com them. I think this is a much better way to get to know someone. If you want to know about me, at least from a professional angle, google me. All the information you need can be found in the top 10 search results.

Today’s branding is an emerging process. It’s the process of you putting pieces of you out there, it being reacted to and you moving forward. When you first start a blog, like The Simpsons, it’s a very badly drawn character. But as you continue, it starts to look more like you, you find your niche and you build your brand.

Rohit says sometimes the blogosphere is a scary place because bloggers are known to be snarky. What? Snarky? Bloggers? Why are you looking at me? Stop it.

Kent says if you’re entering the blogosphere, never try and control it. It won’t work and you’ll just build resentment. He uses the term “astroturfing” and defines it as fake grass roots or hiring low level employees to create fake good will for your company. Astoturfing is my new favorite word. I love this session already.

Karl says you have to be upfront about your blog. If you’re running a corporate blog, let people know you’re going to moderate comments. Let them know vulgarity isn’t allowed and that it may take a few hours for a comment to show up due to the moderation process. People will be understanding as long as you’re upfront. Girlfriends and mothers are the same way.

Social media helps employees to talk to real customers and engage with them, says Jeremiah. You want to have an active dialogue with customers using these tools. This will help you to build better products in real-time. Customers can tell you what kind of products they want.

Rohit talks about using blogs/vidcasts to give employees a voice and how sometimes people become accidental brand representatives or spokespeople. Yes. I would caution companies to pick their bloggers carefully. You don’t want to get into the same situation Bruce did where somehow I became the voice and personality of Bruce Clay. Don’t trust your company to a nitwit like me. Or to someone really boring like Susan. [You were doing so well. --Susan]

Karl says the problem is blogging is hard work. Companies may want the PR people to do the blogging but they don’t want to so instead other individuals and stars emerge.

Steve says now that customers have devices to talk back to you, they don’t just sit in front of the TV and listen. They talk back. A company has to create clear guidelines and let someone take control of the blogging and become the voice.

Rohit asks the panel how you go from being 1 of 72 million bloggers to becoming popular? Yeah, yeah, guys, how do I become popular?

Karl says popularity is somewhat loaded. When you’re a personal blogger there are different measures and it’s really about engagement and conversation. Blogs are not monolithic. There are a thousand different uses. You have to figure out how to measure success.

To stand out you have to have a clear focus and differentiate yourself from the pack. You have to read the industry conversations and decide which conversation you want to be a part of. It’s a very long process to go from that badly drawn character to something that’s fully formed.

To Kent, popularity is about consistency and being brave enough to plow forward. It’s easy to give up. It’s no one specific feature or link that’s going to make your success. It’s about delivering time and time again.

Jeremiah calls blogging/podcasting/vidcasting anti-marketing marketing. Social media is not a push strategy; it’s a pull strategy. Corporate bloggers should be a resource to their customers. You need to give to your community instead of pitching to them.

Karl talks about the long tail of social media and making content linkable. Three buzz words in one sentence! In the end, the sum total of a blogger is not a one-to-one measure, there’s an exponential return from the ideas you’re putting out there, the conversations you’re participating in, and the memes you’re creating it. It’s not just about the number of visitors.

Steve calls blogging the easiest way to engage in search engine marketing. You produce content and it lives on. It’s the easiest, cheapest way to get yourself or your company found in the search engines. I feel so cheap.

Rohit gets to the heart of the matter and asks about the ROI associated with blogging.

Predictably, the panel has a million different answers to this one question. Steve says his intended ROI at the time was a job and then it turned into something different. Now he just likes seeing his name print.

Karl says it’s really difficult to calculate the ROI of his blog experience. He started blogging as a way to break free from the academic form of writing. The ROI for him has been getting quoted and joining the conversation. The blogosphere isn’t one monolithic thing; it’s a bunch of small conversations and groups. The return on a personal level is pretty enormous.

Kent talks about how his company was started by a backer he likes to call “Mom” and this past year signed a 7-figure deal from Federation Media. Based on that, he says, yeah, video blogging has worked out okay for him. Heh. Kent said he started going onto the Web to avoid ever having to get a real job again and that’s still his goal.

