Just like Google wants to make the world’s information universally accessible, it is up to the SEO manager to make local information as relevant as possible for his client’s target audience. This is why it is extremely important that local information is managed by a local SEO consultant. This consultant will be able to tell you if the selected keywords are the most searched ones by internet users. I therefore strongly disagree with consultants who suggest that using translation softwares would do the trick.  In most cases it won’t .

So, the organisation of international SEO project should be as follows:

1. Project management

• Technical optimisation: the backoffice should the same for all language / country versions in most cases. This should be handled by the same consultant / project manager / IT dpt. depending your internal structure.

• Content optimisation: following the lead of the project manager and his recommendation on the content strategy, each local consultant should handle his part and make sure that the right keywords are used everywhere in the website.

• Popularity/linkbuilding: partnerships with other websites is a very local task and one should have a deep knowledge and understanding of the local market to make the right recommendations or contact the right websites.

• Project management / reporting: the most important this to do is match the structure of the compagny you’re working for. Is it highly centralised or does each local team on the client’s end want a local report? Those are the kind of questions to ask but in any case everybody in the company needs to know what’s going on and communication is key here

2. Problems in international SEO

• Unique URL: one URL should be dedicated for one content.  You should recommend working with specific subdomain or folder. If you want to work with language parameters, make sure this parameter is always shown in the URL, and that your content does not appear in 2 different languages for the same URL.

• IP vs. browser delivery: It’s an excellent idea to show different content to internet user based on their location or language preference. I advise you to opt for redirection based on the language of the user’s browser, because IP-to-country tools may not always give you the right country for the right IP…

• IP delivery: Do you still want to opt for the IP redirection? You may, only if you make sure that you don’t do cloaking. Like what Google says, don’t consider GoogleBot coming from one specific country. GoogleBot mostly comes with US IP addresses, which means that it should  see exactly the same content as a US user. If you use IP redirection for specific location within the same country, you’ll need to make sure that you don’t create duplicate content.

Don’t hesitate to drop comments or questions, have a great end of weekend. Follow me on twitter for more news!

1. Search engine market shares:
   
   Nielsen Netratings and comescore usually provides monthly reports on market shares. I found this website pretty useful when you want to get quick answers about top search engines in top countries in terms of number of internet users. I’m keen to find out more about free stats online, so please let me know if you have ideas, especially about market shares in Africa and Asia.
2. Geo targeting in SEO:

• Search engine tools: you may want to use Google Webmaster tool and select the right country for your website. This works for any website structure, meaning that you can list not only domains but sub-domains or folders. For instance, you may list example.com/fr/ for France and example.com/de/ for Germany within the same Google account. But in this case, you’ll have to verify both URLs within the tool.

• Domain extension: search engines and Google in particular currently take into account the extension of your domain. So domain.fr will be taken as a sign that the website may be French, whereas domain.ca will be regarded as a Canadian website. In this case, you will usually see that the area within Google Webmaster tool has been selected by default.

• Meta tags: some meta tags have been created for geo-localisation purpose only. The main ones are country and language tags, but you may also want to put some more to make sure search engines understand which country you target. For instance, if you target the UK:

<meta http-equiv=”Content-Language” content=”EN-GB”>
<meta name=”country” content=”United Kingdom”>
<meta name=”geo.position” content=”51.51225;-0.13326″ />
<meta name=”geo.country” content=”GB” />
<meta name=”ICBM” content=”51.51225;-0.13326″ />

• IP address: Google takes the IP address of your website into account. So if you host your website in another country, it may indeed turn into using a foreign IP address. It’s always good to Google “what’s my ip” and then “ip 2 country” and you’ll get your IP address and the country it is linked to.

• Linkbuilding: inlinks to your website should come from the targeted country. Indeed, does it make sense to say you’re targeting the UK if all your backlinks come from the US?

Enjoy your weekend, and see you in a couple of days with part II.