MivaCon 2International Search & Social Marketing and Emerging Markets: What Merchants Need to Know Presented by Anne F. Kennedy, President of OUTLINES Venture Groupt

1. INTERNATIONAL
ANNE F. KENNEDY

2. INTERNATIONAL SEARCH & SOCIAL
MARKETING
and EMERGING MARKETS
What Merchants Need to Know
Anne F Kennedy, President

3. La Jolla Shores 1936
Alfred Mitchell, California Impressionist

4. Anne Kennedy
• President, Outlines Venture Group
• Search marketer since 1997
• Author

5. WHY GLOBAL?

6. Massive opportunity!
2,405,518,376 – The online population World
Wide
245,303,219 – US online population 2014
2,160,215,517 – The online population
everywhere else
2.1 billion
1.5 billion smartphones

7. Global Competition
• “Marketers from outside the United States are
likely to compete on your home turf, and you
can just as certainly find opportunities in
markets outside the U.S.”
Global Search Engine Marketing
2012, page 1.

8. Commerce Without Borders

9. It’s Complicated

10. 2.5 Billion People Online
Languages online:
Spanish is the native language of
332 million people in the world,
- official language of 22
countries
- Canada, Morocco, the
Philippines, and the
United States.
- But fewer than half those
speaking Spanish are in Spain
Languages Without Borders

11. A Google World

12. Except In . . .

13. Yahoo!Japan Uses Google Results

14. IT’S MOSTLY ABOUT GOOGLE
Rule #1

15. These Are Regions!

16. http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1347922
From Google Webmasters Forum
Generic or International TLD?
Google needs other signals!
• IP Location carries weight for generic domain
 a .com hosted in Japan is a Japanese site
• It is a low level signal that can be overridden
• With Webmaster Tools & hreflanguage attributes
• Language and in-country links

17. What Top-Level Domain?
It’s all good to Google and Bing

18. Great
Build
Out

19. EACH COUNTRY IS A MARKET
Rule #2

20. Nuggets
Miscellaneous Markets
of knowledge

21. UK Nuggets
Separated by a common
language

22. • The UK is not on the Euro
• Ireland is not part of the United Kingdom
– But they use the Euro there.

23. Nuggets for Germany
• Germany, Austria and Switzerland are not the same country
– Same language, surprisingly different cultures
• Be as German as possible on your website to win the trust of
German users. Beef up your “About Us” and privacy pages.
• Allow for longer key phrases in German for your tags and text
ads, and plan to use many more one-word long-tail variations
than you would in English.

24. Nuggets for Germany
• Focus on the quality of your products rather than low prices
to impress German online shoppers.

25. Netherlands Nuggets
• Netherlands is not just Holland. Some Dutch
people are offended when their country is
referred to as Holland
• The Dutch love a good deal, so be sure to
make your offers and calls to action clear and
appealing

26. France Nuggets
• Understanding and respecting French pride in
their language and culture is the key to
success.
• Sixty percent of French online shoppers use
price comparison websites, such as
Shopzilla, Kelkoo, and local favorite, Acheter-
moins-cher.

27. Italy Nuggets
• Don’t make your website look and sound like a
party animal wearing a Hawaiian shirt.
– Italians are classy and sophisticated and take being
stylish seriously.
• Don’t get to familiar too soon, be formal. Stick to
the formal address “il lei” for “you” to show
respect.

28. Nuggets for Nordic Countries
• Iceland and Finland are not part of
Scandinavia.
– Demark, Sweden and Norway are – Over all they
are called the Nordics.
• Culturally these countries are surprisingly
different
– While the Danes are more relaxed the Swedes are
less so

29. Nuggets for Nordics
• Although Scandinavian languages are
similar, be aware of differences in popular
search keywords and trends.
– Written you might say that Danish and Norwegian
are the closest.
• Scandinavians are big social networkers and
YouTube video consumers. Be sure to include
those channels in your online marketing
strategy.

30. How Customers Pay Differs
• Italy: be sure to offer PayPal as an option;
many Italians do not use credit cards online.
• Netherlands: the most popular payment
systems are iDeal and AcceptGiro; PayPal and
credit cards much less so.

31. Use the Local Currency
• Miva supports

32. Paypal Helps Too

33. PAYMENT METHODS DIFFER
Rule #3

34. bloopers
Preventing
Mistakes

35. Don’t forget the slang
• The word Handy (slang for mobile phone) is by far search more than the actual German word
(mobiltelefon). Even related words like handyshop are search more or equally much as
mobiltelefon.
• Other German words used are:
Mobiltelefon
Smartphone
Smart Phone
Handy
Natel (mostly in Swiss)
WAP-Handy

36. The same word for two items, or?
• Another sample would be France, they tend to use the same word for Laptop and mobile
phone, or portable.
• But there is a dilemma as the word portable also means something that is transferable. The
goal here is to put the word in the right context and by that gaining the momentum needed.
• There are words like téléphone portable or GSM (quite widely used in Europe). Laptop would
be natural guess as portative, but portable is more widely used.

