Running Head: GLOBAL STRATEGIES FOR SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION & WEB MARKETING
Global Strategies for Search Engine Optimization & Web Marketing
By: Troy Johnson
Argosy University
MSM Program
10/27/2009
Multinational corporations looking to bring their products to other countries through their websites many times make the mistake of believing the website will work fine in every new market. This article introduces search engine optimization and it will discuss various strategies for successful online marketing in foreign markets. As defined by www.wikipedia.com, “Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines.” Search engine optimization or SEO brings free organic traffic. Conversely, search engine marketing SEM is the use of paid placement for multiple keywords. Both strategies are tested using a cost benefit analysis. The research I provide in this article maximizes revenue and profit potential for web sellers. I describe the differences between white hat and black hat SEO practices and the consequences of each. Then I cover t he application of international marketing principles to reduce costly cross border blunders.
I am the founder of Snowbirdseeker.com LLC., an online property management website that matches renters with seasonal rentals. The results of this article are from a combination of my own experiences and several cited academic sources. Since launching the site in June of 2008 I have learned search engine optimization through experience. After the website development completed, I outsourced a team of search engine optimization professionals from India to jumpstart a marketing plan. The SEO work they performed was slow and regardless of income disparities the project was very expensive. The web development team was in my opinion great at writing code and making things work, but simple things like spelling and subject verb agreement were chronic issues. Gradually some of their search engine submissions gained decent rank, but the effects on traffic were nominal. Although they spoke English fairly well I did not feel the submissions we re compelling and thus had a negative impact on our click through rate. The SEO consultants were too expensive for the results which coincide with the findings of industry research. “Buyers using search engines to look for information tend to trust and follow
links displayed in the editorial section of the search-results page. Most on-line sellers,however, do not invest in search engine optimization (SEO) to get higher search-results rankings for their listings, but instead prefer paid placements. They explain that SEO is
more expensive than paid placements, produces results that do not justify its cost, and does not consistently lead to high search-results rankings.” (Sen, 2005) Cost may inhibit future expenditures on SEO professionals, but since listings in the free editorial section of search engines are more trusted by buyers, I decided to continue their marketing efforts. However, this time I would be handling the SEO project using available research on the subject.
Search Engine Optimization Strategies
Before starting a SEO project it is important to familiarize yourself with words like keywords, click through rate, and metatags, that are part of the search engine vocabulary. Keywords are those words or phrases that one uses to perform a search. Using various keyword traffic and keyword competition estimators a list of keywords should be compiled for optimization. With this list of keywords one can begin onsite and offsite optimization. Onsite optimization involves adding the keywords in the content, title tags, meta tags, and even part of the domain address when possible. Off site optimization is often referred to as link building and this is done by requesting inbound links from other webmasters, submitting press releases, and submitting articles. The primary goal of the search engine optimizer is to make all components of the website search engine friendly. The difficulty is trying to gain high page rank on each search engine when they all have different search algorithms. Just because you rank high on one search engine does not mean that you will rank the same on the other. For example if you search for “seasonal rentals” using Google you will not find my website’s listing, but if you perform the same search using Microsoft’s Bing search engine you will see Snowbirdseeker.com ranked among the top 10 results. “The main hurdle to implementing an effective SEO program is the fact that each search engine has its own requirements, which means that a Web site optimized for one search engine is not necessarily optimized for the others. Pages optimized for Google, for instance, should clearly and accurately describe the content, and cannot participate in link-exchange schemes designed to the site’s ranking. But the same page is not necessarily optimized for Yahoo, which requires that pages not be automatically generated or of little “value,” and not participate in cross-linking sites just to inflate a site’s apparent popularity. The many different requirements make search-engine optimization much harder and arguably more costly to implement. In addition, SEO does not consistently result in high rankings and therefore leads to unpredictable traffic. This is because search engines tend to vary their ranking algorithms on “natural search listings,” and in response, SEO specialists have to “guess” and adapt to ever-changing strategies and tactics to either maintain their positions or improve their rankings.” (Sen, 2005)
