According to the article, this case marks the first time that a website design company has been held liable for such a practice. The design firm was ordered to pay over 27 times more in damages to Cleveland than was the company that actually imported and sold the fake clubs.

This adds an interesting new twist to the “white hat, black hat” SEO saga. The web design company in question built the site using SEO strategies designed to lead shoppers looking for genuine Cleveland golf clubs to the copycat clubs’ site, which was called, by wacky coincidence, copycatclubs.com.

So, if you look at it from a certain angle, the website support company was pretty much just doing their job, building the best possible site for the company that hired them. But, since the company that hired them was engaged in business practices that were sketchy from the start, does this turn the web designers’ practices into black-hat SEO? Or is it just a case of doing white hat work for a black hat business?

Given that the website was called copycatclubs.com, it seems like the website design firm should have known that something foul was afoot. But, then again, they were paid to do a job, which they did—maybe a little too well. It’s sort of a fine line: every company wants to do their best work for every client, but, if a client may be up to something shady, where does responsibility for that shadiness begin/end?

Now we know that at least part of the responsibility (up to 2700%, in some cases) does lie with the web developers. Read the whole story here.

The full article direct from the Googlites themselves can be found here. The short version involves adding just a little bit of Google-created code to your site:

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang="a-different-language" href="http://url-of-the-different-language-page" />

Then, with a few more adjustments, all your website’s users will be directed to the proper version of the site, based on their language preference (using their IP address, accept-language HTTP header, and/or other user info). No matter what language is displayed, and no matter how many other languages you want your content to be available in, every version will ultimately be found under one URL, with the help of 301 redirects or link rel=“canonical” tags.

There’s a lot more to it than that, of course, so be sure to read the complete original article to get all the details. It’s pretty heavy with technical jargon, so it’s not the easiest read (I had to read it about five times just to be sure I was getting the general idea correct), but it’s a supremely easy fix for a potentially difficult conundrum. If your website users speak Spanish, French, German, or even whatever language is spoken in Guam,* they’ll find it in the right language the first time on any Google search. A unified URL for all your content will help you avoid PageRank dilution, as well as other problems which may arise due to multiple pages of (essentially) duplicate content.

It’s an incredibly useful little patch for your site, plus it lets you use the astoundingly official-sounding phrase “multilingual template content unification.”

*Guamish.

Video Marketing—As Scott pointed out in a blog a few days ago, adding videos to your site and creating a YouTube channel for your company can have huge benefits for your business. Almost everybody carries at least a rudimentary video camera with them*, and it’s so easy to edit and upload videos now that there’s no reason not to. The saying goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words”—a talking picture is worth 14,753.6^†. What better way to show potential customers and clients what your company can do than by literally showing them what your company can do! One recent study showed that conversion rates from YouTube are up to 20 percent higher than conversion rates from traditional search engines. If it’s that easy and that effective, it’s definitely a must.

Social Network Optimization—I mentioned in previous blogs that social networks and social media are rapidly taking over the world as we know it. But, this is not necessarily a bad thing. You can use your Facebook and Twitter accounts to update your customers/clients on any and all new developments in your company quickly, easily, and, best of all, for free. Keeping them up to date on your latest and greatest will also keep you front and center in their minds when it’s business time. Tweets, Facebook updates, and the like are also a great opportunities for link building and generating referral traffic. Again: fast + easy – expensive × effective = a must. Facebook and Twitter may not always be the King and Queen of the social networking prom (remember Myspace? Didn’t think so), but social networking itself shows no signs of slowing down, so this one will be a key SEO focus for many years to come.

Local Search Marketing—Thirty years ago, if your business wasn’t listed in the local Yellow Pages, you might as well not have existed. Now, Google and other search engines are the new Yellow Pages, so if you’re not showing up on Google when local customers are searching for your goods or services, the same holds true. Even if you do more business on a national level, once you’ve built up a good search engine ranking on the local level, you’ll start to see better results from national-level searches as well, as Google et al. will recognize your site’s credibility and improve your overall ranking. No matter how big your company is, it never hurts to pay attention to the small stuff.

Mobile Marketing—This one is kind of tricky, because it can be difficult to know where/how to differentiate between your regular online presence and your mobile-friendly online presence. However, as more and more people are using smartphones**, it’s important that you cater to the phones’ full capabilities. Maybe you don’t need your own iPhone app, but a coupon or QR code that can be downloaded right to a potential customer’s phone can certainly make your business more attractive. Many companies have even created mobile-friendly versions of their sites (with the “m.” prefix) that feature more smartphone-ready content. Everyone and their mother has a smartphone now^††, so, like social network optimization, mobile marketing promises to be an important factor in SEO for quite some time.

