Internationalisation: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Emily Mace, Head of SEO at Oban Digital, discusses three examples of brands which have expanded into new markets with varying degrees of success and practical illustrations of why they have failed and succeeded.
7. GOOD INTERNATIONAL SEO IS:
• Focussed on the customer
• Respectful of culture and language
• Pays attention to the technical implementation
• Understands that people are different
11. THE BAD – GET YOUR HREFLANGS RIGHT
What comes first?
Country code or Language code?
12. THE BAD – GET YOUR HREFLANGS RIGHT
What comes first?
Language code!
13. THE BAD – GET YOUR HREFLANGS RIGHT
Know your Country Codes…
EG
KR
CR
HR
14. THE BAD – GET YOUR HREFLANGS RIGHT
Know your Country Codes…
EG – Egypt
KR – South Korea
CR – Costa Rica
HR – Croatia
15. THE BAD – GET YOUR HREFLANGS RIGHT
Where is this Hreflang targeting?
hreflang="at-at"
16. THE BAD – GET YOUR HREFLANGS RIGHT
Website targeting Austria
hreflang="at-at"
AT isn’t a language!
17. THE BAD – GET YOUR HREFLANGS RIGHT
Arabic Speakers – is this right?
hreflang=“ar-ar"
18. THE BAD – GET YOUR HREFLANGS RIGHT
Website targeting Arabic Speakers
<link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/ar"
hreflang=“ar-ar" />
Arabic in Argentina? 2% of the population!
19. BAD INTERNATIONAL SEO IS:
Hasn’t quite got it right
• - Linguistically
• - Technically
• - Culturally (through content / language)
22. THE UGLY – IP SERVING
Recap – IP Serving uses your IP address to
provide website content in the language of
the country you are in
Many web devs prefer this as an
implementation for international websites!
25. UGLY INTERNATIONAL SEO IS:
• Assumes there is nowhere outside the US
• Takes short cuts
• Pisses people off – shows no respect
If your International SEO is Ugly you’ll probably
have to start again!
27. DOMAIN STRATEGY
Sub Folder ccTLD Sub Domain
• Benefits from
main domain
• Easy to set up
• Automatically
associated with
the right country
• No extra charges
• In country hosting
• Not automatically
seen as target
country
• Yandex and Baidu
• Could be
expensive
• Not automatically
seen as target
country
• Yandex and Baidu
28. DOMAIN QUESTIONS
• What do I pick?
• One size does not fit all
• Base on your technical set up and
what you already have!