International SEO: search engine positioning to open up new markets

Written by Fernando Maciá

The current recession is causing a reduction in traditional markets and negatively affecting the competitiveness of companies. At this time, when demand for the usual channels seems to be exhausted, there is a greater risk of waiting for “times to change” than of venturing into new channels and new markets. As a medium with a global reach, the Internet is an interesting alternative for probing the potential of new markets and bringing together a dispersed niche demand that can be very profitable if properly managed through the Net.

The catastrophic environment presented to us every day by the news shows a scenario that is not very conducive to starting a new business venture. And yet, everything related to the Internet continues to boil over in a kind of countercyclical dynamic compared to the rest of the economic indicators. This apparent contradiction is justified by some of the inherent characteristics of the Internet as a new international marketplace:

• The Internet is a medium with global reach.
• It is easier and more direct to measure the return on investment (ROI) in this medium than in any other promotional strategy.
• Initial investments can be comparatively lower than equivalent business models in the offline world.
• On the Internet, it is easy, fast and relatively inexpensive to measure results, test, evaluate feedback and make decisions.

All of this means that in the current crisis environment, in which traditional markets are shrinking, the Internet is the most viable and valid alternative for probing and opening new markets. Faced with shrinking demand and shrinking margins, companies are now investing in information technology to improve their competitiveness. This global presence also favors contact with new partners with whom to undertake new business ventures through joint ventures, in order to maximize synergies and reduce risks. At a time when the usual distribution channels seem exhausted, there is a greater risk in waiting for environmental conditions to change than in venturing into new channels and new markets. In other words: Are we going to sit around and moan about who took our cheese?

If you have decided to go for a more international online presence, however, there are a few tips to help you increase your chances of success. International SEO or international search engine optimization will be one of your best assets.

Multi-language Web sites for international markets

If you already have a sufficiently developed Web site for your traditional market, perhaps your own domestic market, and you are considering developing new versions of your site for other markets, don’t make the mistake of thinking that just because most people in another country understand English, when they search the Internet they search in English. They are most likely to use their own country’s version of the search engine and to conduct their searches in their own language. If you do not develop content in that language, it will be virtually impossible for you to reach those potential customers internationally.

Developing versions of your Web site in many different languages, especially before knowing the potential of each market, can be an excessive investment. The recommendation here is to develop at least a full version of your Web site in English and a microsite or reduced version of your Web site, perhaps consisting only of the home page, section headers and contact information, in each of the languages in which you want to survey the potential market.

These microsites will help you to position yourself at least in the most important terms related to your sector in the search engines of each country. Subsequently, measuring the traffic received by each of these microsites will allow you to decide for which languages or markets the investment of a complete localization of content could be profitable and for which it could not.

The international visitors that will arrive at each of these micrositesAt a certain navigation point, they would be transferred to one of the main versions (English or Spanish, for example) until such time as the potential traffic received was considered sufficient to develop the entire Web site in that language. The traffic analysis of these visits will also provide us with valuable information about the search engines and search terms used by the audience of a certain country; most visited sections, etc. All this can help us to develop the full version of the Web site in that language.

Multi-language, multi-cultural, multi-national?

When developing multi-language versions of your Web site, you will have to make several choices. For example, with respect to the level of adaptation of content to the target market. We could describe several levels:

1. Automatic translation: there are different gadgets on the market that we can make available to foreign visitors to our Web site so that they can access the contents in their own language. These gadgets perform an “on-the-fly” translation and, although nowadays they reach a level that allows a user to at least know what a page is talking about, the quality of the translation leaves much to be desired. On the other hand, these automatically translated contents are not indexable: they can never appear as search engine results for those languages.
2. Content translation: creating different language versions of our website would be the minimum level of adaptation to a multinational audience. The quality of the translation, when carried out by professionals, can be very high and even maintain the advertising tone, suggestive, preserving the double meanings, etc. typical of the commercial argumentation. On the other hand, translated contents will be indexed by search engines, so we will be able to appear as results in related searches performed by users from those countries. Although better than machine translation, content translation has its limitations when it comes to adapting to another environment. For example, a Swede and an Alicante resident would buy a property in Benidorm for very different reasons. Although it is the same product, the sales argument should be completely different. This is where content translation reaches its limits.
3. Content localization: it goes one step further than simple translation. It takes into account the socio-cultural framework of the target country and, in addition to translating the text, adapts the content to the specific audience or profile of the potential customer for our product or service in this country. For example, where in Spanish we would use “coger”, “coche”, “conducir”, “importe”, “marketing”, “marketing”, “ruedas”, “pagar” or “zumo”, in Latin America we would use “agarrar”, “carro”, “manejar”, “monto”, “mercadeo”, “cauchos”, “cancelar” or “jugo” to refer to the same concepts. We should also bear in mind that where for our perspective we would speak of exporting, from the perspective of our audience this is equivalent to importing, etc.
4. Content localization focused on international SEO: represents the highest level of content adaptation to get the best performance from the online presence in another country. Content optimization strategies for international search engine optimization is a relatively new skill set. Adapting the localization of content for optimal search engine positioning means researching exactly what words and expressions related to the contents of our Web would be used by potential users in that market. This keyword research should be performed prior to content localization. The resulting list of keywords for which we want to rank must be provided to those responsible for content localization to ensure that they are used with sufficient frequency within the texts and, above all, that they are present in the most prominent areas of the page for the calculation of relevance: titles, headings, links, bold text, image alternative text, etc. With all this we will achieve that our contents are optimally positioned in international search engines.

Network usage habits in other countries

In addition to the above, it is also a good idea to do some research on Internet usage habits in other countries. You may be surprised to learn that Google is not the most used search engine in countries such as Japan, China or Russia, among many others. Knowing which search engines are the most used in each country will help you position your Web where it is easier for your potential audience to find you. In some cases, such as Japan, social networks are already rivaling traditional search engines in their ability to generate quality traffic to Web sites.

The form of access to the network also changes from country to country. Not only in terms of bandwidth, but also in aspects such as screen size and resolution, access from mobile terminals or video game consoles or the age and socio-cultural profile of Internet users. In Japan, Internet access from cell phones and PDAs and from PCs is almost on a par.

China, India and Latin America are experiencing record growth in Internet access, with a clear prominence of social networks and all the new generation sites that incorporate Web 2.0 functionalities. In 2007, Internet access growth in Colombia was 80% and in Venezuela, 40%. In the same year, the United States only grew by 5% because it is a market where network penetration is already close to the saturation limit.

Mexico and Brazil are the countries with the highest YouTube usage in the world. Orchid is visited by 80% of Brazilian Internet users. And while in mature countries advertising investment in online media reaches 12 or 15%, in Latin America it is barely 2%, which gives an idea of the potential to be developed.

Conclusions

In the current environment of great uncertainty, companies cannot remain impassive in the face of the recession in traditional markets. Betting on the media onlinecontent localization, content localization and international SEO or international search engine positioningis a viable alternative with a high probability of success if certain precautions are taken, which can be summarized in the maxim that to be “global” you must act “local”.