2. IP Address

Google maps the IP address to the country and when looking for relevance in search results, will score locally hosted domains higher than non-locally hosted. In other words, it is better to host the French version of your site in France. This can be awkward and expensive, so you need to consider whether you are able to beat your competition without this. It is not the only factor that Google considers so do not think that this is essential.

3. Webmaster Tools

It is now also possible to select the geographic location using Google's Webmaster Tools. But for now only full sites can be geolocated, not individual folders, although that is promised for the near future.

4. Links

In the same way as you have build vast numbers of links to your English site, the language version is a rich and often untapped source of links. Local links from local domains in the local language are important. You may need outside help for this, and again, the question is what you need to do to beat your competition. As with English SEO, links are a major part of success.

5. Engine-Specific Optimization

This involves the identification of important engines by country for your target market. Google is not necessarily the dominant player in all countries. In China, for example, at the time of writing, you won't find Google in the top ten sites. An engine called Baidu is by far the most used site. In order to identify, and then optimize and monitor for these engines you will require support from external specialists.

6. Pay Per Click (PPC) in each locale

PPC is the fastest method to achieving search engine prominence in any country. Professional multilingual PPC allows you to quickly succeed in a foreign market, but is also a fantastic keyword targeting method so you can discover the most powerful keywords in your target language. Running a PPC campaign may also not require the full localization of the web site which can be an expensive exercise. It is often effective to localize only a landing page. However, ensure your landing pages are culturally optimized because they are critical to gather conversions.

Conclusion

We hope this article has shown that there are some basic steps that can be taken during the localization process that will start the search engine optimization process on the right track. These basic steps will fall easily into place if your localization company know the details of search engine optimization. Make sure you test them out.

Page 3 of 3 :: First | Last :: Prev | 1 2 3 | Next