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Tuesday, 25 November 2014

International SEO: Multilingual and Multiregional Deep Dive Part 1

International SEO which is also known as multinational or global SEO is a part of an advanced SEO tactics. If you got an opportunity to run a multinational SEO campaign, you must be one of the few lucky SEOs. If not, then there is still an opportunity to come. What exactly a multinational SEO is? Let's explore in today's article.

What is International/Multinational SEO?
International aka multinational SEO has two parts. Multilingual and Multiregional. Both are not only different, but also overlap each other. When a website expands the territories and start targeting people of specific region or language, at that time SEO professionals use these international SEO strategies. It is one of the most complex SEO practices. The reason is, you have to handle all the different SEO campaigns and related activities without messing it.

What is Multilingual and Multiregional SEO?
You might get an idea from the name itself. Multilingual SEO is when you customize your website in different languages to serve people speaking those specific languages. Multiregional SEO is a customized SEO strategy used to serve a different geographical area with region specific SEO strategies.

International, Multinational SEO

Key Benefits of International/Multinational SEO:
  • Expand the horizons of your business
  • You can reach a potential audience which are not a native English speaker
  • Go beyond your competitor
  • Diversified visitors & Improved conversion rates
  • Create a global Brand [My personal favourite :)]

Challenges in International/Multinational SEO
International SEO has various challenges including:
  • Local SEO tactics changes frequently. As you are targeting different regions, you have to be updated with such updates and change your strategies accordingly.
  • Targeting only Google won't work. When you are doing region/language based SEO, you have to target local search engines along with Google. For example, in Russia, you have to target Yandex. You have to customize your SEO tactics based on target region's popular search engine.
  • You have to understand the traits of market, culture and buying behaviour of the local people of each location you want to target.
  • You might need a local marketing person. In some geographical regions, still people believes in one to one meeting rather than placing online orders. For such cases, you must have a resource to satisfy this requirement.

A Few Important Tips to make your International/Multinational SEO Campaign successful
  • Perform thorough linguistic research and understand the region, culture, local competition and other factors.
  • Understand the localized market and its specific terms. In SEO language, get a list of region specific "keywords".
  • Write a region specific page with usage of the selected keywords. Don't just translate the pages into regional languages. It won't give as much benefit as expected. It's strongly recommended to write specific pages in the targeted languages using the localized voice and standards.
  • Optimize SEO attributes specifically for the localized market. 
  • Understand the local popular search engines and optimize the site according to that search engines. You can also amalgamate standard SEO practices for major and local search engines, but be very careful.
I hope this article has given you a brief idea of multinational aka international SEO. In the next Blog, I will share some technical details to show how one can implement a multinational SEO campaign in a website.

Ash Vyas SEOAsh Vyas is working in Internet Marketing field for 6+ years. Have experience in handling projects of SEO, SMO, SEM, Content Marketing, Branding etc.
Likes : Blogging, Learning, Networking, Traveling, Photography
Connect with the author via: Twitter | LinkedIn | Google+ | Pinterest

Tuesday, 18 November 2014

Are You Making Any Mistake In Your Marketing Strategy?

Probably a million dollar question in today's time "Is your marketing strategy well aligned with the current trend?" or "Are you making any mistake in your marketing strategy?" Let's delve this topic in this Blog.

What is "Marketing"?
To run your business successfully, the first thing you need to understand is to understand the "Actual meaning of marketing". In a simple language, "marketing is the strategized way to reach your targeted audience as and when they are looking for you [your services/ products] and convert them into a lead by explaining how you [your services/products] can make their life better. Once lead is made, the journey continued to maintain and delight your clients."

How marketing was practised?
Previously, marketers were taking help of a few activities, including:
  • Print media ads
  • Cold calling
  • Door knocking
  • Email marketing
  • Large network

These activities were quite good in 90s and before when people used to entertain such calls,emails and sales people. But, with the revolution in the technology, people changed their approach. They start losing interest in such sales approaches and started finding them irritating, disturbing and interfering. The audience start looking, comparing and reviewing things on the internet. The buying habits are getting changed and so does the marketing activities. It's the time to switch, or start the online marketing practices.

I'm not saying that traditional marketing activities are completely dead, but at certain extent it has lost its original impact. There might be a few industries where people are still getting good business from these activities. But the question is till when?

The world is moving towards the online media and digitization. Your audience is spending majority of their time on search engines, social media, e-commerce sites and similar places. So, don't you think you should target those people, too. Even if, you are getting a great deal of business from the traditional activities, don't you think you should target the other branch of people with various online and digital marketing activities.

If you think why? I suggest to read the failure story of Kodak.It's difficult to cover that story here so giving the reference link of the story http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2012/01/18/how-kodak-failed/

No matter how good position you are holding, you have to change with the trend. If you think old practises give you good results, do work on it, but, start making pace with the world by taking online marketing services. Assign a portion of budget to it and don't wait till the time to get completely failed and then starting from a zero.