Keyword selection is often as important as actually optimizing the keywords themselves. For instance I use the keyword “advertise vacation rentals” to attract potential rental owner members. Anyone who searches for this keyword is likely looking for advertisement services and is more likely to post an ad than someone who searches for “vacation rental advertisements”. Instead this keyword would attract someone looking to rent. Both of these keywords could be useful since the premise and mission of my website is to help renters find rental owners and vice versa. On the other hand it can be important to know which keywords are having a negative impact. I used Google Analytics to monitor my visitors and their behavior to optimize the website for future visitors. Google Analytics enables webmasters to track metrics on individual visitors like keyword used, pages viewed, Time spent, and bounce rate. The boun ce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave the site after less than 20seconds. SEO specialists can eliminate those keywords with exorbitant bounce rates. Understanding how people perform searches is crucial to any web marketer. “Another example: If you are writing news releases for law firms, for instance, you'll want to know if searchers tend to use “lawyer,""lawyers," "attorney" or "attorneys" to search for a law firm. Or do the searchers type in auto accident lawyer into the search engine? Keep in mind that most searchers will type "website" instead of'Web site" (AP Style) in the search field. You need to incorporate those kinds of particulars into the Web content to be sure that your organization is found.” (Faulhaber, 2009)
PPC Advertising
Since I was frustrated with the slow progress that my original SEO team was making I asked them how I could get traffic faster. They recommended using Google Adwords a pay per click program that enables any website owner to advertise on search engines. This type of marketing is called search engine marketing SEM and I quickly learned that it is a very effective way to attract a target audience. In the table below I show a typical advertising campaign summary.
Campaign Name
Status
Clicks
Impressions
CTR
CPC
Total cost
Find renters
Active
25
273
10.92%
$0.13
$3.25
Operation of Adwords programs is fairly straight forward, but you quickly learn there are many tools and factors that can affect your campaign’s success. The above table shows various performance statistics on a text advertisement. Clicks are the number of times a search engine user actually clicks on your advert. Impressions are the number of times that the advertisement was shown in the results list. The Click through rate CTR is impressions divided by clicks. Since this is a pay per click program there is no charge for impressions that do not result in clicks. I set my maximum cost per click CPC at $0.15 and I learned that Google’s software only charges you one cent above the next highest bidder. In the above table there is a charge of $0.13 CPC which means that my closest competitor set a maximum CPC of $0.12. The software also enables users to set daily budget limits. I set my budget at $3.00/day and th e program will usually stay at or near that limit. When using Adwords web marketers can create text ads using the following parameters. Headline 25 characters max then you can enter two lines of description at 35 characters max. each and finally the destination url address. Below is an example of an effective ad that produced the results in the table.
Seasonal Rentals by Owner
Find vacation home, best rated site
Email owner free for best net rate
www.snowbirdseeker.com
Using the keyword selection tool I choose which keywords prompt my advertisement to be shown as an impression. The program offers various tracking statistics to let the web marketer know which keywords are performing the best. I found that when I used this program more visitors converted and became members of my website. The Google Adwords program can be costly, but with practice it can turn profitable. In retrospect I learned that the best way to plan for a SEO project is to first launch a comprehensive ad campaign using pay per click marketing. This allowed me to find out which keywords and advertising phrases work best to bring traffic to my website. It also is a great medium to test out website performance in foreign markets because the risk and investment are minimal. For instance during one advertising campaign in Canada I learned that one rental owner could not pay the membership fee because the Paypal payment portal was not set up to accept Canadian addresses. My experience as a web entrepreneur has taught me that the best way to uncover issues with websites is to use PPC advertising and listen for customer feedback.
Foreign Market SEO
International marketers for multinational corporations need to be aware that while they may be optimizing their website in the domestic market the same website will not rank the same internationally. Mark Jackson of Search Engine Watch says “If you were searching while in Canada, on google.ca, Google figures that domains with .ca might be a better result for you than .com. The top three rankings for "travel" on Google.ca are Expedia.ca, Expedia.com, and Yahoo Canada Travel.” (Jackson, 2009) This finding is interesting because the Expedia.com page has many times more indexed links than Expedia.ca. Under normal circumstances Google would place a higher rank on the site with higher indexed pages and better title tags, but in this case Google believes the better result is the .ca domain.
