Multilingual SEO

Google has recently done a series on the usability of multilingual websites and it got me thinking about multilingual SEO. How do you, in fact, optimize the same website for keywords in multiple languages?

But let’s start with the core basics. In simple terms, a multilingual website is a website that has content in more than one language. And such website has a lot of on-page stuff that is often done wrong. Let’s take a look at some common issues:

1) Language recognition

Once Google’s crawler lands on your multilingual website, it starts with determining the main language on every page. Google can recognize a page as being in more than one language but you can avoid crawler confusion by doing the following:

• Stick to only one language per page
• Avoid side-by-side translations
• Use the same language for all elements of the page: headers, sidebars, menus, etc.

Some web editors create code-level attributes automatically but these attributes are not very reliable, so keep in mind that Google ignores all code-level information (from “lang” attributes to DTD (Document Type Definitions) during language recognition.

2) URL structure

A typical pet peeve of SEO but even more so with multilingual websites. To make the most of your URLs, consider language-specific extensions. Language-specific extensions are often used on multilingual websites to help users (and crawlers) identify the sections of the website they are on and the language the page is in. For example:

http://www.website.ca/en/content.html

http://www.en.website.ca/content.html

http://www.website.ca/fr/content.html

http://www.fr.website.ca/content.html

This is a great way to organize URLs on a multilingual website because not only does it help the user, but it also makes it easier for the crawler to analyze the indexing of your content. But what if you want to create URLs with characters other than English? Here’s how to do it right:

• Use UTF-8 encoding for non-English characters
• Make sure your UTF-8 encoded URLs are properly escaped when linked from within your content

i.e. if a URL contains an é, which is a non-English character: http://www.website.ca/fr/contént.html

here’s how it will look properly escaped: http://www.website.ca/fr/cont%C3%A9nt.html

• But if you have to escape the URLs manually, use an encoder such as one from Meyer Web or look for others

It is important to note that Google directly extracts character encodings from HTTP headers, HTML page headers, and content. There isn’t much you need to do about character encoding, other than watching out for conflicting information – for example, between content and headers. While Google can recognize different character encodings, use UTF-8 on your website whenever possible.

3) Crawling and Indexing

Another common area of focus for SEO. On multilingual websites, follow these recommendations to get more pages crawled:

• Avoid redirects based on user’s perceived language: they could, in fact, prevent both users and SEs from looking at more pages on your site.
• Keep the content for each language on separate URLs
• Don’t use cookies to show translated page versions
• Cross-link page by page

Last but not least, please remember that Google does not recommend automatic translations.

By getting the on-page basics right, you will set a great base for your multilingual SEO in the future and, unlike so many others, you will not have to beg (in multiple languages) SE crawlers to come and index your content.

ANTS IN SEARCH ENGINES

Lets start about the basics of search engine works & its major component called the bots, robot or spider, which is a software that collects information about the website or any portal which is online and brings it back to analyze by major search engines.

This particular activity is referred as streaming, crawling or spidering. There are different types of ways how robots work, lets take an ANTS as a best sample. Think search engine robots as a worker ants which collects information, they leave the colony with one thought in its mind (find food). Well in this case lets refer the food is HTML Data or text, preferably similar or lots of it, and to find it the ant needs to travel an easy, obstacle and other paths like HTML Links.

ANTS IN SEARCH ENGINES

Traveling these paths, the ants aka robot with a single minded, carries the food (data) to its colony and stores in its anthill, which we call it as a database center. Like this there are millions of little ants exploring & collecting the data all over the Internet.

If a path is blocked or absent the ant stops and moves to somewhere else, Is there is no food/data its returns back with the empty. When we think of search engine, consider it and database, which holds the minutes of data that have been gathered from billions of websites all over the web.

