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Thanks
So provided you deal with search engines you are familiar with you will have to provide the same steps in the optimization process for all languages.
The real differences are in the languages and markets, and that is where you need the knowledge of specialists. What are the keywords and phrases suitable for a market and a language? How is the competition, what are the places to get links from, what engines provide what traffic? How do people search, and what does the local webscape look like?
The real issue is really knowing the local markets and how people are searching there.
knowing the local marketsWith the global reach of the Internet, "local" can have different meanings. I have a potential client who's looking to target Israelis living abroad.
What's the best way to gather this info; in Engligh, as well as other languages?
Obviously there are sites which would recquire different approaches, but a typical ecommerce site focuses on specific markets. Selling on a market is tied to the physical, political, social and economical environment, and those factors are far more influenced by the countries in which people live than by the language they happen to speak. To illustrate: Someone living in Peking does certainly not belong to the same market as someone living in London although they may happen to speak the same native language.
So defining multilingual webpromotion as the process of targeting different markets puts the concept of languages in second place. It's doubtless the most critical element in targeting foreign markets though, and the one area where most mistakes are made.
Still: first define your markets and the marketing instruments available, second choose the language you need to reach out to that market.
Here's my 02 cents :)
Some basic differences between english SEO and Japanese SEO:
1) no bonus points for having kw in domain names as most servers and SE's can not handle multilingual URLS.
2) same goes for image names.
3) KW density is handled very differently in Japanese because of the way the language is structured. It's not as easy to do a "word count" as in Japanese there is usually no space in between words. This may change in the future as some software is available which can separate words (not perfectly yet).
4) No effects (yet) as far as I can tell due to Florida or other filtering but this may come about once the english algo has settled down.
Other than that, IMO everything else seems fairly equal.
...define...marketing instruments availableSE's and banners/adwords, and link exchanges are obvious; but what else is there? We'll rule out spam and word-of-mouth is not really controlable. TV and radio cost too much, which leaves print. Am I missing something?
kazonik-
1) no bonus points for having kw in domain names as most servers and SE's can not handle multilingual URLS.I was able to do a search in Hebrew on Google, and I'm guessing Russian will also work.
3) KW density is handled very differently in Japanese because of the way the language is structured.While there might be some issues here in Hebrew, from the sounds of it, they would be nothing compated to Japanese. Come to think of it, in some cases Hebrew, where words are usually based on three letter roots and vowels are often only implied from context, might offer some advantages. Although, with all the pre- and postfixes, it could get tricky.
Some of the letters and characters have multiple meanings so its not a simple task to separate the letters/words.
As I mentioned in my previous post, it is possible with some software, but not 100% accurate because sometimes the meaning and correct combination of characters is decided based on the context the word/character is used in.
As for reading the URL, its possible to use multilingual URLS with a browser plugin but the use is so low (at least here in Japan) I dont think any of the major SE's have thought this is a "must do".
It is possible to use Japanese in URLs as an anchor though..
eg. [domain.com...]
just so we are on the same wavelegnth, I'm refering to the URL or URI, not to the page contents which of course can be searched in just about any language.
As for reading the URL, its possible to use multilingual URLS with a browser plugin but the use is so low (at least here in Japan) I dont think any of the major SE's have thought this is a "must do".
I'm afraid that kazonik mixed up URL and domain.
A URL should be build like this
<protocol>//<host>[:<port>]/<pathname>[<hash>][<search>]
For example http://www.mydomain.com/widgets/faq.asp?item=3&t=2
<protocol> = "http:"
<host> = "www.mydomain.com"
<pathname> = "widgets/faq.asp"
<search> = "?item=3&t=2"
It is true that special characters in the domain require a plug-in for the browser, but the <pathname> or <search> the URL can have kanji, katakana and hiragana without any problems.
See also: Naming files in Asian languages ... [webmasterworld.com] and 蹂・domains - When will it be safe to start using non-english characters? [webmasterworld.com]
No need to be afraid but thanks for the clarification.
I was refering to the domain part of the url...
>>>no bonus points for having kw in domain names
as in multilingual domains but thanks for putting it so concisely.
Since when I did a test search at google.co.il, I got matching urls, I'm assuming it looks for key words there, as well.
Maybe someday I'll learn Japanese, but for now, I'm still trying to get my Hebrew up to a semi-conversational level. (It's a real pain bearly speaking the language of where you live.)
Specifically I'm refering to <table>s.
Because hebrew is read right to left, if you structure your page and tables so that the actual keyword rich content is way way down the page, then you may lose some of the benefit for some of your keywords as opposed to having them higher up on the page.
...actual keyword rich content is way way down the page...What does that have to do with the fact that Hebrew is rtl? Both English and Hebrew are read top-to-bottom.
This would actually make the Hebrew pages MORE SEO friendly as the content would come first, then the menu.
But you have DIV layers nowadays so this not important
[edited by: agerhart at 11:19 pm (utc) on Jan. 8, 2004]
[edit reason] removed inappropriate comment [/edit]
