ARTICLES ABOUT INTERNATIONAL ONLINE MARKETING & SEO ISSUES
by Mathias Levarek, Ph.D.

Articles are updated regularly.

11/26/2008 - Keywords Rarely Translate Literally

When considering “going global” - when contemplating publishing multilingual material online – when developing a true presence on foreign search engines, the accuracy of the keyword strategy is crucial and should be viewed as a top priority.

In fact, when targeting multilingual online markets, it takes much more than just localizing the content of your website into a foreign language and blindly translating the source code of your page (meta tags, etc.). Read more...

10/9/2008 - In today's economic challenge, a true international online presence is not an option!

In light of all the catastrophic economy-related news which “The Media” enjoyed so much sharing with us over the past few weeks, I am asking the following question: “Have you noticed in times of recession how some individuals are thriving in abundance... and on the same token, how some others always experience financial distress in times of flourishing economy?”

I decided to write this short article as I just received the most absurd feedback from a potential customer interested in the Multilingual Search Engine Optimization services offered by MSEO.com. Basically, I was speaking to a lady located in the New York area who was interested in promoting her website on foreign search engines in 5 languages (Japanese, French, Spanish, German and Russian). Although she obviously understood that her website would greatly benefit from such international presence, she was hesitant to move forward “due to the recession” according to her wording, which almost sounded like a mantra (she only repeated the word “recession” 8 times during a 15 minute conversation)!! Read more...

10/7/2008 - New websites must try harder!

Having seniority on the web is definitely a great ranking eligibility benefit! In fact, Google seems to love “old websites”.

Back in the late 1990s/early 2000, the Web was not as sophisticated as it is in today’s internet context. Most listings were based on the genuine character of the offer being featured. In other terms, when most information was being manually posted on the web, less “spammy” material was being submitted. Nowadays, over 50% of all new listings are generated automatically, and it takes Google many layers of database filtering through sophisticated ranking algorithms to separate genuine pages versus what would be better archived in the trash! Read more...

9/30/2008 - Buying Links to Increase Your PR: An Obsolete Link Enhancement Approach! Unless...

I will start this article by explaining in a nutshell the concept of buying links for those who are not familiar with such methodology. Basically, companies such as Text Link Ads have been selling one-way-links from websites featuring pages with a high PR. In other terms, “link brokers” syndicate a whole network of websites willing to accept links pointing to your site. The purpose of such links is not to generate traffic, but rather to “simulate artificially” a strong link popularity factor by having links pointing to your site from web pages featuring a high PR.

The higher the PR, the more expensive for link space. Furthermore, these link brokering services specialize in not only giving you the possibility to pay for a link coming from a quality page, but also you can target the industry of the website from where such links will be posted. Read more...

9/19/2008 - Adding Keyword-enriched content, a.k.a. “Kissing Up to Google”!!

Allow me to start this article by mentioning emphatically that NO pejorative connotation was meant by the title of this article. I am just proudly (!) quoting what my son once said when he was 10 ... As I was trying to explain my profession, his feedback had the straightforwardness and purity that young children can deliver: “So, you are kissing up to Google...Is that what you do, Dad?” There it was in black and white! “Google kisser-upper” from my son’s perspective, “international SEO expert” from a professional aspect! Regardless of terminology, this incident didn’t fail to amuse me and inspired me for the kickoff of this article related to adding content “just to please Google”!

Anyway, last week, I was in Amsterdam on business. I just love Amsterdam – a city called by some as “world capital of freedom” - a city where everything works – a city with unbelievable bandwidth - and, aside from being a European cultural treasure, Amsterdam is a nest of talented SEO professionals. I just love Amsterdam (did I just repeat myself?)! Read more...

8/28/2008 - Arabic Online Markets: Open Sesame!!

As you might know from having visited MSEO.com, we have a fully staffed office in Hazmieh (Beirut), Lebanon. Our Lebanese team is in charge of the development for all of our Arabic SEO campaigns. Over the years of working with such a talented team of multilingual professionals (most of them speak English/French fluently as well), I have learned a lot about the “Arabic online world”.

Our Arabic SEO branch is extremely active within the Arabic IT communities. They exhibit this year at the GITEX 08 in Dubai, promoting our World Tour Seminars (I happen to be the speaker at those events/SEO workshops). Our next four events, in November 2008 and January 2009, will be held in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, and Bahrain. I am not writing this in an effort to promote our SEO Seminars, but rather wishing to bring your attention to our targeted destinations: Gulf countries only. What’s going on with such geo-targeted marketing effort? Read more...

8/25/2008 - Forecasting Results for a Multilingual SEO Campaign is Impossible

When considering promoting a website on multilingual search engines, most people wish they could forecast the results: “How about if I add Chinese? How much traffic can I expect? How about Chinese and Japanese? How about 10 languages?...Come on! You are the multilingual SEO pros! You should know!”... regrettably, such “crystal ball” is not available to us. There is no technical way to assess such factor without guesstimating.... and even then, such projection would be extremely arbitrary and not professional from our perspective.... Of course, there are lots of unscrupulous companies in our line of industry using such “predictions” as a marketing leverage/sales tool. We do not. In fact, as the CEO of Global Vibration Inc., a.k.a. MSEO.com, I have clearly instructed my staff to refrain from making such unreasonable traffic estimation.  The protrusion of these forecasts simply dishonors SEO professionals: once again, there is no technical/algorithmic way to guess traffic regardless of the amount of languages combined in any given campaign. Read more...

8/19/2008 - Your website has been optimized.... Now WHAT???

Last week, as I was having lunch in a restaurant, a young man sat next to me wearing a T-shirt stating “ The road to success is always under construction!” I thought right away about how much this applied to all websites!

As I came back  to my office shortly thereafter, I spoke to a customer whose website had just been re-optimized a couple weeks earlier. This individual asked me to  forecast as per when he should expect to see ranking improvements. I was somehow surprised to be asked  that question such a short time after we had updated his site... regrettably, to my customer’s frustration, I had to respond “it depends...” as I realized that I would have to cover several variables involved in all SEO campaigns. This is why I decided to write the following article in order to emphasize the fact that re-optimizing your site is only part of the overall strategy that every single website marketer should implement. Read more...

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