This short intro to international SEO from the perspective of North American companies holds still some valid infos. I held this PPT on Pubcon 2008 and before it is lost on my drives, I publish it on Slideshare for the world to see. Maybe it gives you some ideas.

1. International and European Site Optimization
Delivering in the content in the language
and the country you want to rank in!
Pubcon 2008
by
Ralf Schwoebel, CEO
Tradebit, Inc.
puzzler@tradebit.com
http://www.tradebit.com/

2. The global approach
Running a site follows basic rules, everywhere
Search & Ads Click
SEO, SEM, Social Networks, Advertising,
Bookmarks, etc. brand positioning
Classical Lead
Offline ads
Mouth2mouth, Print, etc.
Traffic Conversion Generating valid
addresses
Community Sale
Repeating customers, Selling goods and
Registered users, eMailing information

3. The local world
Translation is not enough!
• Ranking is easier with local domains, but a
development effort, if done right!
• Legal aspects can be complicated
• Keyword research and content creation might
work differently

4. The local SEO aspects
Conversion has a cultural aspect
e.g.
e.g.
Germans play soccer,
Germans play soccer,
not football
not football

5. Legal aspects might be a problem
• EU has no DMCA
• C&D in Germany: $600 upwards
• NO Trademarks in meta-tags or domains
• Payment methods are different

6. International SEO aspects
• Keyword research:
Lack of good tools for german, spanish, etc.
• Linkbuilding: Authority sites and social
networks need different attention
• Affiliates: other networks are used!

7. The technical aspects – going local
Introduction of a free reverse proxy for local
content and language delivery...
VPS
VPS VPS
VPS
VPS
M

8. Technical aspects
How does that work? How much is it?
Squid
www.somedomain.com Open Source www.somedomain.de
de.somedomain.com
es.somedomain.com VPS
uk.somedomain.com
cheap, local
M servers
main, big server
(farm)

9. Example Squid config
Open source package for Linux and Win
[root@xy ~]# cat /etc/squid/squid.conf [obfuscated]
http_port 80 vhost vport
cache_peer 74.55.276.X parent 80 0 originserver sourcehash
cache_peer 74.55.276.Y parent 80 0 originserver sourcehash
collapsed_forwarding on
refresh_stale_hit 600 seconds
acl all src 0/0
http_access allow all
cache_mem 32 MB
cache_swap_low 90
cache_swap_high 95
cache_dir ufs /var/squid/cache 10000 16 256
maximum_object_size 4096 KB
maximum_object_size_in_memory 1024 KB

10. More technology to ease your life
Open, free IP based ad delivery
For a test, if regional advertising delivery
helps you to make more money, you may
try out www.openx.org for free (25 Million
ad deliveries - not affiliated in any kind)

11. Contact the speaker
Thanks for watching,
contact me for questions
Ralf Schwoebel, CEO
Tradebit, Inc.
puzzler@tradebit.com
http://www.tradebit.com/