5 greatest myths about international search engine optimisation

By Greig Holbrook, Managing Director, Oban Multilingual

1. Google is number one in all countries.
In fact, Google does not rule the world. In China, for example, Baidu is the most popular search engine by far. In Russia, the native search portal Yandex holds the majority of the market. Do your research and find out which search engines are most popular in your target market – often the popular native sites will offer more cost-effective marketing than Google as well.

2. Translating a site from English into target language is sufficient.
Think about a Chinese site translated directly from Mandarin to English. It would probably be confusing to read, and frustrated users would click off. The same thing happens the other way around. Content must be written by a native speaker, for only they can include cultural inflections and intricacies that help locals connect with the words on the page.

3. English is one language.
Actually, English comes in many different forms. Optimising your site for Indian English will require different keywords than doing so for Chinese English or Canadian English. This often has to do with cultural colloqualisms and locally-influenced misspellings. Optimising for the different Englishes can be a great way to draw traffic to your site.

4. Google Page Rank is a critical factor in back links.
Google Page Rank no longer plays such an important role. Relevancy of site-linking is now the key priority. So, the more thematically-related a site is to your own, the better quality the link…

5. An international SEO campaign must be massive in scope.
Smaller companies can get their foot in the proverbial international SEO door by starting off with an international PPC campaign that leads to a landing page in the target language, which then connects to their English site. This is a low-cost way to test the waters and see if that market is right for you.