Case Study
The Impact of Search Engine Optimization on Internationalization Projects
by Curt Porritt, President and CEO, 10x Marketing
The incredible growth of search engines is the most significant factor for achieving online success today. An entire industry has grown up around the process of optimizing web sites to increase their rankings in search engine results. The money is there to justify it: online product research conducted by consumers during the past year was responsible for driving $106.5 billion in direct online consumer spending, with an additional $180.7 billion in offline spending (the Dieringer Research Group).
Many of the key elements used by search engine optimization companies overlap and compliment those found in the localization process. Combining the two processes - localization and search engine optimization - is an intuitive and tremendously beneficial approach. We refer to this combined effort as Google-ization.
If you translate a web site using the proper search terms or keywords, it can have a dramatic affect on how successful that site will be in receiving relevant traffic from search engines. After all, companies translate web sites in order to drive traffic to them. If your localization process can help to accomplish this goal, then the ROI from localized web sites increases dramatically.
Why Search Engines?
Search engines are now the principal tools used to find information and products on the internet. Next to email, using search engines is the most popular activity among all internet users worldwide. In fact, approximately 90% of the entire online population uses search engines. And it's not just the online consumer who is using search engines. According to a survey by Forbes.com, 73% of C-Level executives say that they prefer to learn about companies and products from the internet, and 80% of these executives say they use search engines to find what they're looking for. Of those online executives, 58% said they're successful in finding what they're looking for online.
Search engines are effective in producing not only online revenue, but also leads that turn into offline revenue. In fact, online product research conducted by consumers during the past year was responsible for driving $180.7 billion in offline spending, compared to $106.5 billion in direct online consumer spending. According to Piper Jaffray, search engines are also the most cost-effective way to advertise, averaging only about $0.45 (USD) per lead. By comparison, the average cost per lead in a direct mail campaign is $9.94 (USD).
Words to Know
Backward Links: Links (pictures or text) from another web site to your site. These links increase your search engine rankings.
Click Through: The process of clicking through an online advertisement to the advertiser's web site.
Conversion Rate: The ratio of sales to visits for a web site. A higher conversion rate means more sales from the same number of visitors.
Hit: A request for a file from a web server. A single web page may contain many files. Generally, a Unique Visitor (see below) count is a more valid measure of web site traffic.
Keyword: A word or phrase used in performing a search. "Used cars" could be a keyword, even though it is two words.
Landing Page: A web page designed to focus on a specific keyword. These are typically the pages that visitors see first after performing a search and clicking through to a site.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC): Paid advertisements that often look similar to search results on a search engine. Ad placement is automatically tied to specific keywords. The company placing the ad must pay the search engine every time the ad is clicked on. The amount per click varies from $0.10 to $30 for popular keywords.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM): The systematic study of which keywords customers are searching for, and the processes used to obtain web traffic from those. This may include natural search results using the search engines' algorithms or pay-per-click management to ensure a high return on investment.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): The process of boosting a web site's ranking during a web search. This is usually accomplished by embedding targeted keyword phrases into site code; optimizing code for search engines; and generating backward links.
Top Ten Ranking: The top 10 search engine results for a particular search term. Web sites listed outside the top 10 are generally visited much less frequently than those that appear in the top 10.
Unique Visitor: A web traffic measurement that tracks each visitor's IP address to ensure that person's visit to a given web page is counted only once during a specific time period.
Jakob Nielsen, who The New York Times calls "the guru of web page usability," has summarized the importance of search engines as follows:
"Search engines are the entry point for most (online) users when they want to look up something on the web… search engine visibility is the most important way of promoting website… "(Jakob Nielsen, PhD)
Over the next few years, search engine marketing in Europe is expected to grow as fast as or faster than any other region in the world. Forrester Research projects that the European search market is currently 20% to 25% of the U.S. market. However, given the higher rate of growth in Europe, Forrester projects that it will reach almost 40% of the total search market by 2010.
The bottom line is that international search engine optimization is here to stay and that it is vital to the success of any localized website. Those companies that take advantage of the obvious synergies between localization and search engine optimization will begin to reap huge rewards, while those who don't will lose business to those who do.
SEO Basics
So what is involved in optimizing a website for search engines? At the heart of search engine optimization we find a handful of essential principles: keywords, pages, and links.
