Benj Arriola's presentation at MORCon organized by SEO Organization Philippines at UP Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines.

1. Geo-Targeted SEO
Local & International SEO

2. Agenda
Overview
Why geo-target your
results?
How to people see local
results?
Optimizing Websites
Organic Results
Universal Search Results
Map Results
Local Directories
Measuring Results
Summary

3. A brief background
Overview

4. Why Geo-Target Results?
The obvious:
Many customers look for products & services in
their local area.
Properly segmentize market with specific local
marketing offers to increase conversions.
Search engines:
Search engines do not have the exact same results in
different cities within a country, nor are they the
same in different countries.

5. International SEO
Selling Global Performs better in
international SEO.
Selling to the world. You Searching within the
business is not necessarily different search engine’s
located in different country /language
countries. versions.
Going International
More of a localized
approach within different
countries. (International
where your business is
located in “Inter-Nations”)

6. International SEO Considerations
Technical
Technical
Language settings & Knowledge
configurations, ISO
language codes, ccTLDs,
IPs & hosting, link
partners, etc.
Marketing & Writing SEO
Translation is extremely
important. Marketing Writing
Knowledge Skills
Automated translations
will not work.

7. International Marketing Blunders
Pepsi
US: Pepsi brings you back
to life.
China:
Come alive out of the grave
with Pepsi.
Pepsi will bring your
ancestors back from the
dead.
Bring dead ancestors back
from heaven.

8. International Marketing Blunders
Clairol
US: Mist Stick
Germany: Mist is a slang
term for TAE!!! As in
kadiri, stick ng tae!
Electrolux
Scandinavian
Manufacturer of Vacuum
Cleaner
US printed brochures:
Nothing sucks like an
Electrolux!

9. Good International Localization Examples
Berliner
Stadtreinigungsbetriebe
Company in Germany. The
company name translated
means: Berlin City
Cleaning Services.
The German word kehr
means sweep.
McDonalds
Austria: Not every country
knows what a drive thru
is.

10. Content Translation
Modified Literal
Translation follows the
grammatical rules of the Unduly free
target language, but is still Translation is too "loose"
literal. If used wrong, it may and strays from the
fail to correctly express the meaning of the source
meaning of the source text. text.
Idiomatic
Literal Preserves the meaning of
Source text is the source text and
translated into the expresses it in a natural
nearest equivalent of way in the target
the target language. language.

11. International Search Engines
77%
57%
62%
62%
60%

12. How do people see local results?
Organic Results
w/ Geographic Keywords
w/out Geographic Keywords
Embedded Results
Map Results
Local Directories

13. Conventional SEO & Local SEO
Conventional SEO Local SEO
Not only title, description and URL.
Aside from a map, this also has:
• reviews of various sites
• star ratings
• address
• phone number
• and websites are optional.
Plain Search Engine Results Local Search Engine Results

14. Map Websites
Benj, nawawala tayo,
i-MapQuest mo nga.

15. Map Website Main Players
42.2 Million Unique Visitors
41.5 Million Unique Visitors

16. Online Search Higher than
Print Yellow Pages starting 2008
Source: TMP Directional Marketing/ComScore
http://searchengineland.com/relying-on-print-yellow-pages-most-local-customers-turn-to-the-web-15082

17. Increase in Local Search Queries

18. Local Search Drives Action
Source: TMP Directional Marketing/ComScore
http://searchengineland.com/relying-on-print-yellow-pages-most-local-customers-turn-to-the-web-15082

19. Increase in Long Tail Queries
“water leak specialist naples,fl”
“below grade waterproofing florida”
“building maintenance companies naples florida”
“aerial companies naples fl” “naples general contractors”
“facilities maintenance and construction companies in florida”

20. Mobile Search Integration Opportunity

21. Best ROI in Local Segment Marketing
MarketingSherpa shared that
SEO had the best ROI among all
marketing strategies targeting
local segment compared to:
Email Marketing
PPC
Direct Mail
PR
Online Advertising (banners)
Print Advertising.

22. Organic, maps, Internet yellow pages
Local Optimization of
Websites

23. Geo-Targeted SEO: Organic Results
OnPage SEO OffPage SEO
Creatively use your Get links from websites
geographic location keyword targeting the local area or
in your onpage elements country you are targeting.
Title Tag Use your location keyword
Meta Description in the anchor text.
Heading Tags Good sites to look for:
Main Content Local directories
Internal Links Niche industry directories
Always remember Panda with a location category
If it look unnatural, it’s Industry related local
probably bad. Remember do organizations
not overdo it. Proper ccTLDs for
international websites.