If you have doubts or finding it risky then allot a fraction of marketing budgets to online marketing. Check the result and then take the next step. This is the right time to think again for the upcoming quarters of this financial year. Are you on right page or not? Don't you want to open the new doors for getting more clients? Don't you want to reach those people spending most of their time on the online world? Think wisely, think now.

If you have any query, you can reach me by commenting on the Blog.

*Image credit goes to omnistudios

Ash Vyas SEOAsh Vyas is working in Internet Marketing field for 6+ years. Have experience in handling projects of SEO, SMO, SEM, Content Marketing, Branding etc.
Likes : Blogging, Learning, Networking, Traveling, Photography
Connect with the author via: Twitter | LinkedIn | Google+ | Pinterest

Tuesday, 11 November 2014

SEO Tips To Market eBook on Amazon

Amazon is one of the big search engines in the world of ecommerce. Somewhere, it dominates the market when we talk about ebook selling. According to Forrester research findings, more than 30% of product search begins at Amazon from mid 2012 which is quite less compared to Google, only 13%. In today's post, I will share a few easy to follow tips to get your ebook rankings up in the Amazon. These tips you can use in other ebook selling website as well.

If you are willing to sell your ebook on more than one online store then the most important thing is, you should get your own publisher account on ebook store to get the most benefits of the platform. If possible, don't use the third party aggregators or distributors as it can reduce your meta date to the lowest common denominator of each store.

SEO tips for ebook selling on Amazon
Amazon has very good influence in ebook store market. Here are a few areas where I suggest you to focus and be precise to get your rankings up in the Amazon store.

Title & Subtitle
Title is the most important thing. Properly fill this field with the name of the book. Subtitle is a new field for KDP. You can add information to it, if applicable. Be precise, as title and subtitle has combined character limit of 200 characters.

Description
Use keyword rich description to get the best rankings. I would also suggest to use html formatting to make your description appealing to the reader. You can use heading, subheading, bold, italic to format your description.

Series Title
If your book has legitimate series then don't forget to mention it. As it's one of the ranking factors in Amazon.

Publisher Name
Never forget to add the publisher name. It adds credibility to the ebook and also build a brand for the author. It also helps to get rankings in search by author name. 

Name of Contributor(s)
If anyone contributed in completing the book then this is the place to give credit. It will opens a door for search by that author name.

Category
This is one of the main reasons to use KDP instead of third party distributors. Amazon allows to give two categories for your ebook. Use both and open another door of high ranking in Amazon search. It will also make you more fit for general search rankings.

Keywords
Unlike Google, Amazon allows to use keywords and use it as ranking factors. You can use seven comma separated keywords., So take complete benefit of it.

Practice above mentioned tips and opens the doors of high rankings in Amazon for general and specific search. Hope this helps.

Ash Vyas SEOAsh Vyas is working in Internet Marketing field for 6+ years. Have experience in handling projects of SEO, SMO, SEM, Content Marketing, Branding etc.
Likes : Blogging, Learning, Networking, Traveling, Photography
Connect with the author via: Twitter | LinkedIn | Google+ | Pinterest

Tuesday, 4 November 2014

Will Responsive Website Be One of The Ranking Factor?

Recently, the SEO market is buzzing with a news or rumor that the responsive website will be a ranking factor in Google SERP. Let's explore the facts on this topic.

At last SMX, Pierre Far, Representative of Google made a couple of announcements. One of them was to provide good user experience to the mobile visitors. He gave a vague statement on this topic. Most of the SEO geeks took it in a way that "In the nearer future responsive website will be compulsory". The fact is little different than this.

As per the announcement of Pierre, he was encouraging webmasters to give better user experience to the mobile users. One of the best ways to do so is making a responsive website. The other option which was completely overlooked by most of the webmasters is to make a mobile version of a website for the mobile users. It's an old day practice, but still effective in some cases. You should choose any one option to improve user experience.



Let's understand with an example. If you have a hotel website, people on mobile site must be looking for your address. At the same time, people on a laptop or PC must be looking for some good offers, available coupon codes or tariff comparison. In this case, both types of users have completely different needs. So the best option is to create a mobile version of the website with targeted design and content. Let's take another scenario, you are an online marketing services provider. Anyone coming to your website must be looking for the internet marketing related services or suggestions. So, both mobile and desktop users are looking for the almost same thing in 99% cases. In such case, the best solution is to create a responsive website.

What can be the expected changes in the Google Algo in nearer future?
The expected changes can be user might implement mobile user experience as a ranking factor. The reason is Google's one of the agendas is to provide better user experience. As more and more people are moving towards mobile devices and Smartphones for search, Google will surely implement it into the ranking factors.

In fact, Google has already given an indirect hint of this update in nearer future by the stated vague announcement. There are also a few hints like the added guidelines for Smartphone websites. GWT also shows mobile usability report.

As per the flame in the SEO world, I would suggest to take a step to make your website mobile user friendly. You can make it either responsive or mobile version to reach this goal. Don't wait for Google's enforcement, start providing a good experience to your visitors.

