A guide designed for those looking to, or on their first towards marketing their websites online via SEO and content at an international audience. Great entry level tips covering your online and offline profile, UX, using localization, cultural awareness and translation as well as basic strategies on taking your website global.

1. A Starter’s Guide to Global Search Engine Optimisation
Using SEO for International Website Marketing

2. The international online space offers some great low hanging fruit for businesses; but to get your website seen
in that crowded space you need an effective Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy.
Kwintessential have pulled together this Starter’s Guide to Global SEO to cover some of the critical steps website
owners have to take in order to gain exposure in foreign search engines and in new markets.
About this guide
This guide does not require a high level of technical knowledge. Without being condescending, we have tried
to keep it plain and easy to follow.
If you happen to be technically skilled and confident you can follow up on design and coding issues in detail.
There are links to other sources for those who want them. If you are not comfortable with coding you can still
find plenty to think about that will make a big difference to your business with some fairly simple steps. You can
pass the links to the people who poke about in the engine for you. Our guide has been broken down into 5
easy-to-understand areas of website management:
1. Web Basics
2. On-site SEO Keywords
3. Off-site SEO
4. Usability
5. Cultural Awareness
Why go
global?

3. Create a local version of your website
A local website means creating a standalone version in each of your target countries. This can be done in three
different ways.
1. A separate domain - for example www.mysite.es for Spain
2. A domain subdirectory - for example www.mysite.com/es
3. A subdomain – for example www.es.mysite.com
Separate domain
This means registering a new version of your name with the right suffix for each country, so that you own
www.mysite.es for Spain and/or or www.mysite.ae for the UAE. You need to buy and renew each separate
domain name and prices will vary widely. See, for example,
http://www.europeregistry.com/domains/domains-search.htm or http://www.afridns.org/.
Some countries have restrictions on the use of their suffix and might require residency or a local office address.
For example, in Singapore you will need to appoint a local agent to qualify for www.mysite.sg. To use .co.sg you
have to register with the “Accounting & Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA), IE Singapore or any professional
body”.
Domain subdirectory
This just requires a separate section of your existing site, for example www.mysite.com/es or
www.mysite.com/ae. It doesn’t require any permissions from other agencies as it is technically just a few letters
added to your own site address as an internal filing system. You may have restrictions on the size of your single
site but if not you can add several countries to one root.
01Web
Basics

4. Subdomain
This is a new and separate site in its own right but using a version of your existing name. For example, you
might have www.es.mysite.com or www.ae.mysite.com. Google used to consider a subdomain to be quite
different from the original site, which had implications for SEO, but the rules have changed and it is now less
important. There are sometimes technical benefits to having a separate subdomain related to Google Analytics
or the control of some complex programs, but from an SEO perspective the benefits are limited.
Subdomains are technically slightly more complex for a novice to set up, although anyone hosting your
site should also provide a simple ‘How To’ guide to help you get started. If your domain package has size
restrictions then a subdomain counts against the overall allowance.
Use local servers
Website ranking will be affected by the speed at which your site loads for local clients and by whether search
engines consider you to be truly local or not.
Speed may be partly a matter of the original website design. You can get useful tips on speeding up load time
from https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights.
Their research indicates that even a small increase in time reduces active searching:
add time
and you
lose searches
01Web
Basics
Gain 100-400 milliseconds
Lose 0.2 - 0.6 searches
When we say local, we mean local. Remember one country may use several
languages, or use them differently. If you want to sell to China which language
would you use? Would the same page be usable in Guangzhou as in Beijing? What
about Hong Kong and Singapore? Do your research into the local language.

5. If you are technically minded, you can engage with Google’s research at a technical level on
http://services.google.com/fh/files/blogs/google_delayexp.pdf . If you are not, it is enough to realise that all web
users are increasingly impatient. If they have to wait another 400 milliseconds they will carry out 0.44 % fewer
searches in the first few weeks, then 0.76% fewer as they are increasingly discouraged and alienated. If you get
faster later on it is too late – you’ve lost them and they won’t come back.
Local hosting will not always increase the speed of download, although it can if the alternative involves sending
packets of data through many different servers:
However, many search engines will assign a location to a web site depending on where it is hosted. Thus, all
other things being equal, a Norwegian site hosted in Norway will impress Google more than one hosted in
the UK or US. So local hosting will not always increase speed of download, but it should always increase the
amount of traffic trying to get to you.
Major hosting services and their server speeds/downtime are usually reviewed on comparison sites such as
http://www.hostsearch.com/review/arvixe_review.asp
You may also be aware of Content Delivery Networks (CDNs). These are linked data centres in different
locations that can duplicate content then respond to a request using one of several servers, choosing the most
local for the quickest response. They are explained in more detail and reviewed at http://www.cdnreviews.com
Use local addresses and phone numbers
Make sure your local website displays a local address and
telephone number. It is critical for search engines and users
alike that you are “local” in every sense.
Google Places is an online display board for local businesses
and listing is free. You should make sure your business is
listed there and link to it from your own contact and/or about
pages. There is, of course, a video to explain the service:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiCyQQ-67Vg
01Web
Basics
FAST FAST FAST SLOW FAST FAST FAST