24. Local Maps Submissions
Google Places General Guidelines
http://www.google.com/pla Make your profile as
ces/ complete as possible.
Yahoo Local Listings When choosing a category,
http://listings.local.yahoo.co use pre-existing local
m/ categories, instead of
creating new ones.
Bing Business Listings Always use the opportunity
http://www.bing.com/busin to add images and videos to
essportal your profile if allowed.
Mapquest For all happy customers of a
http://listings.mapquest.co company listing, proactively
m/apps/listing ask them to add a positive
review on these map
listings.

25. More Local OnPage SEO
Dedicated website or page per location.
Avoid duplicate content or even similar content.
Use the <address> tag.
Use schema.org markup for rich snippets. Not only
for location and contact information but also for
reviews and ratings.
Use a standard phone number format. (123)123-
1234
Have the location address on every page. This can
be added to the footer.

26. More Local OffPage SEO
Aside from links, Google pays attention to
citations.
Any mention of the company name, and
address, phone and all other contact
information is a citation.
Local Directories
Blogs, Press Releases
Forum Post
Social Media

27. Off Page Link Building / Citation Building
CitySearch
InfoUSA
Primary Data Providers Yelp
Acxiom
Submissions to Review InsiderPages
Superpages.com
SuperPages
Citysearch.com
Sources
TripAdvisor
Yellowpages.com
Submissions to Local & MerchantCircle
Localize
Industry-Specific MSN/Live
Insiderpages.com
Directories Local.com
Yelp.com
Ask.com
Merchantcircle.com
Participating in Local Universal Business Listing
Online Community (Local Local.com
Blog Topics) TrueLocal.com
IP Address Location

28. IP Address Location – A minor effect but…
Site you are optimizing
Where you are getting links from
I have rarely seen a major effect from IP address for sites hosted in the US
targeting another country.
I have seen a major effect in a site hosted in Canada that needed to target the US.

29. International SEO – TLDs and ccTLDs
It is best to use country
code top level domains
of the countries you
wish to rank in. This
helps ranking in the
respective country level
Google versions.

30. International SEO – Subdomains vs. Folders
A ccTLD is best, but if this is
not available, or the
company just does not want example.co.uk
to use it, you are left with
subdomains or folders.
From a ranking point of
view, subdomains are more uk.example.com
ideal than folders.
It is easier to create
separate robots.txt entries,
XML sitemaps, and other example.com/uk
location specific settings
separate from the other
pages.

31. International SEO – Language vs. Location
It is best to prioritize
location over language example.ca/en
in URL structure. example.ca/fr
Languages can be set in
folders. And countries
are either it’s own
ccTLD or a subdomain.
ca.example.com/en
ca.example.com/fr

32. International SEO – Duplicate Content
Two different countries with the same or
even different language may run into
duplicate content issues for pages with the
exact same or similar content.
ccTLDs helps inform search engines that the
other versions are targeted for other
countries.
Last Sept 9, 2010, Google announced the
alternate Link tag will help resolve this
issue.
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en"
href="http://example.co.uk" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en"
href="http://example.com" />
In the examples above, ccTLDs would be
preferred.
The hreflang values are based on the ISO
639-1 language codes.

33. International SEO – Language <html> and Meta Tags
Use two letter language code for
<html> tag and meta tags
<html lang="fr" xml:lang="fr" xml
ns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" />
<meta http-equiv="Content-Language"
content="fr" />
These tags specifically help
search engines identify the local
nature of the webpage and help
assign the pages to specific
geographic locations.
Resource:
ISO two letter country codes

34. Proving Success
Measuring Results

35. Web Analytics
Every web analytics Segmentizing
platform runs differently. incoming traffic by:
Google Analytics
Local landing pages
Omniture
Geographic identifiers
WebTrends
in keywords.
What do you want to
track to determine local Use Custom Variables
SEO effectiveness? to segmentize
automatically.

36. Trying to put everything in a nutshell
Summary

37. Summary
Local search has show us not When doing local SEO, you
only is it very targeted, it has are basically doing the
been increasing in following:
popularity/usage and has a Onpage ranking factors, mainly
high amount of conversion. using the location keywords,
and some basic code changes.
Offpage linking from locally
Learn how to track your relevant sites.
success by properly Increasing citations from other
segmentizing your data. websites mentioning your
address and phone numbers.
Submissions to Maps and other
local directories.

38. Benj Arriola
www.linkedin.com/in/benjarriola
www.facebook.com/benjarriola
www.twitter.com/benjarriola
InternetMarketingInc
www.internetmarketinginc.com
www.internetmarketinginc.com/blog/
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Thank you.
Questions?