Keywords
Simply put, a keyword is any word or phrase typed into a search engine. But what keywords might people type into Google when they're looking for your products? Don't make the mistake of thinking there are only a few dozen quality keywords that apply to your business. In most cases there are literally hundreds or even thousands of keywords that are searched for on a regular basis and which apply directly to your business.
"My media director would say that if you aren't putting money into search engines you are letting business walk out the door."
(Bruce Carlisle, CEO SFInteractive)
The specific keywords you choose to target on your web site will make a tremendous difference in the rankings you achieve. A good SEO process will generate a practical list of words for you to target. This list should balance both the popularity of the words selected and the difficulty of attaining a meaningful ranking for those words. For instance, while "used cars" is certainly searched for more often, "used cars Liverpool" will be much simpler to target with positive results. Of course, achieving a high ranking for "used cars Liverpool Volvo Brighton Street" would be a laughingly simple process, but such a ranking will likely do you little good because of the low volume of searches each month.
It is tempting to simply translate an English list of keywords into each target language and go. Experience has shown, however, that popularity and difficulty vary greatly not only between languages, but also between different translations of the same concept in English. For example, suppose you are translating the concept of "low cost rental cars" into English from any other language. The terminology choices available to you include, at a minimum, the following:
Notice in this simple example that, given the data in the other two columns, the obvious choice is "cheap car rental." There are at least two reasons for this. The first is that the other two popular keywords are related to specific companies (Budget and Discount) and would likely yield poor results for any other company. In addition, for whatever reason, people do not search for the other four choices nearly as often. By using "cheap car rental" to translate the concept of "low cost rental cars," a localized web site will have a much better chance of receiving a large volume of relevant traffic from search engines. By choosing any of the other translation options listed the web site will be much less effective than it otherwise could be.
This example clearly shows how the terminology chosen by the translator has a huge effect on the overall success of a web site. Since search engine optimization requires exact terminology matches, the relationship between localization and optimization is unavoidable. This relationship will obviously have a tremendous effect on the localization industry over the next few years as international search marketing continues to grow in popularity.
Pages
Great keywords are only the first step, however. The keywords need to be related to relevant, content-rich pages for the search engines to index. Various factors, such as meta-tags, dynamic sites, Flash, and other advanced technologies can impact the search engines' rankings either positively or negatively.
Adding new pages and updating content are processes which contribute to positive search engine rankings. While avoiding 'doorway pages' and other risky tactics, it is important to regularly add new content to your site and generate content-rich pages specifically designed for search engines to index. Articles, news items, press releases, and other collateral material can be a great source of material for this.
Links
Finally, your own site's internal linking structure and the number and quality of external sites linking back to your site will have a great effect on your rankings. Links serve at least two purposes. First, they help search engines find relevant content on your web site. Second, they serve more or less as a popularity contest to help search engines determine which sites or pages should be ranked the highest. Ensuring that your own site links are simple and relevant will help the search engines find all of your pages and to assign better rankings.
Links from other, high-quality sites to yours will also boost your rankings significantly. A good SEO campaign should include a review process of your site, along with an ongoing process to recruit links from meaningful sites. It is vital that this linking effort be done properly. "Link farms," automated link generators, or links from low-quality web sites can actually damage your efforts to achieve top rankings. Some tactics can even cause your web site to be banned from search engines altogether.
The Benefits of Google-ization
The impact of international search engine optimization is huge. International markets now account for about 65% of the online community (Global Reach). However, search engine optimization is not nearly as competitive in non-English-speaking regions as it is in English-speaking areas. This makes it easier to get top rankings for the most sought-after localized search terms. Those global companies that achieve high rankings now will be in a much better position to maintain those rankings during the coming years.
Here's a brief outline of how Google-ization will impact both clients and localization service providers.
The Impact on Localization Clients
The logic is fairly simple: the main reason you want localized web sites is to attract potential customers from specific geographies. The way in which you localize a web site - especially with regards to the terminology chosen and the manner in which that terminology is used - has a profound effect on how search engines will rank your site. The higher your ranking, the more qualified prospects will visit your site. The more qualified visitors your site attracts, the more leads and customers that your site will produce. The more leads and customers that your site produces, the more revenue your localized web site will generate. And that's what it's all about, isn't it?
