As high speed internet continues to penetrate other countries, many U.S. companies are now focusing their efforts on this world wide market. Google’s India site is now the twelfth most popular site in the world, and Baidu.com, a search engine in China, is even better at number nine. Companies can see huge sale increases from people buying their products from all over the world. Problems are created, for internet marketers, like TK, as people from various countries search quite differently.
Andy Atkins-Krüger explains some of these differences and there importance to SEO experts, in a Sept. 23, 2009 article, “Do Accents Really Matter in International SEO?” . He points out that in German and French searches many words require “diatrics”, the little accent marks above or below some words. International search engines treat these words differently. Some ignore them all together, but most have to take them into account as many will actually change the meaning of the query. Also, many searchers will not use the required diatrics in their search words, creating some often missed opportunities for marketers. Many marketers will make the mistake of ignoring the diatric, or ignoring the word without the diatric, hence, missing out on placing their website in front of potential clients.
The author is now hiring employees from diverse backgrounds, or educating current employees on international search trends, so these opportunities are not missed. TK sees the same trend of international search engine marketing increasing over time, and will now consider the cultural background and linguistic ability of the next person we hire. Many of our current clients are already starting to request more international search engine optimization, and these are rather small companies. They see the potential of worldwide customers, and as a business owner, increasing my knowledge of the online searching trends will become increasingly important.
Several clients, recently, have specifically asked about the many factors that go into helping a website show up higher is search engines. Particularly, on-page factors. The best resource I’ve found in a long time is SEOmoz’s Search Engine Ranking Factors resource.
One of the reasons this resource is so helpful, is that it’s from a survey they do of SEO professionals. So, you get a true view of SEO…simply a bunch of smart people trying to reverse engineer Google and other search engines. So many of these SEO’s have differing opinions, that it’s nice to get a collection of all of them in one single summary. It helps one understand that many techniques that SEO’s go on and on about are simply their opinion…rather than a hard and fast rule. So, looking over the survey results, one can take what ‘most’ seo’s think, and generally bank on the ones that they all agree on.
A few days ago we posted about Bing going visual with their visual search, well Google is getting into the game as well. CNN posts a nice video that gives you a sample.
I like the direction this leads. The more visual search becomes, even more people will use it. Search engine marketing will just continue to grow in importance and complexity…but with it, will be a more enjoyable, effective experience for the end user.
We at TK have long mused wither Facebook would ever really try and get into the search business. Imagine, if you will, doing a search on FB for a local plumber and getting web results that integrate with your friends from FB. It could deliver results that had your friends searches and input as a display factor. So, if 10 of your friends had clicked on Action Plumbing and given it a thumbs up (or Google’s Digg like placement button) then it will show up more prevalently on your Facebook search. That way, your friends kinda recommend what you see as search results…helping you make decisions based off their digital recommendations. Phew!
Well, if that scenario where to play out…the beginning steps may have been taken.
Facebook is now showing Bing results at the bottom of each search (has been for awhile, I know), beneath their stuff. Does it mean Facebook and Bing and going aggressively after Google (Bing already is)…well, not necessarily as we’ve described above. But it could be the start…we’re just saying…
Bing continues it’s steady and healthy adoption rate. It has just improved to over 10% by itself. If you include it with Yahoo, it’s recent search partner, it has over 26% of the total market share. Google is still the strong leader with over 64%, but the competition and with Bing bringing on cool new features like their recent Visual Search, it’s getting a little more interesting.
Much has been said about long tail searches, and the video below illustrates how important these unique, less searched phrases can be to your site traffic. It is critical that you pay some attention to them as an SEO. Sometimes as much as 75% of your overall site traffic can be attributed to the long tail phrases.
So, what is a longtail phrase? Basically, it is a search phrase that is longer and more specific, for example:
Cowboy boots= short phrase, with huge search volume (currently TK has a client ranking on the first page for this hot phrase )
Care for rattle snake skin cowboy boot= long phrase, less search volume
Add up a bunch of these long tail phrases, and you often get significant search volume.
Much has been written about the comparisons between Google, Yahoo and Bing. Many feel that Google still reigns supreme as far as quality search results. Others counter that Google benefits from their brand in this debate, and with a blind test, they argue, Bing competes very well. So, instead of giving our opinion, we leave it to you. Try going to this search engine blind test and see for yourself.
You will find:
– Simple search box
– Results displayed in three columns
– Each column represents Yahoo, Google or Bing, but all branding is hidden
– A button that allows you to vote for the best results for your search
– Branding is then displayed
Do a dozen searches or so and see what engine actually provides you the best results.
Yahoo and Microsoft have finally teamed up to take on Google. We’ve been watching these two try and dance together for a long time and they finally are making it happen- thanks to Bing showing so strongly as of late. Together they could claim up to 25% of the search market and be a thorn in the side of Google. I love it.
Below is a snipet about Yahoo searching for it’s identity. I agree with the comments made. Hopefully this agreement will help them clearly define part of their business- because they’ve been all over the place.
If you’ve talked to me for more than 15 seconds at a time, you probably know that I love SEOmoz. We’ll Rand doesn’t disappoint with another great video whiteboard on the future of SEO.
I love how they never take a ‘this is gospel’ approach, but merely ‘it’s our opinion…smart opinion, but opinion nonetheless’. I respect that, because that’s often the nature of SEO.
I agree that high quality content is not going anywhere. Happily, that’s a big part of what we do at TK. (phew!). Also, I agree that social graph metrics will play a growing part, probably a little bit more than Rand does. It will have to be refined as not to be blatantly gamed.
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