When a Lehman or a surfer enters any term<puberty in boys> into the search engine, all the sites which is might be relevant for that term are bought to forefront. Search engines shifts through is database for sites containing terms like <puberty>, <boys puberty>, and <puberty in boys>. It uses the algorithm to sort the results in fraction of a second, a list of relevant sites & many that contains the exact phrase <puberty in boys> or the links from other sites which contain that phrase will be returned in results page.

Like this there are lots of things factors in the way, which search engines determine to their search results. In order to ranking you need to provide a HTML text for search engines to feed and the Links as clear paths for food/data. Keeping the ways always clearly for robots well fed and happy is your biggest priorities.

Want to hire us, Contact Search Marketing Inc.

Photograph via shutterstock.com

10 reasons people criticize SEO

10 reasons people criticize SEO

SEO is a polarizing subject. Bring it up in the company of the tech set and chances are you’ll get a debate not unlike one you might get when talking about religion and politics.

A lot of the criticism of SEO is misplaced while some of it isn’t. When addressing SEO criticism, it helps to have an understanding of why critics are so skeptical. Here are top 10 reasons.

1. They don’t know what SEO is. While the phrase ‘search engine optimization‘ seems pretty straightforward, it’s pretty obvious that many of the most ardent SEO critics don’t really know what SEO is. Case in point: Derek Powazek’s recent attack on SEO equated botnets and hacking attempts with SEO, a clear indication that Powazek didn’t really know what he was talking about.
2. They had a bad experience. There’s plenty of SEO snake oil out there and a bad experience with an SEO snake oil salesman could easily lead someone to believe that SEO itself is a scam. People throw the baby out with the bath water all the time and SEO in particular is no exception.
3. They’re listening to the wrong people. It’s easy to form a bad opinion of just about anything if you listen to the wrong people. Just as in social media, there are plenty of people in the SEO world who promulgate myths, misstate facts and make sweeping proclamations. These things aren’t always done intentionally but the harm is done regardless. Unfortunately, the people who are most apt to do these things are often the ones who have the time to hog the spotlight and are most visible to newbies.
4. They’re jealous. If the competition has great SERPs thanks to its SEO efforts, and you don’t, it’s convenient to criticize the competition’s use of SEO. After all, you’re better than the competition so any competitor who appears more prominently in the SERPs must be scheming, right?
5. They’re lazy. SEO is hard work. From learning the basics to staying abreast of the latest trends to actually applying your knowledge in practice, SEO, like most things worthwhile, requires hard work and an investment of time. Out of all the people who criticize SEO, how many do you really think have actually made a reasonable effort to see what SEO can do for them?
6. They already have great SERPs. It’s completely possible to obtain great SERPs without making a dedicated SEO effort or being an expert SEO. That’s because so many of the important aspects of good SEO (content, information architecture, design) aren’t exclusive to SEO. So someone who has acquired great SERPs but who didn’t consciously focus on SEO has good reason to ask what all the SEO hoopla is about.
7. SEO seems too complicated. SEO is a nuanced field and in many areas, there are no black and white answers. Much is unique to individual circumstances and there’s also a lot of myth and misinformation that needs to be sifted through. This can easily deter someone.
8. They experienced failure. There’s no magic formula when it comes to SEO and results aren’t realized overnight. For the impatient, a lack of instant results can serve as the foundation for SEO skepticism.
9. They’re master link builders. What’s one of the fastest ways to acquire new backlinks? Write an inflammatory post calling SEO a scam. Oh the irony!
10. They’re full of nonsense. A lot of the people who criticize SEO don’t really believe what they say. Take Jason Calacanis, for instance. He’s said some pretty mean things about SEO yet his company, Mahalo, is basically an SEO play. And uses some pretty aggressive tactics at that.

Have I missed anything? What rationales have you seen behind SEO criticism?

Trends & Predictions For 2011

Digital Marketing Trends

The announcement of the Google AdWords call tracking program validated this prediction, but the word “beta” at the end of the program indicates I was a little premature.

So what should marketers expect to see for 2011?

