In many cases, a site will be aiming at a local, regional or national target audience with its search engine optimization efforts. On other occasions, the aspirations of an online firm may straddle national boundaries. Sometimes a site is hoping for virtual global hegemony in its sector. However, in these latter circumstances, its search engine optimisation will not be straightforward and its ongoing SEO campaign will have to tick a multiplicity of boxes for long term success to be a possibility.

Domain names considered

It might be thought that purchasing a .com domain would be a prudent first step in the drive to be a global giant, but that is not necessarily true. This is primarily because of linguistic and cultural barriers. For example, a site aimed at the Italian market may do poorly if it does not utilise the Italian language in its content. The average user in Italy will be searching for most goods and services in Italian. Therefore some authoritative experts are of the opinion that a firm with a global reach should possess a plethora of sites, each site aiming to exploit a different national market or area of the world. Domain age also is a factor, so buying a previously used domain could be the way to go to help your SEO campaign.

Acquiring the relevant domain names for an international mobile company could proceed like this, for instance. The following domain names could be bought for the USA and the UK: www.cheapphones.us and www.cheapphones.co.uk , rather than the .com equivalent. The major search engines will then recognise how the sites are targeting the various national markets.

Servers and ‘real’ offices

It may also be necessary to take further nation-specific steps. For example, it may prove beneficial to get a site hosted within the ‘real world’ confines of the nation state being targeted. A similar clue to the search engines can be provided by putting the correct office addresses on all the sites involved in the overarching corporate strategy.

The reasons behind this approach

This approach is taken to avoid duplicate content being perceived as a problem by the search engines. If it was not transparent that the different sites were targeting diverse national territories, the search engines may have considered that any duplicate content was worthy of a search engine penalty. By explicitly underlining the nation-specific element of the strategy, it is neutralising that possible threat. This could have been especially problematic if the same content was being ‘pointed’ at Australia and Canada, for example, where a lot of English is spoken.

Limited applicability

It always makes sense to have realistic ambitions and to make progress in incremental steps. This means that for most sites, the idea of having global ambitions is pretty much a pipe dream. Therefore, while it is useful for some site owners and SEO consultants to have access to this information, for the majority its relevance is strictly limited.

Going ‘global,’ then, or trying to retain international dominance, is more difficult than some observers may have believed. While almost nothing is really cut and dried in the field of search engine optimisation as the needs of each site are fluid and distinct from one another, it can be seen that nation-based approaches facilitate greater linguistic matching and higher levels of cultural sensitivity.

Often it can seem difficult for small firms to compete with larger corporations. They lack the influence, the resources and the economies of scale which help reinforce the dominance of bigger enterprises. The internet and search engine optimization can sometimes permit a small firm to obtain a small market share, but expansion can appear to be an uphill struggle. The severity of the struggle can be exaggerated, especially if a firm feels it is engaged in a battle against multinational corporations.

Multinational corporations can sometimes be held in awe by smaller firms. Recent globalising waves have in part been driven by these giants, which have sometimes made the nation state look less dominant than it used to appear. However, the discourse of globalisation has sometimes glossed over messy realities. Processes have often been very uneven. Furthermore, multinational corporations have often found crossing cultural barriers quite problematic.

Glocalisation is a term which illustrates the complex intertwining of the different geographical scales. The phrase originated in the Japanese business sector, but has since spread to other parts of the world. It is useful in that it underlines the persistent power of the local in times of rapid change. Small firms can take some comfort in the fact that their local knowledge and contacts provide them with a comparative advantage when compared with some of their competition.

A search engine optimisation campaign can help a small firm to capitalise on its local strengths. The extent to which this is possible is in part dependent on the sector in which the firm is operating. How much emphasis should be placed on the local approach should be the object of discussion between the client and the SEO company. If it is decided that there are possibilities in this area, proposals can be made to develop a strategy with a view to implementation.

The initial decisions with respect to how local the campaign should be will probably be entered into at the analytical stage. Once these decisions have been arrived at collaboratively, they can inform the keyword research. For example, a cleaning firm in Birmingham may have ‘cleaners Birmingham’ as a keyword, and ‘Midlands cleaners’ as another. A national cleaning firm might not place such an emphasis on those keywords. If a multinational cleaning company entered the fray, it might well not target these keywords with the same vigour either.

Sometimes multinational corporations have made costly blunders because of their lack of attention to geographically-determined cultural difference. For instance, large car firms have on occasion named models inappropriately for all the markets their cars were intended to be sold in. These expensive errors are rarely duplicated by small firms who have a clearer idea of the territories in which they are embedded.

It can be seen that many things work in favour of multinational corporations. They often have enviable marketing budgets and can sometimes negotiate with government from a position of strength. However, the forces of glocalisation can give astute local firms opportunities to prosper, especially if they obtain high quality SEO services.

