Forum Moderators: LifeinAsia
We are using region-sensitive CPC campaigns, as well as regional SE submissions, but we just aren't getting the kind of results that we would expect. Business is thriving in the United States, but our efforts to branch into the EU are met with a not-quite expected lack of success.
Is there any advice or experience with anyone here in finding or advertising to European Nations? Should we focus on individual companies, or the EU in its entirity? The EU right now is getting a great exchange rate on the USD, so we are looking to contact European buyers or retailers to do business with.
Any advice, experience, or suggestions are welcome :)
-kwirl
What we did was carry out UK SEO activity, and then used translation agencies to convert this work in German and Spanish, but that is a poor and likely ineffective strategy.
For UK-oriented activity we would be happy to discuss a possible partnership, as would many other providers, I would guess.
Good luck with it.
Business is thriving in the United States, but our efforts to branch into the EU are met with a not-quite expected lack of success.
Do you mean that the US based SE's are ranking you high, but you are not getting the rankings in Europe? Or is it a problem of conversions?
We get over a third of our internet sales from Europe. I can't say that there is a simple answer to your questions, based on our experience. We used to pay for listings to get exposure in Europe, but gave that up years ago and went entirely with free listings.
- Google's european sites (.uk, .it etc) put us in their SERPs in almost the exact same position as the US (.com) That's where most of our European traffic comes from. Make the site rank high on .com and the other Gs should come by themselves.
- I know that many of our european customers actually switch to Google.com when they want to search for something in the USA.
- There are many free listing directories available for europe. (try colossus for a list) Not many referrals, but I suspect those listings may help in other ways.
- We do well with listings on european topic-specific websites. In the UK particularly, referrals from some of these convert to sales at up to 30%! It is a long slow job to first find these, and then to get listed on them. Once again, a good ranking on Google really helps establish credibility. As our site's ranking rose to the top on G we began to recieve requests from Europe to list our site, and started seeing referrals from sites that we have never approached.
- We have been successful in some countries and a total failure in others. Most of this is due to having an English-only website..(duh). However, by focussing on those countries that have responded, we have built up a few regions in Europe as a base. Rather than trying to crack totally new areas, we are simply expanding the regions we have.
If you are offering something that Europeans are searching for and have: good product, good site, good content, lots of inbound links.... Then I think the traffic will come by itself over a couple of years. Trying to find a shortcut may be more effort than it is worth.