6. Direct visitors to your local domain
When a potential client searches the web they automatically declare
their geographical position. It might be through use of WiFi/GPS (global
positioning system) or just through the IP address. An IP or Internet
Protocol address is a unique identifier for each computer connection
and has a known location. It is possible to turn off the geographical
idenitifier and to do so in Explorer you go to Internet Options/Privacy
and tick the right box. However most people do not do so. This means
you can react to a search with very localised responses. You can also
use different index pages in a range of languages.
On the other hand, you can’t assume all seekers from Italy want
the information in Italian, so make sure they easily spot a menu for
choosing their preferred language.
Use UTF-8 compliant CMS/Software
It may sound obvious but not every language uses the same characters. Even if you avoid Chinese, Arabic and
Greek you have to allow for accents in European language options. The standard coding to read all characters is
UTF-8 and if you use any non-standard software or content management system (CMS) then what ought to say
meaning Press Send could end up as just , losing you orders.
To make sure you get this right, the code in your header should look like this
Content-type: text/html;charset=UTF-8.
Incidentally, if normally you let someone else do your coding for you and you are not used to this area of the
site, take a look at other people’s by pulling up any web page on Explorer then going to View – Source. This
is a harmless way to explore the relation of code to display. You can get used to it without risking any nasty
accidents to your own pages. And you can see what codes and keywords your competitors are using, which
we’ll explore below.
01Web
Basics

7. Use the language meta tag
If you have a Spanish version of your site then you need to tell the search engines your header codes, but make
sure you use the right one. There is lots of advice on the internet which actually is wrong.
This code means the page is intended for Spanish readers, but it might actually be written in English:
Content-language: es
If the document is written in Spanish you need to use <html lang=”es”>
If you want the react to the language the client normally prefers you can try
<html lang=”${user.language}”>
You can find a lot more technical information from http://www.w3.org/International/articles/language-tags/,
which links to a standard language tag registry -
http://www.iana.org/assignments/language-tags/language-tags.xml - so you know what code applies to which
language.
Understand local search engines
Google does not rule the world. Make sure you research the popular search engines in the countries you are
targeting. Understand how they rank websites and what they look for when indexing. You could start a search
with something like “local search engine France” and quickly find yourself on a site like
http://barometre.secrets2moteurs.com/ and if your French isn’t up to scratch just go to http://translate.google.
com/ and it will translate the whole page for you.
This means you can do quite detailed research into any market
in any language. Which is quite useful, as more than half of
China’s searching is done through http://www.baidu.com/, so
you will need to make it look like this:
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=zh-CN&tl=en&js=n&pr
ev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2F
www.baidu.com%2F
Google Chrome offers automatic translation.
01Web
Basics

8. Keywords
You want your site to come up first when potential clients enter a question or key phrase into their search
engine. That requires you to match their keywords.
There are several ways to use keywords and it is important to select and deploy them effectively. What are the
keywords clients might use to look for your product or service? What variations or combinations might be
used? How many people wanting their shoes repaired would actually type in “cobbler”? How many would use
“heel bar”? You can ask which best describes you or ask which is most often used by your potential customers.
When one term actually answers both questions you have the ideal key word, but you will probably need to
use a spread to cover the bases. So the problem is not only what to say but how to arrange and deploy them.
You can research this partly by looking at Google key word tool https://adwords.google.com
You can also look at the source code of your main competitors (see above to find out how).
At least one of your keywords should be incorporated into a key phrase and one of them may have to be your
location if that is an important part of your service or criteria.
If you are looking for appropriate words or other terms for the same idea, then most people know how to use
a thesaurus, but obviously you wouldn’t use a word just because it is different. If nobody is likely to know it
and put it into a search engine then it is wasted space. More advanced research might even take you as far
as ontology tools, which are advanced software to look at how people ask questions and how knowledge is
processed into words using categories and structures. If you wish to go that far you might start with
http://techwiki.openstructs.org/index.php/Ontology_Tools. But don’t worry if you don’t go that far.
Let’s focus for now on some simple places to put keywords.
02On-Site
SEO
Keywords