Jeremiah talks about monetizing blogs and using AdSense. To make a lot of money using AdSense you have to have a good amount of traffic. You can also do sponsorships, sell T-shirts (No really. He actually said that.), use it as a medium to bring in more business, etc.

Putting on the corporate hat, social media allows you to engage with the customers that want to participate with your brand in a different way. No matter what your brand is there are probably a lot of passionate people out there who want to communicate with you in a way other than just buying your services or wearing your product. Blogs and social media are the best channel you have to interact with these people. You have a blog is the best way for you to engage with other bloggers and get buzz building around your brand. They don’t want a press release. They want you to leave a comment on their blog.

To sum things up, Rohit asks the panel to name one company or individual who is doing social media right.

• Steve: GM is doing it right. They launched a blog 2 or 3 years ago. They were the first big company to ever launch a blog and they did it very well – it was written by the executives, they allowed for reader comments, responded well to comments, etc.

• Karl: Nikon is doing a great job engaging with bloggers.

• Kent: PromQueen.tv is doing things in a really fun, interesting viral way. It’s a nice hybrid of old Hollywood and the new medium.

• Jeremiah: John Edwards. He’s everywhere.
  

Something everyone agreed on was that you can’t do a good job of creating a corporate blog if you haven’t done it yourself. There’s too much to learn and too many elements that go into it. You can’t read a book or read an article and get it. You have to full immerse yourself in it.

Someone in the audience asks if the success of blogs is due to the blogger’s personality, their intelligence, the conversation, what?

Kent, whom I’m really starting to love, says he rarely participates in his forum. He’s like a distant father who works a lot. Heh! He appears occasionally to give the fans a hug but mostly he’s doing business. To him, it’s the consistency and the great content.

Steve says it’s the content. Some of the best articles that appear on Adrants are the articles that get commented on the most. No one will come to your blog if the content isn’t interesting enough to read. The interaction is really what can make your blog powerful and dynamic.

Karl says there are many different models, Some blogs post 20 different times a day with news and others write long editorial articles to generate conversation. Your success depends on your business model and what you ultimately want to get out of it.

With all the talk about blogs, podcasts and vidcasts, how about a reader poll? Who wants to see (or hear, I suppose) a Bruce Clay podcast or vidcast? Do you want to see me/us in video or audio form? Let us know. Maybe I can rope one of the BC analysts (or Susan!) into making all your Bruce Clay dreams come true. [I love when you volunteer for these sorts of things. Then you can't blame me!--Susan]

Posted by Lisa Barone on 04/24/07 at 6:53 PM | Comments (3)
See more entries in Blogging, Branding, Fun Stuff, International, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, ad:techSF07

April 19, 2007

Google, Froogle, Click Fraud And Celebrating The Hooley

I’d just like to take a moment to say hello to our loyal blog readers. Hello. Thanks for stopping by today.

Okay.

Google In Trouble With The European Union?

No one really knows for sure, not even Google; however, the buzz in the blogosphere is that Google may soon receive a letter from the EU’s Article 29 Data Protection Working Party concerning how long Google holds on to user data. Apparently it’s too long and the European Union doesn’t like it.

Danny Sullivan speculates on what we’re hearing about a letter instead of seeing one:

“My understanding is that if there is a letter from the working group, it has to go to each EU member state for final approval before being sent. That process takes time, so it may be that news of the letter is being leaked out before final approval is gained.”

Who knows how long that’ll take? More Google lawsuits coming soon!

Click Fraud Up In 2007

Recent news from Click Forensics has advertisers worried again, reporting that click fraud rates are up. The study found that the industry average click fraud rate has risen to 14.8 percent for Q1 2007 versus 13.7 percent for the same quarter in 2006, 14.2 percent for Q4 of 2006, 13.8 percent for Q3 of 2006, and 14.1 percent for Q2 of 2006.

The amount of fraud associated with high-priced search terms (terms that cost $2.00+) has also increased, sitting at 22.2 percent compared to 20.9 percent in Q4 2006, 20.9 in Q3 2006 and 20.2 in Q2 2006.

Should advertisers be overly worried? Not necessarily. As Chris Sherman noted over at Search Engine Land, these numbers may or may not take into account clicks already identified and removed by the search engines. So, as is always the case with click fraud, we really don’t know what the true numbers are. I wouldn’t panic or stop eating or anything; just keep monitoring your reports for suspicious activity.

