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Many businesses have recognized the importance and value of localization.

The Internet offers unparalleled opportunities to break into new markets, but traditional SEO through localization techniques can be slow to yield conversions. Pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns can offer a quick and cost-effective way to break into new markets and increase brand awareness at the same time.

Target Your Markets

Even if you consider your products or services to have truly global appeal, it can help to focus your efforts on one or two target markets to begin with. Don't just go on a hunch, but research your target markets thoroughly. It's important that your products have a genuine appeal within the markets you choose but other factors can be equally important.

Getting the click-through is only part of the process. You also have to be able to follow through and service a successful campaign.

Consider Different Search Engines

Google is, by a huge margin, the single most popular search engine in the world. It has a global market share of around 84 percent but that certainly doesn't mean it's the only player in town. In some markets local competitors hold comparable or greater market shares.

In Russia, for example, Yandex is the most commonly used search engine. Seznam is not far behind Google within the Czech Republic and China still represents a huge stumbling block in Google's quest for complete world dominance.

Baidu is the most popular search engine in China and is currently the fifth most visited site in the world, according to Alexa. The Chinese search giant is often considered crucial by businesses attempting to break into that vast emerging market.

It's worth bearing in mind however that you'll need a local presence with a Chinese domain website and a valid business certificate issued by the Chinese government in order to open a Baidu PPC account. Learn more about Baidu in SEW's "Baidu Paid & Organic Search Starter Guide".

PPC rules may also vary between other search engines. So can rates and, even in markets where Google is dominant, local competitors that still enjoy significant market share may offer cheaper alternatives and a higher return on investment.

Choose Relevant Keywords

Keywords are crucial to any PPC campaign. The trick is to take culture, search habits and linguistic usage into account. If your foreign campaign is an adaptation of a domestic one it can be tempting to think it's enough to simply translate your existing keywords. Unfortunately, what works in one language is not always successful in another.

A native speaking translator and/or SEO practitioner will be able to help you brainstorm alternatives which should then be thoroughly checked using the keyword tools of the relevant search engines. The actual search terms used by native speakers can also be captured using various tracking systems and web analytic platforms.

Refine Your Copy

Just as your keywords need to be carefully considered, so does the copy in the ad itself. With just a few words to capture readers’ attention, you can’t afford to rely on machine translation. This can leave copy feeling stilted, amateurish or even downright misleading. Few people are prepared to trust an ad that doesn't read like it was written by a native speaker.

It’s best to opt for professional translation – or better still, transcreation. This is copywriting in a foreign language, taking the original concept and coming up with a version that’s adapted to the cultural and linguistic expectations of the target market.

It can be difficult enough to come up with effective copy in 25 words or so in your own native language. In order to successfully do so in a foreign target market you will probably need the help of a native-speaking translator who is also well versed in the creative side of copywriting.
Monitor Your Results

Once the ads are live you should monitor them to see how many impressions, click-throughs and conversions each one achieves. Even small adjustments such as altering a single keyword can have a significant impact on results.

There may be other tweaks that can help, like managing the scheduling of your ads. Time differences should be taken into account when dealing with foreign markets as well as seasonal and cultural differences. Even fluctuations in currency exchange rates should be taken into account. A small change in monetary values can make a large difference to your ROI in a campaign that relies on very small margins per click.

Often when I complete a keyword research project for a client, they ask me about keywords I may not have included, or they want to know what the relative competition on the keywords looks like. This happens often enough that I thought I would remind everyone that while research for SEO and PPC can go hand in hand, they’re actually very different.

First, think about what your goals are with each medium. What are you trying to do, and what constitutes success in that area? Next, think about how the keywords will be used. Where, when, how often?

Finally, consider what your margin for error is. If you don’t get exactly the right keyword, what’s the penalty?

What… Is Your Quest?

In SEO, your goal should be to understand the keyword landscape of a topic. What keywords do people search for, and what does this tell us about their intent? What can we learn from looking at keywords in a broader context?

For PPC, your goal should be to find the keywords that you can bid on. Which keywords are going to make you the most potential money for your cost-per-click investment?

You should focus on keywords that suggest a purchase (or goal completion), that represent a category area that is profitable for you, and that you can’t easily get ranked for in organic (most of the time – there are exceptions to this).

What… Is The Air-Speed Velocity Of An Unladen Swallow?

Let’s start with PPC this time. And no, I don’t know the airspeed of a swallow, laden or unladen, so I’d be thrown into the abyss. But I do know PPC. You’ll use the keywords in your campaigns and ad groups, in your ad copy, and on your landing page. You want to have a very tight correlation between each so that your Quality Score is high. This is pretty much it in terms of how you will use your PPC keywords.

For SEO, you’ll use these keywords as the foundation of everything that you do. Ideally, you’ll correlate your existing content on your website with them, find the gaps, and decide if you want to create additional content to fill those gaps. You’ll identify a focus keyword or two for each page on the website, and correlate the meta tags, title, and content to match the focus keyword. You’ll also use those keywords to track and benchmark your ranking progress. I’ve created a handy image below that explains this.

