White Paper on advanced multilingual Google Geo-targeting strategies.

1. Advanced Multilingual
Google Geo-targeting Strategies
Approved Google Engage Agency

2. While everyone knows that you should target customers
in their own language it’s actually more complicated than
simply marketing in German for Germany. For instance, late
last year I visited with friends in Munich. Munich is located in
the southern part of Germany, commonly known as Bavaria,
near the Austrian border. While I was acutely aware that
there were differences between Bavaria, Berlin and Stuttgart
from having worked and lived part time in Stuttgart, my
friend, while discussing some of the cultural and language
differences between Munich and the rest of Germany,
pointed out that she did very well in Austria because the
Bavarians and the Austrians had more in common than the
Austrians and the northern Germans. This is quite common
in Europe where borders have been rewritten many times
throughout history and populations have been displaced,
forced to move or where whole cities where evacuated and
the local towns were taken over.
As Google’s Search tools and network continues to improve,
advertisers and marketers have more granular control and can
target buyers more precisely. So if you’ve prepared separate
campaigns for Germany and Austria, you might want to run
that Austrian campaign in specific cities in Germany where
it might be more effect than your “Germany” ads.
Run the French campaign
in Germany, run the Czech
campaign in Slovakia,
run the English campaign
in almost every major city
While working in Stuttgart, I was told often how close we
were to the French border city of Strasbourg. Strasbourg is
a famous picturesque city on the border between France
and Germany and home to the European Parliament.
Like other cities, Strasbourg has changed hands between
the French and the Germans more than once. As a result
it’s truly a blended French and German city. With Google
geo-targeting you can match specific ads in the languages
of your choice to specific locations. So a campaign here
might run variations of ads in several languages.

3. And the same is true throughout Europe. For instance there
are many Slovaks living and working in the Czech Republic
and many Czech’s have family in Slovakia while each
language is understood by both. Here you might reach more
buyers by running ads in Czech and Slovakian in Bratislava.
While conversely in Prague you might run a campaign in
Czech, English and Slovakian since Prague has many
English speaking ex-pats and even publishes a daily
newspaper in English; the Prague Post. Here’s an example
of how you can run an English language Ad by city, province
or country. In this case we have an English Ad. Since it’s
directed at the automotive industry we want it to run in
places that are automotive-centric. For instance Slovakia is
a very strong automotive manufacturing location. With many
car companies, including Porsche and VW which owns
Slovakia’s only car manufacturer, Seat. So this English Ad
will appear in Search results in Slovakia, Prague and Ottawa
as well as other multilingual cities and countries where
search results in English are appropriate for the audience.
While in Canada you can set the English language Ad to
only appear in Ottawa and run a proper French language
Ad in French-speaking Quebec. This type of advanced
geo-targeting will improve the performance of your online
advertising and impression-to-conversions ratio. It gives
you far deeper control than just choosing a single language
for a country.
You can run an English language Ad
in a specific city, province or country.

4. A three-dimensional approach
to multilingual keyword research
Having lived and worked part-time in both the Czech
Republic and Germany I can tell you first hand that a
monolingual approach for most multinational’s targeted
locales is a simple-minded poor-performing solution to a
more complex challenge. Today more and more people are
living bilingual lives, regularly speaking several languages
every day. Watching TV programs in their native language
and English, listening to local music and American music
with friends while working with English speaking colleagues.
Search is no different with bilingual people performing
search queries in both their native language and other
languages regularly. Want proof? Just take a look at
Facebook profiles throughout the world. Many profiles are
in English even though they live in another country.
Bilingual Billboard for a local radio station in
Ostrava, Czech Republic near the Polish border
A three-dimensional approach to keywords applies here as
well and should work hand in hand with your geo-targeting
strategies. If you’re running a multilingual campaign you
should have keywords in every language. In Prague, you
might have Czech, English and Slovakian keywords to
support an English language Ad campaign.
333 West 7th Street, Suite 120 For effective international and multilingual SEO and PPC
Royal Oak, MI 48067 campaigns that rock, contact Rick Woyde at Language Arts
Ph: 248-246-0475, Fax: 248-282-0433
& Science. Rick can be reached by email at rickw@
www.languageartsandscience.com languageartsandscience.com or at +1-248-246-0475.