Ash Vyas SEOAsh Vyas is working in Internet Marketing field for 6+ years. Have experience in handling projects of SEO, SMO, SEM, Content Marketing, Branding etc.
Likes : Blogging, Learning, Networking, Traveling, Photography
Connect with the author via: Twitter | LinkedIn | Google+ | Pinterest

Tuesday, 28 October 2014

Google Updates: Gmail Inbox in Search Result, WebMasters Guideline Changed

Google is in mood of updates or makeover I guess. In the past few weeks, so many small and big updates it has announced, including, Panda, Pirates, Penguin. Last week, Google announced two more updates including Gmail Inbox in web search, webmaster's guideline changed.

Gmail Inbox Result in Web Search
Don't get confused or panic with the heading :) People won't see your private messages, Google takes care of security concerns as before. According to this update, if you are logged in to your account then you can access your all mails without opening gmail mail-client. A user can access all gmail tabs, including, Inbox, social and promotion directly from the Google web search or Google now. As per the TheAndroidSoul, users can search with any of the below queries to access their emails.
  • gmail inbox
  • my inbox
  • show inbox
  • get inbox
  • inbox by gmail
  • inbox from gmail

This update seems to be rolling out as a few users are not getting the results as mentioned. You can try in your Android. ;)

Gmail Inbox in Search Result
Gmail Inbox in Search Result

Another update is an update in the Google Webmaster Policy. If you are a webmaster, you must understand how serious it is....!! This update was announced by Webmaster Trends Analyst of Google, namely, Pierre Far. An official blog has been published on the same subject on googlewebmaster blog, too. According to this update, now Googlebot is modernized. So it will crawl websites as modern browsers. [People who are not aware of it, Google was crawling websites as text browser like Lynx before]. With the technology, Google has changed its bot as well. So the updated guideline in brief is, DO NOT BLOCK GOOGLEBOT FROM CRWALING IMAGES, CSS & JAVASCRIPT. The reason behind this is, Googlebot needs to crawl and index all images, CSS and JavaScript for optimal rendering and indexing of webpages. Google's webmaster has written the main point in bold as below:
Disallowing crawling of Javascript or CSS files in your site’s robots.txt directly harms how well our algorithms render and index your content and can result in suboptimal rankings.
It means, it can harm your search rankings and results directly. You must have understood the seriousness of the update. So take instant action. You can use GWT's Fetch and render tool to check how your website will be viewed by Googlebot. Previously, Google suggested to use the Lynx browser to check the same.

There is one more update deemed to be coming, will write about it in upcoming Blog. So stay tuned.

Hope this Blog added some value to your knowledge-base. :)

*Image credit goes to searchengineland.

Ash Vyas SEOAsh Vyas is working in Internet Marketing field for 6+ years. Have experience in handling projects of SEO, SMO, SEM, Content Marketing, Branding etc.
Likes : Blogging, Learning, Networking, Traveling, Photography
Connect with the author via: Twitter | LinkedIn | Google+ | Pinterest

Tuesday, 21 October 2014

Google Launched Penguin and Pirate

As Google announced, it has released Penguin 3 update in Google. On 17th Oct, 2014 Penguin 3 was rolled out. Many webmasters has seen major updown in the rankings. As per the sources, it has affected 1% of English search query. Some even got positive result because they were penalize in last Penguin and finally recovered their site. Those who are not aware of this term, Penguin algo is a spam fighter algo of Google which penalize websites with low quality backlinks. Point to be consider is that it's just a refresh of existing algorithm and not a full change.

Another update was "Pirate Update". After almost two years, Google has updated this algorithm. So it's a good news for those who got hit by this algorithm last time. This algorithm is to fight against Piracy. Basically it's to fight movie and album piracy, so not to get confused with other kind of websites.

Google Pirate algorithm is a filter which review each website and penalize those website which violates it's rules. The website cannot recover until the next algo update. According to this, if any website had penalized at launch of this algo then now they got chance to recover :)

To fight with the Piracy, Google has also started to showing ad and planning to show knowledge base kind of concept in search result. Let's get ready for the new changes.

Ash Vyas SEOAsh Vyas is working in Internet Marketing field for 6+ years. Have experience in handling projects of SEO, SMO, SEM, Content Marketing, Branding etc.
Likes : Blogging, Learning, Networking, Traveling, Photography
Connect with the author via: Twitter | LinkedIn | Google+ | Pinterest

Tuesday, 14 October 2014

The Basics of Google Analytics - Hangout

Rohan Gupta, Online Strategist at Google, conducted a hangout  on 30 Sep, 2014. He talked about the "Basics of Google Analytics". That video is private, so I thought to share it for you. Have a look at it and learn the Google Analytics basics.



If you can't acces above video, then explore it on Youtube. Here is the link, http://youtu.be/2LIp1sqocvA

Hope this helps!

Ash Vyas SEOAsh Vyas is working in Internet Marketing field for 6+ years. Have experience in handling projects of SEO, SMO, SEM, Content Marketing, Branding etc.
Likes : Blogging, Learning, Networking, Traveling, Photography
Connect with the author via: Twitter | LinkedIn | Google+ | Pinterest