September 2010 Archives

Another excellent benefit and reason of going global is to generate more revenues.  A custom web site design company is going to help you the best they can with selling as many products on your site as possible.  They will provide many different efforts to get the word out about the business online, build a site that works well with the search engines, is appealing to the users, and much more.

If you have a local establishment, hiring a custom web site design company to help you go global is one of the best opportunities you can take advantage of today.  This will help you expand your customer base around the world and generate more revenues while creating a name for yourself around the world.  You can be successful online and the importance is taking advantage of true globalization and what the World Wide Web really has to offer.

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Rat Wulf - Website Designer

7strategy Web Design Company

117 N. Cooper St.

Olathe, KS - 66061

By Christian Arno| Aug 25, 2010

When it comes to creating websites for foreign language markets, a few necessities are immediately obvious.

First, the websites need to be in the native or primary language of the country you're targeting. Also, you'll need to take into account consumer behavior and culture in that country -- where's your gap in the market and what's your unique selling proposition (USP)?

You'll also need to work out your search engine optiimization (SEO) strategy, because what's the point of spending all that time and money developing multilingual websites if they aren't ranking in the search engines?

Where to Concentrate Your SEO Efforts

The tricky point to consider here, though, is that while you may be well attuned to the needs and vagaries of Google, the Internet superpower isn't the dominant search engine in every country.

You've likely heard of Baidu, the Chinese search engine, which leads Google China on searches by 52 percent to 33 percent.

There are a few theories on why Baidu is the Google-killer in China. Some pundits believe it's due to Chinese patriotism (despite the fact that Baidu started in the U.S.). But the more likely reason is because the Chinese love to search the web for MP3s (55 percent of Baidu users are MP3 searchers). Baidu is better for illegal downloading because it's held to less strict legal standards than Western search engines.

Among the other Google-beating local search engines, popularity is attributed to their being optimized for the alphabet and language of the country.

For instance, Yandex succeeds in Russia (with a 64 percent market share) where Google.ru fails, largely because it's built around the Cyrillic alphabet and recognizes Russian grammar and inflection.

Then, of course, there's Seznam, the dominant search engine in the Czech Republic. In South Korea, Naver has 70 percent of the search market (compared to Google's 2 percent). Meanwhile, the Japanese inexplicably prefer Yahoo Japan to Google.

Naturally, then, it makes sense that you if you have a Russian website, you would want to concentrate most of your SEO efforts on Yandex, and Baidu for China, and so forth.

Changing Your SEO Strategy for Market-Leading Search Engines

Sadly, there isn't enough space here to outline every difference and similarity. Extensive research can be found online that goes into SEO strategies for each search engine, but the general consensus is that they all operate in largely the same way, with a few key differences.

Baidu doesn't seem to take into account inbound links -- one of the integral parts of effective Google SEO -- so building links with Chinese websites would seem to be a waste of your time. Your money might be better spent on increasing your Baidu PPC advertising budget, as Baidu apparently doesn't take relevancy into account with PPC -- higher rankings are achieved with higher spend.

Yandex, meanwhile, counts inbound links as relevant, and also highly rates relevant geographic location. Interestingly, Yandex will also penalize you for having spam-like roll-over and pop-up ads on your site.

Fortunately, each search engine offers its own keyword research tools, so you're obviously far better off using the data analysis tools of the search engine you're trying to game, than, say, applying your Google China keywords to Baidu.

With Great Effort Comes Great Possibility

Clearly, one size doesn't fit all when it comes to SEO strategies for different countries.

The crucial lesson here: developing SEO specific to each country's dominant search engine is just as important as creating language- and culture-specific websites in the first place. Mastering the tricks of each market's search engine is the key to success.

See the full story at: www.searchenginewatch.com

For more information about S.E.O, e-commerce web site design, e-mail marketing, web site design service and website development, just visit us at www.7strategy.com 

Most search engine optimization (SEO) agencies are now accepted as an integral part of their customers' wider marketing strategy -- and that's because it's increasingly obvious that SEO underpins every other online promotional tool.

In fact, my recent post "How to achieve excellence in joined-up marketing" showed how SEO can work with many other marketing tools in order to make marketing spend work even harder.

Despite this, some SEOs just don't get it. I was chatting to a young, bright, up-and-coming SEO at a conference recently about the strategy he was employing to boost an already-popular website.

He explained that he was writing some "keyword-heavy guides" for the site's pages, which interested me because he had no copywriting experience.

"Oh, it doesn't matter about the quality," he explained. "For this content, Google is the only customer."

Google is Never the Only Customer

Now, this guy isn't an employee at my company, so he didn't have to sit through the usual lecture I roll out at this point.

Suffice to say, in our industry, Google is never the only customer because it's humans who search, humans who visit the pages after they have been crawled by the spiders, and humans who use the content on those pages to form opinions on the company that supplied it.

It isn't impossible to create articles, guides, news stories, blog posts, and landing pages that are both useful to people and attractive to search engines. You just need skilled, informed writers with a firm grasp of SEO principles.

Google is Evolving

The most successful search engine in the world is so successful because it gives people want they want -- and they don't want keyword-stuffed garbage.

Yes, your website content needs to include relevant search terms because you need to show Google and other search engines that your page is relevant to the customer.

However, Google wants to give people useful information. Google's engineers are constantly working to refine its algorithm to make sure that's what it does.

If you want to future-proof your SEO strategy, you'll make sure your pages are useful and not just "optimized" by having a bunch of keywords crowbarred in.

You Risk Damaging Your Brand

There's a real danger that having poor quality copy on your website damages your brand in the eyes of any humans who stumble across it.

Your website is the equivalent to your shop front, your office reception, even your staff's attire in client meetings -- it's how customers form opinions of your brand.

Poor quality, keyword-stuffed, useless content lowers your brand's value in the eyes of the customer. The customer is the only customer -- not the search engine that brought them there.

Poor Copy Won't Convert

Whatever your website's purpose, poor quality content won't help you achieve it.

Whether you're trying to garner support for a cause, enhance brand engagement, or simply sell a service or product, your content needs to promote that end.

You can't have some copy on the site that you hope humans won't read. Those searchers who do land on it will quickly leave your site -- often with a lower opinion of your company than before.

You Won't Get Any Link Love

A low-quality, keyword-crammed guide on your site might attract the attention of the search engine spiders, but it won't get any humans particularly excited.

However, a well-written, informative industry guide could easily be tweeted, shared, and linked to. That encourages natural traffic and aids your website's optimization, so it's a double win.

Why bother with useless, brand-damaging, short-term copy when a little extra effort could bring you all these benefits?

See the full story at: www.searchenginewatch.com

For more information about S.E.O, e-commerce web site design, e-mail marketing, web site design service and website development, just visit us at www.7strategy.com