Garry Illyes - "Think about how you can target other countries"

[nomis5]

The remark was made in an interview with Danny Sullivan. To put it in context, the full question and answer was:

"DS: Top 3 or 5 things webmasters should be thinking about?

GI: Mobile-first index. Then, how can you improve user experience. Think about how you can target other countries — there are a ton of countries that don’t have enough content. These are the top three for me."

Mobile-first index - no surprise to most of us I suppose. Same goes for improving user experience. Both of them will benefit webmasters and Google.

"Think about how you can target other countries — there are a ton of countries that don’t have enough content.". For me that is a surprise as the third most important thing a webmaster should be thinking about. Where does that come from? What interest has Google got in me or you targeting other countries and creating more content for them.

Of all the things GI has said, that strikes me one of the most non-Google centred remarks. If so, maybe it's worth investigating.

Anyone had any good or bad experiences in targeting countries which have low levels of content? Spain, France, Russia, Mexico etc? Have you just translated your site into a different language?

I'm a UK based website and I tried to target the US (admittedly they don't have low levels of content) and I failed miserably. We both speak English but the cultural gap is far wider than many imagine. Aside from translating my website, I wouldn't know how to target Spain, France, Russia, Mexico etc.

[keyplyr]

I'm in the US and my sites are written in American English. I do not offer translation.

20% to 30% of my daily visitors (desktop & mobile combined) are from regions where English is not their first language. An extremely low number use a translator.

Among the internet crowd, English seems to do pretty well regardless of the user's origin.

[nomis5]

This subject has also just been referred to by Barry Schwartz at SEO RoundTable:

[seroundtable.com...]

[NickMNS]

I find the remark somewhat disingenuous. The reason markets don't have much content is that the market is not big enough to warrant the investment. At least from the perspective of an Adsense publisher. If you have a specialized product that can cater to a specific niche within such a market sector then fine, but my guess is that that type of content already exists.

A market with a population of say few million people, will not provide you sufficient page views or ad clicks to warrant the investment. And that simply assumes that CPC will be similar to the CPC's of large markets such as the US. But we know that that isn't the case. So not only will it be difficult to get enough traffic, the traffic will pay less, and as pointed out by keyplyr the content will need to be customized to the particular region thus content generation will be at a premium.

I live in a region that is a "specialized market" and I don't even waste my time. To build a site for a potential audience of 6 or 7 million people, vs building a site for 320 million. Sorry I'll focus on 320 Million. Not to mention the fact that at least one third of the 6 or 7M will go to US/English website regardless.

[jmccormac]

Guess the whole "don't link because Google will be angry" has come along to bite Google. Most countries outside the US have their own ccTLD and they tend to use it more than .COM. These ccTLD registries don't generally release their zonefiles so Google has to find new sites, and new content, by crawling and other methods. But Google's FUD buddy SEOs have been scaring people about linking so these sites often have little or no inbound links. Thus they are invisible to Google.

If you want to target a country other than the US, get your site name in the country's ccTLD if possible and then 301 it or develop genuine country market focused content.

Regards...jmcc

[nomis5]

I live in a region that is a "specialized market" and I don't even waste my time. To build a site for a potential audience of 6 or 7 million people, vs building a site for 320 million. Sorry I'll focus on 320 Million. Not to mention the fact that at least one third of the 6 or 7M will go to US/English website regardless.

An interesting view but not one which I am sure I agree with.

The UK has a population of 65 million and I get more results from that market than I do from the 320 million in the US - I get roughly 8% of my page views from the US. The market I am involved in is not specialised, but in effect it comes down to being specialised if you are looking for advice from someone who is experienced. And the audience 100% fully understands that even if the webmasters involved in that market don't.

Targetting an audience of 7 million? Well that's the question. It clearly works for 65 million, so we are only talking about various degrees of possible success - or failure.

Don't forget as well, and potentially GI may have a point here, where the audience is 320 million every tom,dick and harry (some of them being very capable) will be targetting that audience and in competition with you. Where the audience is only 65 million you only have tom in competition with you.

With an audience of 7 million, probably tom is only half hearted opposition.

A small fish in a big pond or a big fish in a small pond?

I don't know the answer but the fact that that GI put it number three of the areas a webmaster should investigate made me wonder.

[robzilla]

I've considered expanding internationally to the larger audience pools like Portuguese, French and German, but the cost of translation has held me back thus far. It's very appealing on the one hand, but on the other I don't feel too comfortable with a dependency on translators and proofreaders; and for some content, localization is more complex than simple translation.

Also, if AdSense revenue for non-English visitors on my English-language websites is anything to go by, the expected revenue per visitor for those potentially gained visitors would be relatively small. But perhaps non-English ads perform better on non-English websites?

[riccarbi]

I can share my personal experience. My best paying website (an informative magazine focused on museums, art, and design) has English/US and Italian versions (with EN-US as primary). Almost all pages have versions in both idioms. Although I am Italian and English is not my native language, some 70% of my users visit English pages, about 50% of them are from the US, UK, Australia and Canada, the rest is from non English speaking countries (mostly from Germany and France). The remaining 30% of my readers are Italian-speaking (Italy's population is about 60 M). Does maintaining a website in two language is worth the effort, in my case? I think it is, because in Italy there is much less competition in my niche, and because Google doesn't (still) show bad things such as the Knowledge Graph or the usual standard links to Wikipedia in its Italian SERP, therefore I guess there is still much room for improving my traffic in the next future. The only problem is that having a multi-language site is a quite demanding task; if you don't do it properly (for example if you create by mistake links between pages in a different language, as I stupidly did) you can easily destroy ALL your ranking in few days, including that of your primary language pages, and start wondering why in the world your traffic is biting the dust.

[keyplyr]

Thanks for sharing that riccarbi, good info.

[graeme_p]

An English speaking population is different from an English speaking speaking country - there are more English speakers in India than anywhere bar the US.

With regard to small markets, niches for which it may not be creating content, may be profitable enough to adapt content. Also, niches to small to attract big business, may be profitable for small business.

[IanTurner]

I have already translated into major latin character set languages and the translations have paid for themselves and make a small income.

I have thought about Russian, Arabic, Chinese and Urdu as potential translations but, unlike the Latin and Germanic languages (where I can get the gist of what it says), I am completely reliant on the translator doing a good job.

[nomis5]

I have already translated into major latin character set languages and the translations have paid for themselves and make a small income.

Did you have different domain names for the different languages? If so, was the naming mysite. com / myitaliansite.com / myspanishsite.com? Or mysite.com / mysite.it / mysite.es etc?

[IanTurner]

Yes language specific domains - so that domain name reads well on Serps.

All in top level tlds com and info as I am targeting globally speakers of the language.

Such as
withexample.com
avecexample.com
mitbeispiel.com
Etc