Rising Costs-Per-Click

Only three things are certain in a search marketer’s life: death, taxes, and rising CPC’s. With ad dollars continuing to migrate from the offline to the online world, costs per click will continue to rise for years to come.

To combat this cost increase, marketers will have to double down on match type and negative keyword management, creative testing and campaign structure optimization to lower costs and increase conversion rates.

Expect tool vendors to respond with increased automation, allowing marketers to succeed with these optimizations at scale. Advertisers will be forced to re-evaluate the right level of automation for their business, and put the necessary controls in place to ensure automation delivers high quality results.

Rise Of Mobile and Social Platforms, Fragmentation, And The New Rules Of Marketing

With an ever-increasing number of mobile and social users, now advertisers must deliver content on more platforms, in more formats and account for more contexts.

Advertisers will need to look past the website towards investments in mobile applications, Facebook pages, twitter feeds and even sites like Groupon or Google Places. Look for advertisers to increasingly convert users off site, whether via mobile, local or social apps. As they do, advertising campaigns will become tailored to the requirements of specific platforms, increasing complexity for the marketer without necessarily increasing revenues. As this shift occurs, early adopters will benefit from building a multichannel customer base at a time when acquisition costs are still relatively low.

Google Gets Social, Facebook Gets Serious

Look for Google to respond by overlaying a sentiment analysis on top of its organic results. This new, more social search algorithm will allow users to rate search results or even websites, and have user “likes” factored into ranking algorithms.

Google is getting more social, Facebook will get more serious. To expand the value of its ad network, Facebook will extend its ads beyond Facebook to participating publisher sites. This new ad network will enable 1:1 targeting based on demographic and placement characteristics, increasing CPMs for publishers and offering the first true challenge to the Google Display Network.

Search Engine Marketing Trends

1. CPCs Will Continue To Increase By 12-15% per Year
2. Cross Channel Optimization Will Become More Important Than Ever
3. Bing Will Continue To Gain Marketshare After A Short-Term Marketshare Loss
4. Smarter, Bargain-Centric Customer
5. Mobile Will Finally Take Off. (Several start-ups are working on enabling mobile ecommerce. Google itself announced that it is working on a phone that will replace credit cards.)

CREDIT: SEARCH ENGINE LAND

Deadly Sins Against SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a specialty that is intricately woven into many other disciplines: website design/development, information architecture, copywriting, website usability, analytics and conversion analysis, etc. Successful SEO hybrids are web professionals who are equally skilled in SEO and another area of expertise. For example, many search-savvy web developers understand how search engines access content on a website, and they make it as easy as possible for search engines and searchers to access that content.

Many SEO professionals work very hard to understand other disciplines to create the best overall searcher experience. Yet we meet with a lot of resistance. Copywriters don’t want to want to change their clever headlines (that often lack crucial keywords). Designers take great offense when you tell them that Flash was used inappropriately. Even landing page and conversion specialists are dumbfounded that we optimizers are trying to prevent a sale, at least from their perspective. Here are some of the top SEO sins I commonly encounter.

Sin #1: Eliminating important keywords

I have this beef with a wide variety of professionals, be they journalists, public relations (PR) professionals, information architects or website usability professionals. I constantly observe landing page professionals remove important keyword phrases from pages… after I put them in. And the tug-of-war begins. Who is a website owner to believe: the search usability expert or the conversion guru?

For search engines and searchers to accurately determine the “aboutness” of a web page, the page needs to contain important keyword phrases, and the page needs to appear somewhat focused on those words. I am not saying that web pages should contain a sea of black text. I am not saying to eliminate calls to action and other important sales copy. But I am saying to stop eliminating important keywords that successfully communicate the “aboutness” of a page.

Guess what? It might mean that some items will not appear above the fold. But that’s okay, because users/searchers will exhibit important finding behaviors long before they click “add to cart,” which brings me to my next SEO sin….