Froogle Becomes Google Product Search

In super important, you’d-be-out-of-the-loop-if-you-missed-this news, Froogle has been renamed Google Product Search to make it more Google-branded and clear things up for people who are so brain dead they didn’t understand Froogle was Google without the ‘G’. Why do we always have to make life easier for the stupid people? Evolve or die, right?

Marissa Mayer says when Froogle was first named Google didn’t really understand the importance of names and branding. I guess I’m going to have to stop making fun of Microsoft for their wacky habit of putting “Windows Live” in front of everything.

Besides the name change, Google Product Search will also be streamlined to create a cleaner interface and give Google Checkout a little more prominence so Google can take all of your money. Exciting.

Happy Birthday, Hooley

This has nothing to do with his blog entry asking for love, or the fact that he harassed me via AIM, but here’s a little link love for Chris Hooley on his 30th birthday just because I think he’s a swell guy and only moderately insane.

As Susan said, thirty is so totally old. Heh. We heart you, Chris.

Fun Finds

Something for our Australian readers: Darren Rowse announced a Melbourne Blogger Meetup for those of you down under have been bitten by the blog bug. If you go, tell Darren that Lisa sent you. He’ll have no idea what you’re talking about but at least it’s an icebreaker.

Kim Krause talks about how schools should stop promoting the end of hope and once again makes us all proud to know her.

ResourceShelf points to a Forbes’ article outing The World’s Greenest Billionaires. Sergey and Larry seem to be listed third, with Bill Gates appearing later on. I don’t know, I just don’t think you should be on any kind of green list when you own a private jet, even if you only have one and are forced to share it.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 04/19/07 at 5:07 PM | Comments (4)
See more entries in Fun Stuff, Google, International, Pay-Per-Click

April 10, 2007

Organic SEO with Big Companies

[covered by Marie Howell, Bruce Clay Europe. Marie joins us from Bruce Clay's London office for SES NY and will be adding her session recaps to Lisa's this week.]

Jeff Rohrs (of the Sausage Manifesto), as charismatic as ever, introduced and moderated the panel which included the highly respected Bill Hunt, Marshall Simmonds from Define Search Strategies, Tanya Vaughan from HP and Brendan Hart from National Geographic.

Bill Hunt
In his fast-paced presentation, Bill Hunt advocated syncronising and integrating all of your company’s team – web, IT, tech, marketing, etc – when working to optimise a site.
In a large organisation, segmenting the programme works best. Working with Brand level programs, group level programs and Corporate Level Programmes with the different department creates a more holistic approach to SEO.

Corporate Level Programmes: Develop long and short term strategies to maximise search as a marketing vehicle.
Group Level: keyword research and prioritisation, coordinate approach
Brand Level: implementing on page, page edits etc.

Bill advocated screen shots of competitors’ ranking better than the company as a good way of showing that their system is not working and what they need to change / improve. He also referred to optimising RSS feeds as a great way of distributing content.

As search is the most measurable marketing activity that we have, it is so important to measure effectively. There are a number of issues that need to be covered from a site audit, including compliance audit, a link popularity assessment through to identifying problem items and getting the template right. Bill also advocated create a style guide and show where all of the key things from search should be as a clear visual tool to your company / client. Bill discussed the MOM – missed opportunity matrix, as mentioned in his book with Mike Moran and how that informs clearly and in a highly effective manner. Bill returned to his seat after suggested showing the management the cost of NOT optimising and offering a way to do this.

New York Times Case Study
Marshall Simmonds from Define Search Strategies.com explained how his company had taken the New York Times on as a client and then doubled their traffic in a mere 9 months.

He commenced by sharing some striking statistics, and his starting point of how can this be organised across a company with many different publications such as the New York Times. With 11-15 million documents in that publication alone, a specific organisational structure was required and an SEO-friendly template was needed.

One of the major problems with a large organisation is the resistance to change, especially within publishing so it was a case of encouraging the editors to merely enhance their writing styles and not change them.

The methodology that works for big brands, according to Marshall, is to Organise. Analyse, Educate, Execute and then Track results. And then, wh