The document discusses the four pillars of international search success: technology, operations, content, and localization. It emphasizes the importance of the right technology, such as implementing hreflang, global site tag, and ensuring speed and accessibility across markets. For operations, it stresses the need for regular audits and monitoring, guidance for teams, and empowering teams. Regarding content, it highlights that keyword research alone is not enough and that localized market research is required. For localization, it recommends transcreating content rather than direct translations, using translation memory technology, and focusing on three content funnels.

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The Four Pillars of International Search
Success
Will Cecil
Senior SEO Manager
Adapt Worldwide

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• Multilingual Full Service SEO Agency
• 21 languages in house
• Operate across 70 markets

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The FoundationsDo you really know where the opportunity is?

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The Foundations

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Internet Penetration In Emerging Markets
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35
40
45
50
55
60
2013 2014 2015 2016
Internet Usage in Emerging Markets
*Pew Research Centre

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Smartphone Use In Emerging Markets
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*Pew Research Centre
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
50
2013 2014 2015 2016
Smart Phone Use In Emerging Markets

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1% Rise Represents: 42M people

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$30 Trillion Opportunity
*Mckinsey & Co

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Where most people go wrong
Incorrect ISO codes

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Where most people go wrong
Errors in
content
creation &
distribution

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Where most people go wrong
Using pure machine translations

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Where most people go wrong
Jan-15 Feb-15 Mar-15 Apr-15 May-15 Jun-15 Jul-15 Aug-15 Sep-15 Oct-15 Nov-15 Dec-15
Organic visibility
UK HK FR
Underperforming in certain markets
because of buy in & operational flaws

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These problems can be broken down into 4 pillars

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Technology

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Operations

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Content

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Localisation

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Tadaaaa!

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The RIGHT Technology is crucial for
international search success

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SEO’s should get a huge say in
technology…. Because?

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Share price closely correlates to SEO visibility
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SharePricein$
TrafficinM
Date
Correlation between Yellow pages share price & organic visibility
Semrush Figure Stockprice
*Semrush US
* Yahoo Finance
Correlation = 0.75

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*Semrush US
* Yahoo Finance

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Here are some mistakes in action

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Thinking you’re too big to be affected
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-$30M from neglecting a SEO recommendation & not
investing in the technology to make the change possible

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Thinking cross market ranking isn’t a big issue
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100,000 visits
Let’s assume you’re sending
100,000 visits to the wrong
website over the course of a
year because your French
website ranks in
Switzerland.

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Thinking cross market ranking isn’t a big issue
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100,000 visits
80% of these people bounce
& go elsewhere because the
website isn’t fit for their
market
80% bounce

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Thinking cross market ranking isn’t a big issue
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100,000 visits
Now let’s assume the
conversion rate & AOV of
your CH site is 2% and £100
80% bounce
2%
£100

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Thinking cross market ranking isn’t a big issue
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Without even considering the missed opportunity from;
• Better quality signals
• Local links/shares
• Reviews
-£160,000 in revenue

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3 Key International SEO Tech Factors
Hreflang
Validate all reciprocal
links
Validate all country-
language ISO codes
Targeting
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="http://es.example.com/" />
• Language
• Language & Country
• Country

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3 Key International SEO Tech Factors
GWT
Set up profiles for each
cctld/subdomain/subdir
ectory and set country
targets
Targeting

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3 Key International SEO Tech Factors
Speed/Accessibility
Use a CDN
Account for exceptions e.g.
China will require a cctld & local
host
Mobile first
Reduce page load times as
much as possible

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3 Key International SEO Tech Factors
Structure
Language Country
Sub Directory
Sub Domains
Cc tld
Sub Directory
Sub Domains
Keep URL structure relational across markets
Don’t cross
sub
directories
with geo
targeted cctld

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If you have ever felt like…..

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And this has happened…..

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What do you need to do?

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Regular Audits
• Crawl Weekly
• Crawl Staging Environments
Before Release
• Feedback to devs
constantly!
• Log file analysis
• Global Ranking Reports

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Key area’s to look for changes in
• Cross Linking
• IA
• Meta Data
• Crawl Errors
• Alien rankings
If you’re using ccTLD’s
If you’re using sub
directories & ccTLD’s
Create lost revenue
attribution based on
the user behaviour of
the traffic this brings

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Monitor Monitor Monitor
Custom Crawlers
Use monitoring tools to tell you what’s
changed on a daily/weekly basis
Develop your own to suit your needs

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Not just on page, off page & analytics too!
Set up alerts in GA for traffic
from alien geo’s

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Not just on page, off page & analytics too!
Monitor all your markets for sudden changes in links

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Become a Q&A dependant
Become a Q&A dependant

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Use Google Tag Manager
Implement Mark Up with JSON-LD
Track All on page interactions
Version Control
Use loads of pre built tags from industry
leaders
Test tracking before going live
Apply schema to new local
office pages set up in HK
Set up scroll tracking on
your creative content in CH
Nothing beats a safety net
Roll out new optimizely tags
in IE
Ensure data accuracy

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Make sure you’re using these useful tools
http://adaptworldwide.com/hreflang-checker
http://www.isearchfrom.com

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Continuity: “The unbroken and
consistent existence or
operation of something over
time.”

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What is important within
international SEO team
operations?

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Scalability – Being
able to roll out
strategies to all
markets
Operational – Getting
the most out of a
global team
Efficiency – making
actionable change
quickly

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Moving into or working across
markets is challenging…

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If you don’t have a process for
everything you will fail!

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“Hi Tom, can you do some keyword
research in Latvia around search
opportunities for televisions?”

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“Certainly, here it is”
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No back
translation
No
categorisation
No seasonality
No current
situation

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Guidance is key
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1. Create templates for all your processes
2. Ensure you’ve got material to distribute as you grow into new
markets so that everyone is working to the same structure
3. Standardise everything against an EN master

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Hint Use Screencasts
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Two great apps

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Guidance is key
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There is no “I”
in SEO

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PR
EventsProduct Leads
PPC
SEO needs to be friends with everyone

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Share your success stories to get buy in

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Get stuff done

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Empower your team
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Bottleneck workflows
Don’t
Training Tools

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Improve your efficiency
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Assess Throughput &
Communication
Develop Team Strengths
Invest in tools and resources

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Key Takeaways
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Create processes for
everything
Use PM tools to measure
workflow
Be scalable
Sharing is caring

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What happens when you get content
wrong?

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Nothing
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One Glove Doesn’t Fit All - Trends
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Relational Search Trends for Spiralizers
UK US

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It’s more than just keyword research
Market researchKeyword Research
• Keywords
• Trends
• Keywords
• Trends
• Competitor performance
• Content Type
• Social Performance
• Content length at page level
More Data = Better Decisions

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In facts let’s just call it localised market
research
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UK
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HK
Links
Shares Shares
Links

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Do keyword research as per usual
Do keyword research as usual

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And…
1) Extract top performing competitors &
themes through:

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Add data layers
Extract Competitor data through Screaming Frog
Extract Competitor Share Data at a URL level
through the shared count API & google docs

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You should forget the word translation

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Focus on 3 content funnels.
Localisation, transcreation – content creation

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Machine translation isn’t all bad but it has to
needs to be edited and manually edited by local
resource

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Use a Translation Memory
Reduced content costs long
term
Faster translation time
Automated checks less errors

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What translation technology can you use?
Multilingual CMS Proxy solution Multilingual CMS with TM
AWW &
easyling
XTM
Wordpress
& WPML

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Summary
International SEO
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