Like most worthwhile investments, however, Google-ization isn't free. The process will take a bit more effort and will cost a bit more than localization alone. However, in most cases, these costs will be a fraction of the cost associated with localization alone.
The additional costs will occur in two main areas:
- There will be some added effort as localized search terminology is selected and additional keyword content is added to each localized web site.
- There will be some additional costs associated with engaging a good search engine marketing (SEM) firm to help with the project. Search engine marketing has become somewhat of a science. With few exceptions, professional firms are becoming a necessary element to success.
While well-intentioned web masters will often claim to know all about search engine optimization, in reality, few of them know as much about it as they think they do. The worst-case scenario, of course, is using outdated tactics that will actually cause a web site to be dropped from search engine results altogether.
By Google-izing web sites, instead of just localizing them, web sites become the useful tools they were intended to be by actively marketing and promoting your business/service. In the end, the benefits of Google-ization far outweigh the costs.
The Impact on Localization Service Providers
In order to remain competitive, localization service providers will need to find effective ways to incorporate search engine optimization into their current workflow processes. For the most part, this will involve two main adjustments:
- You will have to work closely with search engine marketing firms to identify effective terminology prior to translation and learn how to assimilate that terminology into the translation process. This effort may require a higher level of project management and communication with translators.
- There will usually be some additional content to translate that is specific to the keyword terminology. In many cases, this additional content will come from the SEO firm, rather than from the client. It needs to be translated according to some basic guidelines. These guidelines aren't difficult, but if done incorrectly, the entire effort may be in vain.
While some localization service providers may view these adjustments as a nuisance, others will see them as an opportunity to generate more revenue and to provide much higher value to their clients. In the end, those service providers who work well with SEM firms will experience higher customer satisfaction, improved client retention, and increased sales by having another arrow in their quiver to entice new business.
Another benefit for both clients and service providers is the enhanced ability to engage high-level decision makers from the client's marketing and sales departments. For most businesses, localizing websites is all about marketing. Elevating this marketing effort to the level of search engine marketing makes both the internal and external localization teams that much more important to a company's overall success.
Conclusion
Clients need to begin by doing one of two things:
- 1. Ask your localization service provider if they are currently working with an SEM firm and, if so, start involving them with your localized web sites, or
- 2. Identify a good SEM firm yourself and ask them to work as a team with your service provider.
Localization service providers need to start creating solid, long-term partnerships with SEM firms that understand the localization process and that can adjust to meet the needs of their globally minded clients. Then, the marketing and sales teams can be trained to include Google-ization as a normal part of their value proposition. "We don't just translate your web site. We make sure it will become a valuable marketing tool for your global company." You get the idea.
As all international markets continue to mature, search engines will be the driving force behind most online business activities. Buyers of localization services will either have to engage in effective Google-ization efforts or lose business to their competitors. There is no doubt that an ever-increasing number of potential customers will be searching for your products and services in all major languages. The only real question involves which web sites these prospects are going to find as a result of those searches and, ultimately, where they end up spending their money. As Jim Spanfeller, CEO of Forbes.com, has explained, "Beyond all of the positive attributes of web advertising, like incredibly trackable ROI, the fact is business decision makers don't look to TV and newspapers anymore as their top sources of information; they go online."
Currently, localization service providers still have the option of whether or not to become involved with international search engine optimization. This option, however, is a door that will close in the very near future. In the coming years, clients will demand that search engine optimization be integrated with the normal localization process. The terminology issue simply can't be avoided. Localization service providers that begin to offer these combined services now will have a huge advantage over those who will be trying to play catch-up a few years from now.
This article was originally published in October 2005 as a white paper here.
For more details on Google-ization, check out Porritt's presentation, Website Google-ization: Localizing for Search Engines , at the recent LISA Forum Europe in Zurich, OR read Google-ization: How It Will Impact the GILT Community.
Curtis R. Porritt is President and CEO of 10x Marketing. He was a part of the phenomenal growth that characterized the early years of WordPerfect Corporation, playing an integral role in designing and managing WordPerfect Corporation's world class international development organization - one of the first in the world to produce software products on a simultaneous release schedule with products in more than 30 languages. Porritt has over 13 years of upper-level management experience in the high tech industry and can be reached at curt@10xmarketing.com.
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