Understand The Margin Of Error For SEO & PPC Keywords

In SEO, your margin for error is very large. If you use a keyword in a way that just doesn’t work, you’ll adjust it and try again. You may find yourself ranking for or getting traffic for keywords you didn’t think about. Those are a bonus, and you can just add them into your reports as needed.

You’ll also want to refresh your keyword research every now and then to make sure there aren’t new advances, technologies, products or ideas that weren’t popular when you first did your research. Since SEO doesn’t cost a fee per keyword, you won’t (or you shouldn’t) shy away from high competition words that you may not get. It doesn’t hurt you at all to continue competing for those, and if anything, it makes it easier to qualify for many longer tail keywords.

Plus, on the user experience side, it makes your site much cleaner, because instead of having headings like “Wedding Accessories for Dog Ring Bearers”, you can stick with “Wedding Accessories” or the more specific but still high volume “Ring Bearer Pillows”. It’s important to adjust the depth of the keyword to the depth of the site, with top level pages using broader keywords and sub-categories being much more specific.

Conversely, the margin for error in PPC is small. Every mistake costs you money. Every keyword that you bid on puts you in direct monetary competition with other sites. You need to go over your keywords with a fine tooth comb, cutting out any that aren’t working, adding negatives, expanding to new opportunities, and always with one eye on the cost per click and the other on the Quality Score.

You need to make sure your keywords are tightly categorized by theme, that your ad copy is performing as well as it possibly can, and that your tight ad group/keyword strategy extends to your landing page and the way keywords are used on it. The efforts must be meticulous and calculated.

So the next time you are tempted to ask your consultant why they didn’t include competition metrics in an SEO keyword list, or why PPC categories are done by keyword rather than intent, think about the differences between the two mediums. And remember that just because data is available, it doesn’t mean it is necessarily useful in all contexts.

New to SEO? Need to polish up your knowledge? The Beginner's Guide to SEO has been read over 1 million times and provides comprehensive information you need to get on the road to professional quality SEO.

Download the PDF version of the SEO Moz's Beginner's Guide to SEO

No matter how advanced you are in your link building career, there’s always room to take things to the next level.  So if you feel like you’re stuck in a blog commenting rut or you’ve hit an article submission wall, try out any of the following advanced Link Building Techniques to improve your site’s performance:

On-Site Promotions

Technical Link Building

Social Media

Content Marketing

Expanding Your Web Presence

Over the past few days, even as far back as last Friday, I noticed a lot of chatter on a possible Google update. So yesterday, after returning from my family vacation, I emailed Google to confirm that an update was indeed happening. Shortly after receiving my email, they replied that they just confirmed it via Twitter.

Google said they rolled out a minor Panda refresh this past Monday on August 20th. This refresh only impacted less than 1% of search queries according to Google. The previous Panda refresh was a month prior on July 24th.

I did receive emails from a few people who asked me to verify that this was a Panda refresh. Because they saw changes on their Panda penalized (pandalized) sites and wanted to know if they finally broke out of that penalty.

I'm proud to say that I've never been responsible for a site that has been punished by any of the Google Panda/Penguin updates.

I've seen my fair share of Google fallout though, usually brought forth by someone after they've seen their traffic tank. They don't know what happened, why, or much less how to fix it.

Truth be told, I'm surprised by how often I've been presented with this scenario. Every single time it's boiled down to using bad SEO or outdated SEO tactics that they consider tried and true but are no longer valid.

While we must be aware, and understand, things like Google Panda/Penguin and other major changes in the algorithms, if we focus on doing “good marketing”, all other things should fall in line, and major algorithm changes shouldn’t be a concern.
Here are 10 old SEO methods that I've seen come across my desk in the past two weeks and how you can do better.
1. Article Submissions

If the word "EzineArticles" falls out of your mouth when you start talking about your SEO, you should just stop right there. Even before the Panda update, this really wasn't the best use of your time and essentially was just a way to get some quick links back to your site.

Get this through your head: link building isn’t easy. It, like all things in optimization, takes time and effort.

Instead of going after easy links, why not work on building relationships with bloggers and work on writing guest posts that can add value to their site and community while benefitting you with exposure to their audience and possibly building a quality reference from an authoritative site.

Here are some tips: 8 Steps to Guest Blogging Artistry for Free Links, Recognition & Exposure

2. Press Releases Without News

Here's the thing, you run a business, and kudos to you. According to Dun and Bradstreet there are an estimated 23 million small businesses in the United States as of 2010. I'm not saying that you're not doing something that's newsworthy, but just existing doesn't qualify you.

Ask any public relations agency and they'll be quick to tell you that there's more to PR than just a press release. Kimberly Eberl, President of Motion PR in Chicago states:

Public relations is a conversation between a company and all of its different stakeholders. It encourages company transparency and works to the benefit of all parties. PR is about building awareness and leveraging relationships through various channels and markets.

Kinda sounds like link building, doesn't it? Press releases for the sake of links alone is probably just as close to a waste of time as article submissions.

Remember, no quick fixes. Do something newsworthy and good. You'll be helping someone else at that, in turn can help you with effective media relations and the links will follow.

