Is good SEO practise enough in Europe?

Or does one have to go all the way?

[rencke]

Having read everything in the European forum more than once, I have begun to form the conclusion that just good SEO practise, and nothing else, is enough for success in Europe.

If I am right, we are talking about multilingual sites split into one for each language, good domain names with one or two keywords in the local language; good page titles - different for each page; good page descriptions - also differing from each other; maybe a dozen or so well chosen meta keywords; properly structured page content with header, text, subheaders, text etc; ALT attribute set for all pictures, and perhaps one or two more things such as lots of text and links in the noframes area of framed sites.

If this is true, doorways optimized on a per engine basis, selective IP-delivery and other more advanced methods would not be needed. But a keyword database is worth its weight in gold. Get the simple basics right and make it to the top!

BUT: my own experience is limited to low to medium competitive themes. I have no idea what the world looks like for European adult webmasters, gambling sites and other highly competive areas.

SO: Is the basic rule right? If so, what are the exceptions to it? If not, what goes?

[rencke]

2nd hand domain name companies, cyber squatters and registrars are now pushing accented domain names in a big way. Just the other day, I was offered to buy www.mörrum.com (which redirects to a site selling 2nd hand domain names btw). It is the name of a place in southern Sweden, famous for its fantastic salmon fishing. That place already has a site called www.morrum.com.

But what good would mörrum.com do? The only people who have a key for the letter "ö" on their keyboards are Swedes, Finns, Estonians, Germans, Hungarians and Turks and perhaps a few others. Rather than pressing ¨and o in succession in order to generate ö, everybody else would automatically type "o" if they see the address in print, and that leads to another site. This thing with accented letters in url:s can become very confusing.

In the case of the French language, suéde and suede are clearly two different things (Sweden in French and suede leather in English). The letter é can be reproduced from most non-French keyboards with two strokes (as indeed can ö and ä, but not å).

So, what you will have to keep in mind here is that if you pick a good keyword for your url in french that contains an accent, you would have to register both with and without the accent in order to protect yourself from cyber-squatters.

[webtastic]

Hi, I,m from England and fairly new to this forum so please bare with me.
I submitted my site to Google on the 23rd Aug and it is ranked No1 today on one search I made 30 mins. ago.
Is this usual or have I been extremely lucky?

Also does anyone have any info on AAA Matilda - Australia?

[heini]

>have to register both with and without the accent in order to protect yourself from cyber-squatters.

I just visited Icann.org to try and find out what´s really up. I got the impression it´s still unclear if any registrations done now will be valid. Also the technical problems seem to be unsolved.
Well, since their pages make a rather complicated reading I´d love to hear from somebody who has studied this stuff?

[rencke]

Welcome to WembmasterWorld, webtastic. I think that the experts who spend their time in the Google forum [webmasterworld.com] are likely to say that submitting to Google on the 23rd and being in their index 8 days later is extremely good. Keep in mind though, that Google does almost all of its spidering on its own, so if there was a link to you anywhere on the web before Aug 23, then they may well have picked you up on their own before that.

As to AAA Matilda Australia, we Europeans are very etnocentric and have no idea. ;) Try to use the site search and if that doesn't work, ask the question in the Asia & Pacific forum [webmasterworld.com]. The place is run by an Aussie (Woz] and if he doesn't know, it is probably not worth knowing.

[webtastic]

Thanks for the advice Rencke.

[markd]

Thanks for the useful advice regarding the use of accented/special characters in domains.

One last question please:
Would an appostrophie be counted as a non-ascii character in a domain?

I am thinking of French terms where this may be used such as 'l'ecole' etc.

I am wondering if a French searcher, for example, would type in the apostrophie when searching?

Thanks again

[heini]

<pushing to the top again>

Mark, you could post in the France forum, or ask MacGuru perhaps?

[markd]

Thanks Heini, will do.

Mark