Business executives are notorious for cutting costs, so it is not surprising to learn of their multidomestic approach to website marketing. Some website executives only offer their content stating that adding content in a foreign language would be expensive. The leading international marketers will seek access to every foreign market regardless of language. “One researcher suggests that if a Web site does not have at least multiple languages, a company is losing sales. It is the company’s responsibility to bridge the language and cultural gap; the customer will not bother—he or she will simply go to a site that speaks his or her language. As discussed, culture does count, and as competition increases, a country-specific Web site may make the difference between success and failure.” (O’keefe,2002) It is possible that you may be able to achieve some sales in foreign markets using an English only website, but gradual ly this will affect customer repurchase loyalty. International marketers cannot expect that simply optimizing their website in the foreign markets language will protect them from foreign litigation. Companies must also be aware that 1st amendment rights are not universal in each country. International marketers should be familiar with the political and legal environment of each country that they are entering with their website’s services.
White Hat vs. Black Hat SEO
With a basic knowledge of search engine optimization one only needs to study white hat vs. black hat SEO before executing the project. Essentially white hat optimizers do so ethically and are not trying to mislead their visitors or the search engines. On the other hand black hat SEO practitioners manipulate data, keywords, html code, and they create pages not visible to humans that are to boost a site’s rank. Using white hat practices and avoiding most black hat practices will usually be the best strategy to rank well and avoid too much attention from search engine management. “However, certain SEO techniques directly violate the guidelines published by the search engines. While the specific guidelines vary a bit, they can all be summed up as: show the same content to search engines as you show to users. Failure to conform to search engine guidelines can lead to penalties, such as worse placement in the SERPs or an outright ban from the search engine.” (Malaga, 2008) Early black hat SEO specialists used html text that was the same color as the background to boost ranking on the search engines, while showing human visitors a different message. Search engines quickly caught on to this behavior and penalized sites for using the practice. Black hat practitioners also set up hundreds and sometimes thousands of blogs with a link to their website and then they would continually ping the blogs causing indexing spiders to crawl the blogs and rank the linked site higher. This practice is still in use today by white hat professionals who might create 20 blogs and ping them only when a legitimate update has been made to the website. The field of search engine optimization is like any industry in that ultimately ethical conduct will be rewarded.
I described and introduced search engine optimization and website marketing. I analyzed data from my own pay per click advertising campaign. Based on the results I was able to conclude that SEM or PPC marketing should receive more marketing budget than SEO efforts. Since SEO could not produce consistent high rankings on all of the search engines at once web marketers should continue relying on their Google Adwords program to target their customers. However, this does not mean that SEO should be discarded because my findings suggest that users trust the listings in the editorial section of the search engine results over those in the sponsored advertisement field. Furthermore, listings with high ranks in the editorial section bring traffic for free. I discovered the best way to create a SEO plan is to first run a pay per click ad campaign to learn which keywords and phrases work best. My research also revealed that domain extensions are very important when marketing internationally. As a result of my SEO efforts I have tripled site traffic. International marketers that plan to sell their products abroad need to apply international marketing principles to all aspects of their business including website design. In web search engine marketing if you are not appearing you are disappearing.
References:
1.
Optimal Search Engine Marketing Strategy.
Sen, Ravi 1 rsen@cgsb.tamu.edu
International Journal of Electronic Commerce; Fall2005, Vol. 10 Issue 1, p9-25, 17p
2.
Working words: SEO style for search-engine optimization.
Faulhaber, Patricia
Public Relations Tactics; Feb2009, Vol. 16 Issue 2, p19-19, 1p
3.
Worst Practices in Search Engine Optimization.
MALAGA, ROSS A. 1 malagar@mail.montclair.edu
Communications of the ACM; Dec2008, Vol. 51 Issue 12, p147-150, 4p, 2 diagrams
4.
International SEO Challenges and Tips
by mark jackson
http://searchenginewatch.com/3632897
Retrieved on 10/28/09
5.
Patrick Y. K. Chau, Melissa Cole, Anne P. Massey, Mitzi Montoya-Weiss, and Robert O’Keefe, “Cultural Differences in the On-Line Behavior of Consumers,” Communications of the ACM 45, no. 10 (2002), pp. 138–43.