3. Reciprical Linking & Link Exchanges

What is this, 2004? Link exchanges are just another way to try to take the work out of gaining links and earning trust by swapping links with another site.

Can you think of a more easily detectible signal that you could throw at a search engine to let them know you're trying to get cheap, useless links?

Think of a link as an endorsement of sorts. A link should mostly be used when it makes sense and can help the visitor by pointing them to additional resources or related material.

If someone makes good content then that will help your readers or site visitors, then by all means link to them. That works the other way around too: *hint* *hint*

4. Creating Thin Content

This bad SEO technique just doesn't want to die. I get it, old habits die hard. But friends, it's time to move on. We already know that great content can drive great links. Here are a few questions to ask yourself when looking at your content creation:

    Are you outsourcing your content writing? If so, who is doing your writing? Is it the person most qualified to build out superb, link worthy content?

    Who are you writing for and why? Are you writing for search engines or are you writing to build an audience? These shouldn't be mutually exclusive things, by the way.

    Do you feel like you're writing the same thing over and over and over again and you're so tired of it because there are only so many ways you can write about whatever it is that you sell? You're likely doing it wrong. Sorry, but it's the truth. Writing can indeed be tedious but think of the question above. If you can't stand what your writing, what are the chances that others are going to think it's great? Will they think it's great enough to link to?

5. Losing Your Voice Through Automation

I'm not going to dive face first into the automated tools debate that constantly seems to circulate through the social media sphere. A tool to help streamline, disseminate content, and balance time can be just that, a tool.

Tools all have their purpose and can all be useful given the right circumstances. That said, you don't saw a board with a hammer. Learn your tools. Use them, but use them wisely.

Social media, including your blog, is a way for you to build relationships. It can help you gain and keep customers or open new doors for the future.

Automation is often seen as an easy way out for companies that know they're supposed to "be social" but they don't want to be, they just know it's "important" for some reason.

You're not fooling anyone. Social media gives you a voice. Trying to take the easy way out is like putting your company on mute.

6. Ignoring Social Signals

Thankfully most blogs and websites nowadays have social sharing buttons of some sort. Unfortunately, many site owners aren't paying attention to these social signals, what they mean, or their potential.

Let's turn to Google's CEO, Larry Page, to help me tell you to stop ignoring this:

In a recent Google earnings call, he was asked, “If you think of the future of Internet search three or four years out, how important will the social signal be and how important (will) personalization be?”

He responded by explaining how he might search for one of his friends who had a common name.

    “For the first time, the search box isn’t really searching a string...it’s actually searching for that person that I know. Having real feedback from users...is very useful for search...we have a lot of those signals already, but we can always use more...we can always use better relevance and we can always use more data to generate that.”

7. Implementing Tactics without a Strategy

Truth be told #1-6 above all fit into this but I felt like this should have its own little mention. Why? Because this is a pattern by which a lot of people set out into SEO and it's why old SEO methods are still being used. It's also why so many people fail at marketing in general.

I can't stress this enough: plan out a strategy and work the plan! Test all the time. Rinse. Repeat.

8. Focus on Rankings

I was handed a ranking report by an SEO the other day which they had run for their client of five years. It was 30 pages long and tracked hundreds of keyphrases.

I asked how this correlated to their analytics and how the traffic behaved since the client had felt that their sales were down. The SEO looked at me and said, "Umm. I don't know if they have analytics on their site. Maybe I looked at it once… I'm not sure. But I've run ranking reports for them every month and they like that."

I know how alluring those ranking reports can be. I know you do work, and this is a nice little report that you can show your client or your boss that says "We're number 1 in Google for 'Blue Spandex Widgets For Sales in Wichita, KS'!!"

However it's our job as an SEO to steer the conversation from the old way into a more meaningful one. If we don't, we're taking the path of least resistance and we truly aren't helping ourselves or our clients.

9. Focusing on Google Only

You may have a problem that you're not aware of yet because maybe everything is going along swimmingly. Go look at your stats, right now. How much of your organic traffic comes from Google? What percentage?

I know you wouldn't put all of your retirement plan in one stock so why would you put so much at risk in your current life by keeping all your eggs in one basket. Create a diverse traffic portfolio.

Although geared towards the travel industry, I believe everyone who is thinking about this could benefit from reading: Getting Serious about Inbound Marketing

10. Ignoring Design

I have one last bone to pick with something that a lot of people don't think of when it comes to SEO, but it fits and I'm tired of running into it. You know that website that you have? Oh, you helped design it? Yes, I see how that menu looks all cool. Flash, you don't say?

Your website can say a lot about you and your brand. I know a lot of people pay a lot of good money for a site, only to have it be ugly as sin, non-functional, or not search engine friendly. This has been going on since I started working online and it's not bound to stop anytime soon but I'm pleading with you to save yourself the time and money and headache:

The next time you go to build a site, hire a designer. Shop around. But when you find one that's good, trust in them and their design work. They do this for a living and you don't.

Guide your designer, but don't do the designing. You didn't hire them to just use tools you don't understand. Allow them the freedom to make something great for you.