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Seems to me that these companies are not promoting their sites on the search engines in these countries but are relying solely on their brand names.
Looks like there is a great deal of opportunity for SEOs in the european market - it's just a case of convincing these HUGE corporate types that they need to promote their foreign sites correctly.
Do you think SEO still has a long way to go? Seems like companies are still very wary of it.
Thank you for the useful info in this forum, it's a great resource.
Thanks for posting these interesting questions.
>rely solely on their brand names
Head on the nail. A lot of very prominent companies just don't care about their pressence in the local SE's. Well, at least not until they have had a visit from a SEO consultant that can set they view straight ;)
In fact I think many of them that are doing great on the net today, also have implemented some sort of local SEO strategy. The real winners are those that grasp that Europe is NOT one country and NOT one culture.
>opportunity for SEOs in the european market
Ooohh very true, very true :)
Personally I think SEO have not yet seen the full effect over here. We run into companies every day that spend huge sums on marketing, but have not (yet) invested a single Euro on SEO.
We as SEO's have a great task of teaching those compaines the value of "search based referrals".
We know they convert better than any other referrals and we know they are cheaper leads.
What we don't know, is why the companies don't know, what we know yet.
There are at least as many European online today as Americans. That ought to open some company execs eyes, yes?
What we don't know, is why the companies don't know, what we know yet.
One main reason for this is the fact that larger companies usually deal through so-called Media Companies when they shall allocate their marketing budget to various marketing activities. The knowledge about SEO is very limited in theese media companies and therefore they elude to include SEO in their proposal to their corporate clients.
I think this is exactly why they often don't realize that SEO is a very good marketing activity.
They simply don't know that is excists.
That is true they trust the company that have made the design on the site and think its ok.
Its the same thing with a homepage that it is on a broschys (papermedia) it doesent matter if you have a greate brochyr and dont send them to anyone know one will now that it exist.
You have a homepage and nobody knows about it that is not marketing.
/Ove
However, the largest barrier to SEO is that many companies haven't got a fully developed strategy for doing business on the internet yet. Until they know exactly how they will be making money on the internet they wont invest a lot in SEO.
I agree with Tor that media and internet agencies are to blaim for some of it. However, I know as a matter of fact that the top companies are reluctant to investing in SEO or any other media before business strategy has been adapted to the internet and implementet. That makes sense to me.
Don't wory SEO will boom in EU within the next year or two.