Google are constantly trying to streamline the search process, and this means the search engine environment could be subject to change at any moment. So far, however, the search experience has remained relatively un-altered since it was first conceived, with one exception –locality.

It was once the case that webpages had to compete on a global scale, which meant that local physical shops would more often than not be displayed beneath global brands, even if the user has included a “local” modifier. Luckily, however, Google (and other search engines like Yahoo) have long since recognized this flaw in the searching process and today’s search is a lot more aware of user location.

This is not only good news for the consumer, but it also presents the SEO practitioner with a great oppourtunity. I.e. there are now local “niches” available which make it possible for even small local business to make it to the top of a result’s set even for broad keywords!

But how exactly is this miracle performed? Well a successful localized search engine optimization campaign involves a diverse strategy, and will implement many “traditional” SEO techniques but with a localized twist.

The first, and most obvious, consideration in this regard is page language. Whilst if you are targeting the UK market it is likely that your page language will be in English, there is an exception, and if you offer a Welsh service or product, you might just find that some Welsh language content is viewed positively by a search engine.

The next, and potentially most effective, consideration should be keywords; in terms of localization this will not only involve occurrences of keywords relevant to your business but should involve occurrences of your business local. This could involve, on a simple level, a “contact us” page, a more “optimized” blog section that carries geographical information, or even geographical terms within the url of specific subpages on your site.

If you really want to reap the benefits of a localization campaign, however, you will need to go beyond on-page occurrences of geographical terms, and instead you will need to take advantage of a variety of business listing services. Most notably, you should register with Google Local Business Centre, which will not only get your entity noticed by Google, but will give you a presence on a high ranking page, and ensure plenty of backlings to bolster your ranking. Of course local SEO isn’t just about Google, and Yahoo is also great when it comes to offering localized search results, particularly in regards to their Yahoo local service.

Finally, in order to monitor your success in localizing your SEO (which is especially important if you are physical “high street merchant”) you should use SEO tools such as Google Analytics to monitor the traffic to your page, and specifically where its all coming from.

Whilst locality is great for identifying a niche for your business, it is important to remember that local searching represents the “perfected” search experience, and therefore in the not too distant future all search engine results page’s may well have a “local” element

Once you’ve decided on a domain name and bought the .com if it is free, consider how and where your page will be located as this has an impact on how effective your search engine optimisation efforts will be. Search engines increasingly take location into account as a ranking factor, assuming the search user’s location to be home, and that they are more interested in getting results from nearby, even in the larger international search engines like Google – you can choose to get results exclusively from the UK, for example, but even if you don’t, searches performed within the UK give a little more precedence to UK sites.

These aren’t necessarily .co.uk sites, just those hosted within the country. Unless there is a sound reason to host offshore, it’s best to stay within the country most of your business will come from. A nice trick is to buy both the .com and the .co.uk and redirect to the latter. Buying domains isn’t usually that expensive – unless it’s one that someone already owns, in which case it can be very pricey indeed- so it doesn’t take much effort. Remember that SEO savvy competitors can register a domain very similar to yours if you don’t get there first.

Local directories will often only list your site if it is actually local. In addition to having the right hosting location, things like listing a UK address on the site and having links to other geographically nearby sites can help. A physical address is also seen as a sign of a more established business and will help allay any fears users might have about ordering from an unknown company over the internet. Remember, what people think of your website is more than half the search engine optimisation battle.

Ok, so, listing your location and choosing the right top level domains will help your local SEO. What about expanding? There has never been a better time for UK companies to sell to customers in the EU, for example. It’s pretty easy because goods are considered to be in free circulation within the EU, so while you do have to charge European Union customers VAT, you don’t have to fill in any customs declarations and nobody has to pay any extra taxes or charges beyond postage. And, importantly, the euro is high against the pound, so for a lot of customers it’s actually cheaper to buy from a British website, especially for more expensive items where the value of the product is much higher than the delivery costs. How can we do SEO to bring in this lucrative overseas market?

The answer is to look back over your marketing strategy and make it specific. If I were a French customer, what keywords would I be looking for if I were them? Don’t worry about foreign languages if you’re not an expert, but having a keyword rich page about international shipping is a good start. Terms like ‘international delivery’ and ‘buy from overseas’ will help customers who are already thinking about buying from another country find your site. What products have you got that aren’t distributed in other countries?

The answer is to look back over your marketing strategy and make it specific. If I were a French customer, what keywords would I be looking for if I were them? Don’t worry about foreign languages if you’re not an expert, but having a keyword rich page about international shipping is a good start. Terms like ‘international delivery’ and ‘buy from overseas’ will help customers who are already thinking about buying from another country find your site. What products have you got that aren’t distributed in other countries?

Make sure you correspond with overseas customers and build a relationship. Social media marketing is key to getting a toehold in international markets and the easiest way in is through existing customers. Encourage links from subject-specific hubs overseas, and remember that one good review on a site you’ve never heard of in Sweden or Germany might open up a whole new market.