Sin #2: Not accommodating searcher behaviors

One of the reasons I contradict landing page professionals is what I perceive as ignorance on their part. All too often, I encounter a profound lack of knowledge about common searcher behaviors, such as orientation. Before users “add to cart,” and before users determine the product/service they wish to purchase, they are going to land on a web page and quickly ascertain whether or not they have: (a) landed on the most appropriate page, and (b) landed on the most appropriate site. And they are going to orient very quickly. In fact, successful orientation should occur in less than 1 second.

Successful orientation, reinforcement of information scent, and validation of user/searcher mental models ultimately leads to customer satisfaction, brand credibility, increased findability and sales. Keywords are a critical part of the scent of information and successful orientation. Landing page and conversion specialists might convince you to place more products/services to appear above the fold, but you are also doing that at the expense of critical finding behaviors.

Prioritization is a key skill of a qualified information architect, which brings me to my next beef….

Sin #3: Making sites difficult to navigate

With all due respect to landing page and conversion specialists, site navigation and relevant page interlinking isn’t exactly their forté. In fact, conversion specialists seem so overly focused on sales and conversions that they often lack the objectivity needed to construct intuitive site navigation schemes and labels.

I have seen global navigation schemes that are completely inappropriate for a site, all in an effort to get as many internal links as possible to important “sales” or “conversion” pages. I have seen “page interlinking gone wild.” I have seen keyword-stuffed navigation labels that are incredibly difficult to scan. On the flip side, I have also seen content orphaned when it shouldn’t be orphaned. I have seen links buried or de-emphasized that shouldn’t be buried. And all of this “conversion” advice comes from persuasion architects, landing page specialists and conversion professionals. Which led me to conclude that hiring a landing page or conversion expert to come up with a site’s information architecture might not be a wise decision.

Information architects tend to be more objective than any person involved in sales. They understand that finding behavior consists of browsing, querying and asking. They accommodate these three finding behaviors into site navigation schemes and other navigation labels, such as headings and titles. They determine the order in which information (and navigation) should be presented via a variety of usability tests and other data.

Information architects do not ignore or discount business goals. They try to make websites more intuitive. Their goal is to make task completion easier and more efficient. The end result? More sales, conversions, and findability.

Sin #4: Using tools vs. developing skills

A tool can be effective if the person using the tool has aptitude, skill and talent. A tool is not a substitute for skill. For example, I can hammer a nail into a wall to hang a picture, but I do not have the skill and aptitude to build an entire house. This is analogous to SEO. Knowing how to use various keyword research tools does not automatically make a person an effective search-engine friendly copywriter or information architect.

Don’t get me wrong. I understand the initial need and usefulness of many SEO tools. A keyword density tool can be useful for people who are not accustomed to writing with keywords and applying them appropriately on a web page. Some of the search engines’ webmaster tools help site owners pinpoint easily overlooked crawlability roadblocks.

Problems often arise when SEO professionals use these tools as a crutch instead of becoming true optimization chefs. For example, one tool will say that your content’s keyword density is too much and another tool will say that the content is perfect. And search engines have not used keyword density to determine rankings for a very long time. What about users/searchers? What keyword density tool determines what your target audience thinks? At some point, search-engine friendly copywriters should know how to write effective content without relying on such tools.

Sin #5: Misinterpreting data by taking numbers out of context

A number without context is just a number. A number taken out of context can lead website owners down the wrong path.

Here is an example that has been driving me crazy for many years. I know of a sales/conversion expert (who touts himself as an SEO professional) who created this word calculator. This calculator supposedly determines the number of times you use your company name on a web page. The reasoning is that if you use your company name too much, your site content is more focused on your company name and brand than on site visitors.

On the surface, this sounds somewhat reasonable. But what if your company name contains keywords, including the primary keyword phrase you wish to target? Or your trademark? What about navigational queries, when the searchers’ intent is to go directly to a website or even a page within a website? Navigational queries are far more common we might imagine, often up to 33% of search engine queries. Why would any website owner make it difficult for a person to arrive at the official company web site?

