Enterprise Ireland - eMarketing Event - Dublin - October 2017

1. International SEO
and
Content Clustering
Enterprise Ireland eMarketing Event
Using the Internet to Compete in International Markets
John Caldwell
john@creatorseo.com
061 513267
086 2410295

2. ✓ Physicist & Marketeer
✓ Multi-Nationals & SME’s
- Global Marketing and
Intelligence Teams
✓ Founded CreatorSEO/ABC Digital,
Intelligence Market and Research and
Experts
✓ Specialise in helping businesses grow
internationally

3. Some of our customers ........

4. • Introduction
• The Search Landscape and how Search Engines Work
• Content Clustering
• International SEO
• Duplicate Content
• Tips
Areas covered:

5. Search Engine Optimisation - Introduction

6. Strategy
Meeting a need!
Relevancy &
Engagement

7. 4 Seconds

8. If your not on page 1
of search results
you don’t exist!
Perception is reality

9. Search engines – How they work?

10. What a Search Engine Sees

11. > 1.2 Trillion searches last year
> 40K GB of data moving every moment

12. Artificial Intelligence – Machine Learning
RankBrain
Is Google’s name for a
machine-learning artificial
intelligence system used to
help ranking

13. 13
1. You are being watched
2. Google learns from us
3. We create our own social environments
4. It happens invisibly
5. SEO experts use this knowledge!!
Search engines today!!

14. Which? - search engines!

15. … but it is usually enough to focus on the main Search Engines
• Ranking
= 2a+0.7b+12c+9d+2(a-b+d)-1.5e+2f …………..

16. … and let’s not forget

17. Search Pyramid
Social
Link Building
Keyword Research &
Targeting
Accessible Quality Content
Bring all this together with intelligence

18. The search demand curve
Source: SEOMoz
1 2 3-4 4+

19. What is Google looking for?

20. You need to think like Google:
Keyword relationships and
usage – close bonds between
keywords on each page
Date can be important –
most recent content
– if applicablePredict what you are
looking for!
The intent of your search
– information open queries
- location matters

21. Unique content
Google likes unique content
Does your content on a PAGE
meet all the searcher’s
needs?
Are you better at giving the
searcher the information they
need?

22. 23
✓Interprets your query
✓Determines your
search intent
✓Selects which ranking
signals match best
Rank Brain …….
Signals
Key terms
Freshness
Inbound authority
Engagement
Content depth
Related topics
………

23. No one way to DO SEO
- ALL depends on the signals!!!

24. Content Silos/Clustering

25. 26
Typical Site Organisation
Top / Home Page
Top level categories
Sub categories
Detailed pages

26. A content cluster is
the grouping of
related content
around key terms.
These key terms are
topical grouped on areas
or themes.
These are implemented
on your website / digital
needs

27. 28
Clustered Content Organisation
Top / Home Page
Move all pages up one level
&
Topic Clustering

28. 29
Clustered Content Organisation

29. 30
Make it easy for the search engines -
content clusters
Google in particular want to have a
good understanding of your website’s
content.
- what your promoting
- how it is structured
- layout of content
Optimise within a cluster!!!
Relevant Content organisation!
Traffic
SEO / User Experience
Content Silos
If you want to rank think of sections
rather than just a page.

30. 31
• Silos
• Relevancy
• Consistency
• Amplify your content
Target the right audience with
the right content
– as per your digital strategy
– planned in your roadmap
Content Amplification

31. 32
Content Example – Google.co.uk ranking
Term 1 Term 2 Term 3 Term 4 Term 5
Ranking before process >500 201 306 432 >500
Implemented Silos & taxonomy 145 61 114 92 345
Relevancy - meta / content 86 39 51 44 74
LinkedIn engagement 52 30 64 37 49
Consistency – links / language 48 27 31 33 37
New relevant content (daily) 3 4 2 5 11
Get feed for your site:
john@creatorseo.com

32. 33
Think like Google!
Content - Authority - Authenticity - Trust

33. Some key tools
mysiteperformance.com

34. Marketing - Google Alerts & Google News & Google Publisher

35. Internationalisation
Google.ie,Google.co.uk,Google.de,Google.fr……

36. Trading internationally
• Common situations:
• one country, several languages
• one language, several countries

37. Trading internationally
• What can be done?
• domains by country?
• main domain and subdirectories per language?
• sub domains?
• Geo targeting on Google

38. Trading internationally
• Best option domains by country
• creatorseo.com
• creatorseo.fr
• creatorseo.de
• but
• complicated to manage and coordinate
• one CMS for all or one per domain?