9. Use keywords in page titles
Page titles help search engines determine what a page is about. These also usually show up in search results.
Make sure you use strong, relevant keywords. Every page has a unique purpose and titles should reflect that
without missing a chance to signal to the search engine. If you sell Retro Furniture in Paris then Retro Furniture
in Paris ought to be part of a heading on page one. You might want to say “The Best Retro” but not “Come to X Y
and Sons for the Best Retro”, because it has just pushed your key word too far from the start of the sentence.
Use keywords in your meta data
If your header code looks like this <title>Untitled Document</title> you could be missing an
opportunity. The jury is out as to whether search engines now take any notice of keywords in meta data.
However, we know some search engines still use them, and it costs nothing to take out insurance by adding
them here.
Above all pay attention to your description text. They should be short, sharp and enticing but must also contain
your chosen keywords.
By now you ought to know enough to be able to load our web site at www.kwintessential.co.uk using Explorer,
look up the source code and see why we have made it look like this:
<meta http-equiv=”content-type” content=”text/html; charset=utf-8” />
<meta name=”description” content=”Translation Agency (UK) for professional
translation services, interpreters, intercultural training, cross-cultural courses,
localization services, website translation and more.” />
<meta name=”generator” content=”Joomla! - Open Source Content Management” />
<title>The Translation Agency for complete Professional Translation Services</
title>
The red clues will help you. See how we carefully specify the character code then tell search engines that we
offer a particular range of services using the terms most likely to be entered unto a search engine by potential
clients.
02On-Site
SEO
Keywords

10. Use keywords in your headers
H1 and H2 tags are of critical importance. Your H1 tag (main heading) should state the main keywords of the
page and what it is about. The H2 tag (sub-heading) can then use complementary or related keywords as an
H2 tag can help the page rank even higher. If your main title were “Graphic Design” your subhead might include
sub-divisions of that service such as logo design or web design, stationery or internet marketing.
Use keywords in page content
Your website copy must also contain the keywords you use in meta data, H tags and URLs but the biggest
mistake you can make is to litter a web page with keywords that appeal to search engines and forget you are
supposed to be speaking to real people.
Opinions differ on the best percentage to aim for. You might want a saturation of anything from 1-10%,
depending on the number of variations you are using. If you have cobbler once, heel bar, once then shoe
repair once, is that more or less effective than using “shoe repair” three times? If you used it ten times in a few
paragraphs it would almost certainly look unnatural and read very oddly. Increasingly, web sites use articles just
to pile on the keywords and the actual content is not even supposed to be read by humans. This will alienate
any human who stumbles across it and can lose sales if badly done. The ranking systems of search engine
giants like Google are becoming increasingly sophisticated and are better at weeding out all the cheap tricks
used by black hat operators, so if it seems too easy it probably is, and not worth doing.
Use keywords in ALT tags
Pictures and images and just as important as words. As well as looking good they also offer some valuable
SEO-juice. Ensure whenever you add an image to a website page that you include an ALT tag otherwise search
engines can’t tell what it is about and therefore won’t index it. Also make sure the image is sized and optimised
to load quickly.
What is the ideal size and format for this image? Would the best ALT
tag be “watch” or “pocket watch” or “hunter watch”? How would you
know that? Use the advice above to know which words signal most
strongly to your potential clients.
02On-Site
SEO
Keywords

11. Content is king
It should go without saying, but often does not, so we’ll say it here – if you write useful and interesting stuff
people will come to read it.
Perhaps the most critical element of on-site SEO is your content. Make sure you post regular, quality content
that people are searching for and the rest will take care of itself.
Make sure your content is well-written, helpful and above all unique. Vary content from articles to blogs posts
to PDF downloads. Always add value to any visit, and they’ll visit more often.
02On-Site
SEO
Keywords
#content
#quality
#value

12. Register with local directories
Business directories and others offer a great way to build inbound links to your website. We have already
mentioned Google Places above. Suppose you want to find a directory in Finland. You type in Business
Directory Finland and this link is near the top:
http://www.ezilon.com/regional/finland/business_and_economy/index.shtml. If you are into Electronics it
shows you 16 firms operating in Finland, but note that the language of the site is English. How local can you
get? Should you be looking through Finnish eyes and wondering what Finns would enter? What are their
favourite directories?
Research and register on relevant in-country directories ensuring you use your keywords in link titles and
description text.
Acquire in-country links and consider links from related sectors
One of the best ways of ranking your website high is to acquire links to your website from others based in the
country or region you are targeting. This all adds to developing your website as being truly “local”. Directories
will help, and an outbound link to you from a number of directories will help your profile even if it is only a
search engine that reads it. But recommendations help more and getting a local source to put your address
on their site is a recommendation by implication. Who can you find to swap links with? What can you offer in
return? If your website complements other sectors such as tourism, health, business then target websites that
will see the benefit in pointing their visitors to you. This helps develop the strength of your keywords through
peer recommendations.
03Off-Site
SEO