37. But they all speak English!
• In the Nordics “laptop” as a word is easy enough and widely used, but there are local words
not to be missed.
• In Sweden the most used single word would be laptop, but if you forget words like
“bärbar”, “bärbara”, “bärbar dator” etc you are missing out on well over 50% of searches.
• But non only that, we found that the Swedish are more likely to use English when they are
researching but their own language as they are closer to shop.
• In Norway you can not ignore “bærbar PC”, in Icelandic “fartölva”, in Denmark “bærbar
computer” and Finland there is always “kannettava tietokone” or “sylimikro”.
In many cases we found that those searching in
English are in research mode and those in the
native language are in the buying mode.
Important to know as 80% of searches are informational

38. Translating
• Then there are translations, if you are sending out translated emails then please respect the
user enough to do it right.
• The word “Launtilboð” (roughly translated “secret offer”) is not a word that I would use, not
even sure what they are translating it from? An easy way to understand if a word is being used
is to search for it on the local Google version, does it come up?
• In this case Google finds 2400 results (all from Booking.com) and the PPC campaign that
follows is actually about salary payment software (launaseðill).

39. Over
translating
A very very short case study

40. Over translating
• In some cases, English
phrases have superior search
volume compared with
corresponding phrases in the
targeted language
• Some page elements in most
cases have a nice way to
accommodate English search
phrases.
– Comments
– Jargon busters
Before you start your SEO work make sure you
understand the culture and their use of “technical” terms

41. DON’T TRANSLATE KEYWORDS
Rule #4

42. Language Matters
• Signals your target country
– but many languages shared by countries
• English content on non-English domain
• Use the hreflanguage tag:
– For multiple language versions of a website, each language must use
rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x”.
• A page in German needs to have a rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x” link to the
English and Spanish version and the English and Spanish version must
include a link pointing to the German site.
• Most effective on xml sitemaps

43. Using the hreflanguage tag
• hrfelanguage causes Google to replace English site
with specified language.
• When http://www.yours.com/ – contains the general
homepage of a website,
– in Spanish http://es-es.yours.com/ – is the version for users in Spain,
– in Spanish http://es-uk.yours.com/ – is the version for users in United
Kingdom,
– in Spanish http://en.yours.com/ - is the generic English language
version

44. Using the href language “x” Factor
• Rel=“alternate” hfrelang=“x”
• Use for pages that have no localized content
for specific countries
• Choose the default language used by the most
customers there
See Webmaster Tools Help
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077
And for xml
sitemapshttps://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/26
20865?hl=en&ref_topic=2370587

45. How to Find In-Country Links
• Open Directory Project dmoz.org
– 1.9 million listings in 46 languages, from Afrikaans
to Ukrainian
• www.dmoz.org/World
• Wildcard search
– E.g. for lists of directories in Argentina use
• www.web directory site:*.com.ar -Google
• Google Translate helps you find your way around
results in a foreign language

46. GWT Geo location
• Reads mapping in your Google Webmaster
Tools account
• Sets Results to that Country ONLY
– do not use if you want to target multiple countries
with a single language (not recommended)

47. How to Map in GWT
• Geo-targetable domains listed at Google Webmaster
Tools forum answer here.

48. FREE TOOLS HELP YOU
Rule #5

49. Avoid Duplicate Content Filters
• Use
– WMT geo-location
– In-country links
– Unique page titles and directory URLs in the
language you are targeting
• Rewrite your session ID’s!

50. General Dont’s for Europe
• Don't market only in US English
– Those that learn English mostly learn UK English.
• Don't use auto-generated translations without
having a native speaker edit your content
• Don’t make up you own country domain
extensions

51. What to Do for Global
• Do have someone who knows the target
language review your pages after insertion in
your CMS.
• Do set up Adwords in separate campaigns for
each country.
– Same with analytics
• Hreflang tags is great for small sites but you can
also geo-target in webmaster tools

52. More Do’s for Global
• Do use a country coded domain, sub domain or
sub directory (.de = Germany, .cn = China etc..)
• Do localize your content.
• Do get inbound links from sites in target country
to your in-country page.

53. It’s Great to Be Back

54. Seattle Washington & Portland Oregon, USA
anne@outlinesventure.com
@AnneKennedy
Anne F. Kennedy
President, Outlines Venture Group
& Author
Thanks!