Part of the Lionbridge Learning Series- this webinar is delivered by Ken Applin

1. Lionbridge Learning Series
Global SEO: How to Enhance Your Website’s International User
Experience with Geo-Targeting

2. In This Presentation:
1. International SEO
Why Should I Care?
2. Geo-Targeting
What Is It?
3. Geo-Targeting
How Do I Do It?

3. INTERNATIONAL SEO: WHY SHOULD I CARE?

4. International SEO: Why Should I Care?
Facts:
Global population: 7,340,000,000
Global Internet users: 3,611,000,000
English Internet users: 949,000,000
Non-English Internet users: 2,662,000,000
½ the world is online: 49.1%
¾ of that is non-English: 73.7%
Source: http://www.internetworldstats.com/

5. International SEO: Why Should I Care?
Top 10 Languages on the Web:
Source: http://www.internetworldstats.com/

6. International SEO: Why Should I Care?
Top 10
Languages on
the Web:
Source: http://www.internetworldstats.com/
Share of Web
Content per
Language:

7. International SEO: Why Should I Care?
Are you spending
the right amounts
in your
global markets?
Source: http://www.internetworldstats.com/
Content
vs.
Users

8. International SEO: Why Should I Care?
• We don’t see this problem in the US, but every
other country experiences it every day…
• What would you do???
– Not your language
– Product availability for a different country
– Foreign currency & pricing
• Bad user experience = BOUNCE!

9. GEO-TARGETING: WHAT IS IT?

10. Geo-Targeting: What Is It?
“Geo-targeting ensures the right content is
served up by the right search engine matching
each visitor’s search habits & intent”
• Good user experience:
– Lower bounce rates
– Increased conversions
– Improved loyalty
• Happy customers!

11. Geo-Targeting: What Is It?
Why is it Important to Your Customers?
In general, improves the
user experience within
each of your local markets
Speaks to the customer in their own language and dialect
Allows content to answer localized questions and needs
Uses local currency and local contact details
Works with local search engines that customers are using
Enables customers to receive local offers
Makes a customer feel like you have a local presence

12. Geo-Targeting: What Is It?
Why is it Important to Your Business?
• Builds stronger relationships with customers and increases repeat visits
• Improves search engine understanding of your content
• Provides the right products, services & other content to the right
markets
• Eliminates self-competition and reduces associated administration
(think currency)
• Increases conversions and referrals
• Improves measurement & reporting within individual markets
• Facilitates localized testing
• Enables you to provide greater focus on high-priority markets
In general, allows more
efficient use of your
resources & budgets

13. GEO-TARGETING: HOW DO I DO IT?

14. Geo-Targeting: How Do I Do It?
5 Steps to Success
1.
Local
Market
Research
2.
Content
Strategy
3.
Glocalize
4.
Inter-
national
SEO
5.
Continual
Measurement

15. Geo-Targeting: How Do I Do It?
1. LOCAL MARKET RESEARCH
You can NOT translate
keywords and expect to
drive traffic

16. Geo-Targeting: How Do I Do It?
1. LOCAL MARKET RESEARCH
• Critical for
– Understanding your customers in each locale
– Knowing what content you must provide to win
– Beating your competition
• To be done successfully, it must be performed
– For each market you care about
– In-country
– Using local search engines
– Before content is developed and/or localized

17. Geo-Targeting: How Do I Do It?
2. CONTENT STRATEGY
Give your customers the content
they are actively seeking…
It’s “bigger” than the message
you want to send

18. Geo-Targeting: How Do I Do It?
2. CONTENT STRATEGY
• Critical for
– Catching your customers at their entry point into your category
– If you don’t rank when a customer searches,
you aren’t part of that customer’s consideration set
– If you aren’t part of the consideration set,
your competition wins
• To be done successfully, it content must
– Be search engine friendly
– Be guided by the market research
– Answer the questions your customers are asking

19. Geo-Targeting: How Do I Do It?
3. GLOCALIZE
Globalize what you can and
localize the rest
Globalize + Localize = Glocalize

20. Geo-Targeting: How Do I Do It?
3. GLOCALIZE
• Globalize
– Consistent domain & directory strategy, e.g., ccTLD, gTLD, etc.
– Human-readable URLs (no codes!)
– CMS & templates by page type: products, FAQs, reviews, etc.
– Not just mobile-friendly, but mobile-first
– Tested in all popular browsers
– Include your equity, voice, and logos
• Localize
– Everything else: use local market research to transcreate
– Examples: topics, phrasing, URLs, directories, metadata, tags, etc.

21. Geo-Targeting: How Do I Do It?
4. INTERNATIONAL SEO
Google dominates in most
countries, but other search
engines are still preferred in over
30% of the world

22. Geo-Targeting: How Do I Do It?
4. INTERNATIONAL SEO
• Critical for
– Eliminating self-competition and duplicate content errors
– Maximizing pages indexed by the search engines
– Winning in countries such as China, Japan, Korea, & Russia
• Be sure to include
– Optimized schema (automated tools can save time)
– Hreflang tags (automated tools can save time)
– Localized sitemaps submitted to local search engines
• For content, videos, images, etc.
– Setup webmaster tool accounts as appropriate
• Define geo-targeting rules as well as website structures

23. Geo-Targeting: How Do I Do It?
5. CONTINUAL MEASUREMENT
Benchmark
Measure
Analyze
Update
Repeat

24. Geo-Targeting: How Do I Do It?
5. CONTINUAL MEASUREMENT
• Best Practices
– Establish your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
• Local search engine ranks & demand for all keywords
• Number of pages indexed by each local search engine
• Traffic redistribution to/from each market
• Local bounce rates
• Particular conversions associated with your business goals
– Use KPIs consistently around the globe for each locale
– Employ tools that can handle your KPIs in each market
– Benchmark all KPIs before you begin

25. Geo-Targeting: How Do I Do It?
5. CONTINUAL MEASUREMENT
• Best Practices (Continued)
– Monitor all KPIs consistently at least once a month on the same date
– Don’t just report numbers; analyze trends
– Identify what is working and what is not
– Create best practices from what is working and reapply
– Look for opportunities to create new content actively
in demand by your customers
– Monitor your success compared with your competition:
what are they doing right?
– Correct content deemed “duplicate” by the search engines
– Stay aware of the latest search engine updates & fine-tune as necessary

26. CASE STUDY

27. Case Study
Issues:
• Uneven distribution of market level traffic, especially in English markets
– Inability to get the right content to the right market
– Traffic was too high in some markets & too low in others
• Low index rate of product pages by search engines
– Search engines ignored content
• Low ranking of pages for important keywords
– Competitors were winning
• Poor user experience
– Incorrect currency, pricing, products & other local content

28. Case Study
3 Different Pilots Conducted:
• Directory Level Pilot
– Slow and unsuccessful
• Sitemap Level Pilot
– Slow with minor impact
• Page Level Pilot
– SUCCESS!
– BEST PRACTICE identified
– REAPPLY to all languages

29. Case Study
The Solution:
• Immediate decision made to implement Hreflang at the page level
• Page cross-reference & Hreflang sitemaps created
• Proprietary tool used to generate hreflang-enabled sitemaps
• Once Google processed the new tags:
– Indexed pages doubled from 30% to 60% for the 15,000 page site
– Global English traffic redistributed to appropriate markets
– Page ranks increased
– Overall traffic increased

30. Case Study
English Results:
• Results seen almost
immediately
• Results continued to
grow over 3 months
– Existing traffic
– New traffic
• On-going maintenance
substantially reduced
• Significantly improved
user experience

32. Thank you!