International SEO Offerings and Experience

SEO Chiangmai is an SEO/SEM/Internet Marketing/Ecommerce consulting company. We've taught marketing, innovation and entrepreneurship, public relations, and organizational communication at the university level for 7 years. We've done IT consulting for 10 years and Internet marketing consulting for 5 years. The point is that this experience and expertise is brought to bear specifically in Internet Marketing where we do SEM (paid search/advertising) and SEO (site optimization and link-building).

Seven-Part Strategy

We have found a seven-part strategy works best:

• Keyword research, including competitor and market research
• Modern, open-source content management system and search engine integration (WordPress + SEO plugins)
• Content, content, content - updated, relevant, on-page SEO-ed content
• Social media integration, including Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube
• Linkbuilding
• Advertising (paid search and banner ads)
• Analytics, to provide feedback and progress measurements

Case Study - 140 Hours / 4 Months / $5,000 USD

Our most recent success story we engaged with a client for 140 hours over 4 months and achieved a 300% increase in traffic and keyword ranking. One thing that is an advantage is our cost structure, being located in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Our price for this work was $5,000 USD (at $35/hour). This client also conducted an ongoing Google Adwords campaign of approximately 1,000 USD/mo. This campaign is one crucial element of the overall SEO/SEM efforts.

SEO Scalability

As far as our scalability, we are a small shop but could take on new select clients. We are a little picky because it is important that the client believe in and adopt appropriate content creation activities, and be willing to conduct an ongoing Google Adwords campaign.

Copy Writing and Content Strategy Requirement

We can do copywriting if the client so desires, but the point is that someone has to create regular content. The effectiveness of our strategy requires regular (if only weekly) content creation according to specific SEO guidelines. We have had clients who simply do not take this step and therefore see only small, incremental improvement in their rankings, organic and paid traffic. This as you can imagine is quite frustrating, and so we generally "out-counsel" them.

White Label

If SEO/SEM firms have clients who are willing to engage with us on all seven elements of our strategy, then we are interested in discussing further. We can do all work white label.

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Panoramio is Image Sharing Integrated into Google Maps and Google Earth

Enough said. It is a free photo sharing site. Ok, maybe not enough. As of July, 2009 Panoramio photos are being included in certain Google searches.

A Different kind of Link

Panoramio is a different kind of link-building process. It consists of links that are essentially geographical and visual as the link is between an image (and more importantly, it's metadata) and the image (and more importantly, it's metadata) in the map interface.

It's All About the Metadata

Consider maps as merely an interface. In some cultures they are much less prevalent, such as Thailand where maps are not taught and rarely used, even by those with university degrees. Regardless, it is the metadata, starting with the geographic coordinates, which is valuable. Just with any link from a conceptual perspective it is the thing linked from (generally text but also in the case of images, binary data) and its connection to the to, namely the presentation of those coordinates and the interface in another context.

One aspect of Metadata is language. The suggested use of two languages in the metadata cannot be emphasized enough.

Objects on a Map are the Reverse of Links

In this sense, what is of interest and value is the objects doing the linking, and not the object linked-to. After all, the value of a map is not the two-dimensional surface, but the features displayed on it, the roads, buildings, etc.

In this sense we need to be very clear on the value we are providing (namely the incentive to click on the link which is an image, as well as the accompanying metadata (title, description, keywords and most importantly the links to our sites).

Early Days and First Mover

When it becomes easier for the thousands of images at a given map location to be made available, the some of the same metrics Google uses for PageRank and SERP ranking will likely apply to which images will be displayed in the Google Maps, Google Earth and other Google and non-Google mapping interfaces:

• Age of image (older is better)
• Metadata (title, description, keywords)
• Links to the image
• Social behavior (favoriting, ratings, etc.)

It is incumbent in this environment to begin deploying the most important images to sites such as Panoramio.

Panoramio Profile and Link

A nice follow link is available on Panoramio Profiles, for exampel this one for SEO Indochina.

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Today we turn to a new topic which is an aspect of local search, namely geographic or map search. There are several map tools out there (besides Google Maps and Google Earth). Some are overlays or information provided within a mapping interface (think of an object on a map as a result entry on a SERP), and some are the mapping framework itself where objects can be created.

Tomorrow we will discuss Panoramio which shows up on Google Earth and Google Maps and is the former. Today we discuss Wikimapia, which is the latter.

Wikimapia and Geographic Search

Wikimapia is only one of a few specialized local search tools which are sprouting up and are wonderful community resources including the Open Cycling Map which is itself a part of the Open Street Map project. Open Street Map is another opportunity for link-building.