13. Write articles for others
If able to, commit time to writing articles that you can publish on others’ websites such as blogs or information
websites. Publishers will usually give you a link at the bottom of your article to your website. But note what we
said above about the value of content. You can’t just post up a few hundred words of waffle then put your link
at the bottom. Focus on some quality information or point of view that only you could offer. Hone it, so you
stand out and your link is valued.
Create social media profiles
Use social media to create foreign language landing pages for your brand and website such as on Google+,
Linked In, Facebook, Twitter or You Tube. These show search engines you are ‘real’ as well as offering the
opportunity to bring in traffic and generate links.
Also, it puts a human face to your commercial presence. You are not just a sales force
but a familiar voice from a friendly dialogue. Again, you have to make sure you include
quality content. It has to be suitable for the markets you are developing (see warning
about cultural sensitivity below). If you allow others to comment you have to moderate
the responses to guard your reputation. However it can pay off once it takes hold and it
costs time not cash (unless you need to hire a translator).
Adapt social media campaigns
Once your foreign language social pages are set-up, use
them to develop your brand, spread your message and
engage with your specific audience in their language.
Translating tweets, for example, can gain good traffic as
well as demonstrate your ability to work in that country.
You weave yourself into the fabric of your local market
140 characters at a time. Here’s our own example -
https://twitter.com/_kwintessential
03Off-Site
SEO

14. Avoid cheap link building offers
Paying for links more often than not leads to a flurry of links from low ranking and irrelevant websites. Stay
away from such offers. If you do wish to pay for link building, advise your supplier what you expect, i.e. quality
websites (Page Rank 3 or above), in-country and relevant to what you do.
This is what Google has to say about it:
Your site’s ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to
you. The quantity, quality, and relevance of links influences your ranking. The sites that link to
you can provide context about the subject matter of your site, and can indicate its quality and
popularity.
Any links intended to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered
part of a link scheme. This includes any behavior that manipulates links to your site, or
outgoing links from your site. Manipulating these links may affect the quality of our search
results, and as such is a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356
They go on to give examples of the kind of trickery they don’t want and promise to improve their algorithm so
they can detect anyone using them and punish their ranking accordingly.
Analysing statistics
When you first designed your website you should have been thinking about where you want your visitors to go
and making this as easy as possible for them. How easy is it to get here and do it?
Once you have launched, you need to monitor responses so you can see what works and what could be im-
proved. Who responds to what signals how often? Where do visitors enter your site and from what sources?
How do they behave when they get there? Know where people are entering your site and where they are leav-
ing it. Try to understand why they are leaving and fix it.
If you trade heavily through your sites you may want to look into Google Analytics -
http://www.google.co.uk/analytics/. You will certainly want to know how you perform on any search engine
results page (SERP). Something simple like Site Meter will give you basic information free and is easily attached
by even the least technical site builder - http://www.sitemeter.com/.
03Off-Site
SEO “
”

15. Remember you want to know about searches made by local clients using local engines (see above).One of the
most common alterations is likely to be your keywords, which you can alter or reposition. They are most likely
to be an issue in markets using another language. An easy way to see how different keywords perform is to
create different pages and monitor differences in traffic and bounce rates.
Localise your keywords and beware of language variations
Don’t translate keywords carelessly from English into other languages. Many will get lost in translation and
become ineffective. Look at what people are searching for in their native tongue and use these to drive traffic to
your website.
Many languages come with regional variations. English for example offers different spellings and meanings
whether you are in the USA, the UK, Canada or Australia. Other languages such as Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic,
etc also have such differences. Make sure your language is appropriate for the local visitor.
03Off-Site
SEO
Localise,
don’t translate

