by OBAN Multilingual

On the opposite end of the scale to ‘local search’, for a company wanting to reach new audiences the concept of a ‘world wide web’ in search marketing terms now looks outdated. Without a global search strategy, companies in the UK have very little chance of effectively reaching international markets.

Search behaviour – differences in territory

Every country has unique search behaviours which range from:

• Use of search engines
• Construction of keyphrases
• Ability to access the web
• The type of content that increases conversion

UK companies that are either global or thinking of going global have a number of reasons that make it necessary to develop a global search strategy:

• Search marketing in English is highly competitive and this makes it expensive too
• Broadband penetration in many ‘developing’ countries is fast approaching UK levels meaning more time spent online
• By not thinking local
• your product or service could be invisible to potential new clients and you will be limiting sales
• ROI is potentially higher because of a competitive advantage as fewer local companies understand the absolute necessity for SEO/SEM

Search engine behaviour: and a correction on who reigns supreme

Officially, in countries like the UK, Germany and France, Google is the most popular search engine. However, this has become highly dependent on what people are actually searching for. For example, German and Spanish users are turning to more local search engines that can provide the most relevant local content like www.terra.es in Spain. These engines also tend to provide a lot of local and regional information rather than solely listing websites. A PPC campaign in Czech Republic based on Google alone is likely to mean that up to 80% of searchers are not seeing your ads. By far the most popular PPC campaigns in Czech and Slovakia are through E-target, www.e-target.cz. Similarly in Russia any SEM activity should concentrate on Rambler or Yandex as the most popular engines rather than Google. In China it’s Baidu.

Keyphrase behaviour

Keyphrase behaviour has become highly localised and often culturally based. Simply translating keyphrases is very unlikely to provide you with the best phrases either by volume or scope.

For example, in Poland they use three terms to search for “English course”, simply translating the phrase from English would mean missing out on a lot of traffic, also the chances of finding the most searched for phrases become more remote if you simply follow the translation process.

The Chinese tend to use expressions of meaning for search rather than ‘head’ and ‘tail’ eyphrases. The Polish often search by using the infinitive but in written Polish this can look strange or incorrect. Italians are very anti-grammar in their search behaviour in that they often prefer to use search phrases which are not strictly grammatically correct.

Example:

The Germans have developed four main approaches to keyphrase construction:

1. German: they use the appropriate German phrase.

2. English: this can be either US English or UK English.

3. German/English: for example “Kinder Diaper” – “Child nappy” using the US version of “nappy”.

4. New construction: the keyphrase is spelt how Germans think it would be spelt. E.g “anti-aging” rather than “anti ageing” and this is accepted on German websites too. “Bungii jumping” rather than “Bungee jumping”.

There are even significant differences between countries that speak the same language. Between Germany and Austria, for example, German people would commonly use the word “der Junge” for ‘boy’ whereas Austrians use ‘der Bub’.

Content conversion: cultural content design

Getting international visitors to your site through search is of course only half of the picture. Successfully converting international visitors through search also means optimising your website and content to obtain the best conversion rates and ROI.

Research (Hofstede 1994, Oban 2007) has shown that each culture responds differently to content and design and so to get optimum results both design and content should be designed and written from scratch.

For example the French are 300% more likely to convert on copy written and designed specifically for them rather than a localised translation. Many western cultures respond negatively to ‘red’ being used in design whereas Asian cultures convert much better with the optimum use of red in the design.