39. Trading internationally (option chosen by most businesses)
• Directories by country/language
• creatorseo.com/us/
• creatorseo.com/fr/
• creatorseo.com/de/
• One language, several countries
• creatorseo.com/es/
• mycompany.com/es-pu/ (Peru)
• mycompany.com/es-mx/ (Mexico)

40. Trading internationally
• Sub-domains or Domain name alias
• us.creatorseo.com
• fr.creatorseo.com
• de.creatorseo.com
• Search Engines consider subdomains almost a completely different
entity than their domain
• they don’t inherit most of the domain's relevancy
• … but are a more integrated approach than having a number of
unrelated domain names
X

41. Trading internationally
A new domain starts with
ZERO domain authority

42. Competition

43. Competition ---- Perception is Reality
• On-line competition may not be your traditional competition
• Different competitors in different regions
SEO is about beating your competition in the targeted geographies

44. Audience
• Know your audience
• Cultural
• In Mediterranean counties
- Internet use is driven more by social factors rather than anything else,
• where Nordic countries rely on the internet for more pragmatic, functional purposes.
• Language
• What are they searching for?

45. Keyword
Avg. Monthly
Searches World
wide(exact match
only)
Avg. Monthly
Searches US (exact
match only)
Avg. Monthly
Searches UK (exact
match only)
Avg. Monthly
Searches Canada
(exact match only)
Avg. Monthly
Searches Germany
(exact match only)
Avg. Monthly
Searches France
(exact match only)
Avg. Monthly
Searches China
(exact match only)
Avg. Monthly
Searches India
(exact match only)
hotels in dublin 49,500 1,900 18,100 390 590 110 10 90
dublin hotels 33,100 3,600 18,100 880 480 140 10 70
hotels dublin 18,100 590 6,600 170 1,000 390 10 10
hotel dublin 14,800 260 2,400 110 2,400 3,600 10 10
And that’s just English!

46. Local content
• Use local addresses and contact information
• Add local case studies/ testimonials
• with names and images
• Customise content for each country or market
• More relevant, increases local link building opportunities, and decreases duplicate content
• Currency

47. Design and usability

48. Basic requirements for any website
A web site is a bit like an advert!
• Clear purpose
• Easy to use / intuitive
• High impact
- you have only 4 seconds to impress!
• Optimised for visitors
• Target audience
• Easily found by the target audience
• Content must be dynamic and interesting

49. Design and usability
• Different countries prefer different design aesthetics
• Recreating your website in a different language may not be enough
• Get feedback on your site from locals in your target country

50. Speed

51. Duplicate Content

52. Duplicate Content and Languages
• Google and Bing have clearly said to keep one language on one URL.
- Proxied content
- Content served by a cookie
- Side-by-side translations
Can be very problematic for search engines to index a page in more than one language.
You want
1 URL = 1 language

53. Duplicate Content and Language Flags
• Hreflang tags are intended to ensure the correct localised page is seen by Google
• You can have multi-country targeted content in the same language.
- You need to combine hreflang tags + some localisation!

54. Ways to avoid Duplicate Content
• Use Hreflang tags
• Localised keyword optimisation
• Have local content … maybe testimonials
• Name, Address, Phone, Currencies, Google Business profile
• Localised HTML sitemaps
• Localised navigation and home page features that cater to specific audiences
• Localised images that resonate with the audience
• Obtain links from local links

55. Some Final Tips
• Create useful page titles
• Use informative URLs
• Provide relevant page descriptions
• Add your business to Google +
• Manage your site links
• Get a local mailing address
• Use a translator!
• Value proposition
• Call to action
• Speed
• User experience
• Relevant and most recent
unique content
Google shows search results based on
what's best for the user

56. john@creatorseo.com
John Caldwell
john@creatorseo.com
061 513267/ 01 5313061
086 2410295