Bounce rates can be an indication of meeting searcher expectations (for a “quick fact” informational query) or not meeting searcher expectations. Increased page views per visitor can be an indication of confusion (poor navigation and labeling) or interest. Eye-tracking data can show the page elements (text, graphic images, videos) that people view and the order in which they view them. But people view content differently, based on individual scenario and user goals, especially during eye-tracking tests.

I have been a strong believer in web analytics and usability testing since the mid- to late 90s. But I am equally a strong believer in accurately interpreting that data.

Sin #6: Treating symptoms instead of solving the problem

Sometimes, I swear the SEO industry has become the industry of band-aids and workarounds. Is your entire site designed in Flash? There’s a workaround for that. Do you have a content management system (CMS) that generates an uncrawlable URL structure? There’s a workaround for that, too.

Again, don’t get me wrong—some SEO workarounds are necessary because the “powers that be” who are employed at the commercial web search engines do not yet know how to deal with the new and emerging technologies that enhance and enrich the searcher experience. In addition, software developers seem to discount or ignore crawlability and indexation issues when they create CMS software. Therefore, we SEO professionals find it necessary to use these workarounds until software is developed to accommodate web crawlers.

Nevertheless, many workarounds are not workarounds. Many workarounds are band-aids for genuine site problems. For example, site maps (both wayfinder and XML site maps) are still used as a substitute for a site’s poor information architecture and crawlability issues. A wayfinder site map is a web page that all sites should have as a part of defensive design. But if the wayfinder site map is the only way in which users can directly access desired content? Then the solution is to fix site navigation and supplemental page interlinking.

Likewise, XML site maps (also spelled XML sitemaps) are commonly used as a crutch. If a site has 50,000 pages and a search engine is not crawling all of the pages, the problem might be duplicate content delivery, substandard or non-existent third party link development, poor navigation and interlinking, poorly implemented URL workarounds, and so forth. A URL list is not going to fix those problems.

I have to admit that I found it very difficult to identify my top SEO sins, as each SEO professional has unique challenges. What SEO sins do you commonly observe? Let us know in the comments section below

Source: Deadly Sins Against SEO; Search Engine Land

Twitter Confirms And Details New “Discovery Engine”

We’ve been getting a lot of tips today and yesterday about the limited roll-out of a new Twitter homepage design, which gives the search functionality a more prominent place along with some additional features.

We couldn’t see it ourselves on our accounts, but now co-founder Biz Stone has confirmed the changes in a blog post, calling the new feature a ‘discovery engine’. (see it here on the Flickr account of Adam Jackson)

With the redesign, the search box has moved to the right sidebar of the interface (only for a small subset of users at this point), where Stone claims it’s a more ‘natural part of the Twitter experience’. I agree, and it shows that the company realizes very well that real-time search is a killer feature they should be nurturing and monitoring very closely. When you do a search, the results no longer appear on a separate page but remain on the homepage, and by default it only crawls the tweets from the accounts you’re following.

You can also save search queries and revisit the results at a later time. Since the searches you save stay on your homepage, this feature makes it a lot easier for people to keep track of conversations around a given topic (e.g. a brand, event or person) and also sort of makes the plethora of third-party monitoring tools obsolete for basic queries. We’ll have to see how this will affect the applications that are currently centered around monitoring Twitter conversations (take for instance, the Yahoo Sideline desktop app we covered yesterday), but it’s clear that the more emphasis Twitter puts on that, the less relevant they become.

Twitter is also going to display popular trending topics below the search box, which will in turn make it easier for people to discover what the Twitterverse is talking about the most at any given time. Stone reminds us Trends is in beta, but like he says, it has potential.

Meanwhile, a lot of people are still reporting missing tweets and direct messages, a problem that’s been lingering for several weeks now.