Wikimapia, Maps, Wikis, Community and Value Creation

We believe that contributing to these wiki projects not only provides a useful function for our clients, but also develops the map resource itself, which is in our estimation a value-creating activity. Certainly there are network effects at work in any directory or social network (any linking activity, actually). With wikis the value of editing is not to be underestimated. It is the foundational activity, after all.

The work of adding roads, road names, and locations such as this Open Street Map Thai Language School in Chiang Mai is both engaging and value-creating for future users.

Thailand and other Southeast Asia Maps and Wikis

For places like Thailand, mapping support is less well-developed than in other parts of the world. Nonetheless, Wikimapia does a good job of supporting this geographical location. For example, My Thai language teacher's school can be handily located as follows:

• How to Learn Thai - Thai Language Teaching and Tutoring in Chiang Mai, Thailand

Excellent Language support in Wikimapia

In addition there is multiple language support (entries can be edited in Title 101 languages as of 2009-11-08. For Indochina there is support for the five major languages of Thai, Lao, Khmer, Burmese and Vietnamese, as well as many interesting languages with smaller user-bases such as Nepali.

Map Metadata

A Title and a Description can be entered (Title required) as well as a Street and Building Number, and category tags, as well as a checkbox to indicate if the item is a building.

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This is a comment on Dennis Yu's article How to grow your SEM business in Asia. His commenting system didn't seem to work, and the beauty of having your own blog is that you can make comments on your own site (also, the comment got a little long).

Asia is Big

For one thing, Asia is too large to conceive much less target. 3.8bn people, largest landmass ever, untold languages, etc. etc. No one would try to target India AND China with the same strategy. How can we even use the term Asia?

Singapore is Not Big

This is a good article but scratches the surface and misses one point which is that Singapore (as well as Hong Kong) are nicely Internet-penetrated and may have business, cannot be seen as much of a leverage point to going into other places such as Saigon or Bangkok. The languages are different and besides bragging rights to being located in a big city in Asia, well not much else.

International SEO is Complex

There are several other issues such as the SEO for such a business itself, not only the customers which includes tld/domain localization (or not), local hosting, native keywording, Google geotargeting, etc. Here is one article covering some of these issues including International SEO, Geotargeting, TLDs and Languages.

SEO Chiangmai is Growing

SEO Chiangmai is based in Chiang Mai, Thailand serving local businesses who target English-speaking markets. Our second step of development is a partnership with local Thai language and translation experts as well as Thai web developers and SEO consultants. This way we begin with customers we are uniquely qualified to serve and build strong local partnerships, which is the preferred way of doing business. From there we will repeat the process of deeply localizing our efforts and transitioning between market targets. This is a much more local approach for localization, which to us appears as the most appropriate internationalization effort.

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International SEO has its own unique challenges. One aspect is the issue of duplicate content, which is simply one aspect of ranking in local search SERPs and routing customers to the appropriate sites and pages. Turns out that this can be difficult.

First let's look at what Google does in an automated way and then go into more topical areas.

Google looks at ccTLDs, site hosting location, and language for automated Geotargeting in SERPs.

• Google WMT article on Geotargeting
• Takeaways include: don't use geotargeting for a language group.

The tool handles geographic data, not language data. If you're targeting users in different locations—for example, if you have a site in French that you want users in France, Canada, and Mali to read—we don't recommend that you use this tool to set France as a geographic target. A good example of where it would be useful is for a restaurant website: if the restaurant is in Canada, it's probably not of interest to folks in France. But if your content is in French and is of interest to people in multiple countries/regions, it's probably better not to restrict it.

Matt Cutts on Duplicate content in Ecommerce

• How are duplicate shopping pages with different currencies handled in Google? - Google policy on duplicate content with a good example

Articles on International SEO

• Do diacritics really matter? - Search Engine Watch
  • Note this is important for Vietnamese where many users drop diacritics from online communication, e.g,. chat and email
• Less common problems of International SEO - Search Engine Watch
  • No need to localize hosting
  • The interesting Regional vs. Local content issue
• Translating Keywords should never ever happen - Search Engine Watch
• International SEO 101, Part 1
  • Know your audience (use the useful Internet World Stats)
  • Include the web page code (language code) on each page
  • Domain extensions for local content (local search optimization)
  • Local hosting (though not necessary in various circumstances)
• International SEO 101, Part 2
  • Keywords, keywords, keywords... Did I mention keywords? Yeah, them.
• International SEO and Geolocation - top 10 factors - SEO Bloom
  • Content, title tag (unique, localized keywords), description meta tag, language meta tag, TLD for local market penetration, Geo selector (cached, crawlable link), hosting location, localized file names, local contact information, local incoming links from local ccTLD
• Archive of International SEM articles on Search Engine Watch

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