16. Don’t make things hard for yourself or your visitors.
You can be impressive without being over-complicated.
Use standard fonts
Ensure you use universal fonts such as Times, Arial and Verdana so that your text is displayed properly. Some
fonts are automatically installed in every computer but many are not. If you choose one the reader has not
installed they won’t see what you intend. There are technical ways round this by installing fonts for them but
why make yourself a problem?
Different browsers and different languages could render your page unreadable or at least less impressive unless
your font is guaranteed universal. Underline and colour links to increase click through rates.
Analyse your site’s design
Sites that are first built in English have to be
adapted to cater for other languages. This
can cause havoc with your design due to text
alignment. It may sound obvious but Arabic
and Hebrew read right to left. German usually
takes up more space but Chinese may take
less, so all your design has to be moved about
to cater for this. A flexible design in the first
place could have allowed for such variations
by not boxing you in.
Ensure your website is localised
It is important that elements such as dates, times, currencies, phone numbers, measurements and payment
methods are all as local visitors would expect. There is no faster way to lose potential business than not
allowing visitors to shop, buy, etc in the manner they are used to. Christmas shopping in London may be heavy
on 3/12/2012 – in New York it would be 12/3/2012. Not every country has PayPal so check if they can use it
locally.
04
Usability

17. Use Call to Actions
A ‘call to action ‘ or CTA provides a real focus for your site – drawing people in and persuading them to commit.
It also gives you a very useful measure of success. But you have to prepare the ground. You might, for example,
identify a problem, persuade them it matters to them, persuade them you have the remedy then ask them to
enter an email address and press send to get it. If you ask too early they won’t be convinced but if you wait too
long they have stopped reading. So ensure your CTAs are clear, enticing, simple and explain how the visitor
will benefit from clicking through.
You might use incentives and you might want to alter the language to sound more urgent and compelling. Do
you want then to register, ask for an estimate, buy now? But don’t say your offer expires on two weeks if it has
already been up there for six months. Web clients are not that daft anymore and some CTAs can sound tacky.
Tone matters. Don’t appear to offer something free then ask for credit card numbers later on.
Design also matters so make it high, central, big enough, in stand out colours etc. Think about attractive
buttons to push. Check out marketing sites for good examples you can learn from -
http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/30691/5-Real-Life-Examples-of-Fantastic-Calls-to-Action.aspx
- but also see what works in your chosen market, not just at home.
One language per page
Avoid using more than one language on one page. This is bad for SEO and even worse for usability. Your
visitor needs to trust your website and this can only be achieved if they understand it’s designed and aimed
specifically at them. Keep all your foreign language versions separate but give them the option of swapping if
they choose.
Display language options clearly
Although your geo-targetting may push a visitor to your Spanish website, that visitor could simply be an English
speaker in Spain. They may not speak any Spanish.
Display the different language options clearly on every page, i.e. such as the top of your pages. Make it obvious
and easy to use.
04
Usability

18. Avoid flags
The use of flags to portray language options can be difficult. Arabic, French, Portuguese, Spanish and many
other languages span country borders. A Spanish flag may not attract a Venezuelan client. Israelis may prefer
Hebrew, Arabic or English. Political divisions are more fiercely expressed in flags than in something relatively
inoffensive like an international code.
To avoid alienating visitors, look at other ways to display languages such as simple text or ISO codes, i.e. ES for
Spanish, DE for German.
Understand local preferences
Different cultures expect different things from websites. Some like little text and strong images, others not.
Some expect all the answers to be on your website, others expect to contact you for this information. In a short
guide we can’t generalise – the whole point is to be more specific ß- so you could start by looking at the sites
dominating the local market. Get to understand the navigational psychology of the country you are targeting.
Or ask us about a specific market.
Get your cultural lenses on
Many elements of website design will be impacted when taking it abroad. In China dark blue is associated with
funerals but also therefore with immortality; red is a bridal colour for good luck. It is easy to be careless with
colours, symbols, icons or pictures. On your Arabic website would you refer to the Persian Gulf, Arabian Gulf or
simply The Gulf?
Humour is especially dangerous. The Chinese People’s Daily printed an article stating that the North Korean
ruler Kim-Jong-Un was declared ‘sexiest man alive for 2012’. The article was accompanied by “steamy” pictures
of the dictator. But the paper’s source was The Onion, a spoof website. They just hadn’t realised it was a joke,
although it would have been horribly obvious to UK eyes.
05Cultural
Awareness
ES

19. Research local use of devices
In some countries the majority of web surfing is done on a PC, in others on mobile and in others tablets. Make
sure your website is compatible across browsers, operating systems and devices to maximise traffic retention.
05Cultural
Awareness

20. If you are planning on taking your website global speak to us about
any of the services below:
• Translation
• Localisation
• Keyword analysis
• Copywriting
• Social Media
• Landing page design
• User Experience Testing
For more information on what we do or how we can help please
contact us.
+44 1460 279 900
info@kwintessential.co.uk
www.kwintessential.co.uk
@_kwintessential
http://www.linkedin.com/company/kwintessential/
06Going
Global