I hope this list has been at least a little bit helpful and informative. Let us know what you think in the comments section, and keep an eye out for new SEO trends on the horizon. They’re changing all the time, so it’s good to be prepared. My prediction for the biggest, best SEO trend of 2012: blimps. Don’t ask me how, don’t ask me why, but trust me—blimps.

* Hint: It’s your cellular telephone.
^† Rounded to the nearest tenth.
** They’re not that smart. Mine can’t even tie its shoes.
^†† The day my Dad gets one will truly be the dawn of a new age, however.

At Ecreativeworks, we have monthly SEO clients and monthly PPC clients. There is also a good handful of these clients that do both SEO and Pay Per Click at that the same time. Our approach is to use Pay Per Click as a supplement for those keywords or keyword phrases that a company wants visibility for, but may take a little time to gain organic ranking.  Each customer also has their goals – do they want traffic, more conversions or are they building brand awareness? Depending on what their goals are, you can tailor your programs to meet their needs. When you are running both a Pay Per Click program and a search engine optimization program, you can capture data quickly to see what is working for you and what isn’t. Taking a more aggressive approach allows you to make your money go further for you.

Watch our quick 18 minute webinar and start applying the strategies to your PPC and SEO programs. Contact us to learn more and keep an eye out for our next webinar!

If you have followed some of my previous posts (OK, there have only been 2 for those that are counting) you now know that I coach soccer for boys ages 9-12.  I am going to use them once again to get my SEO thoughts out on “paper”.  We had a game this past week that reminded me a lot of how some companies like to tackle their SEO programs.  I have coached this team for 4 weeks prior to our game  and up to this point they had been following my recommendations and things were slowly improving.  Here is where my analogy begins.   Like many companies that build their new website or do a major redesign, they often really listen to what their SEO team is telling them.  Or asking them to do to make their site found and have web conversions that translate into customers (AKA profit).  Things usually are on the upswing at this point.

Back to the Soccer team:  The kids seemed to have decided that they knew enough to do things “their way” for this game.  Now, here I am on the sidelines screaming to do this, and do that, protect your goal(online conversions for the web people here) and don’t all focus on one point of attack–spread out and pass the ball around.  Ok, now the SEO stuff:  If your company decides to forgo the professional SEO team and try it “your own way”, you may end up like my soccer team last week.  They were destroyed 0-10, it was not pretty and we now have some major work to do to get back on track.

SEO professionals often see companies that go off on their own path for Search Engine Optimization.  They will start focusing on just one aspect, or may ignore the site altogether as far as SEO goes.  Just remember that you need to watch all aspects(the whole field) of your website:  Focus Keywords, local link building, Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, LinkedIn, etc.), Press Release submission, tracking your visitor traffic, managing your ecommerce pages, and updating all of your pages on a regular basis so google will remember how important you are to the rest of the world.

I now have my soccer team focusing on their task for this next game and a promise that they will listen to my recommendations, and I am confident that we will get back on the winning track.  If you have left your professional SEO and have seen a decline, I would encourage you to call them up and talk about how to get your site back on the winning (profitable) track once again!

The focus of International Industrial SEO is all about foreign search engine optimization for industrial and business to business websites. The blog aims to cover a wide range of topics related to industrial websites and their presence in international search engines. Topics include keyword research, translation, and international Internet usage. We encourage readers to leave comments and questions on posts so we can help them to better understand international SEO and how business to business websites can use it to attract visitors and increase conversions.

We’re very excited to share some of the information we’ve learned through our international internet marketing. It’s an easy way for our clients and those in industry to better understand the work we do and how good SEO is necessary for business websites.

Stop by International Industrial SEO today!

Here are some reminders of what to think about when beginning your international link building campaign.

• Local Directories Submit your website to directories based in other countries and that target those local audiences. Look for something like the Nationwide Business Directory in Australia or Allesklar in Germany. Seeing your website listed in local directory searches will increase foreign users’ confidence in the relevancy of your site to their location.

• Local social networking sites It may feel like Facebook and MySpace are global communities, and they are, but there are also sites abroad that are targeted to or used by specific regional audiences. There are a lot of Germans on Facebook, but there are many more on StudiVZ and MeinVZ. Mixi is big in Japan, and Bebo has taken over the UK market. Hop onto the social marketing sites in your international markets and see what people are using. If you can, sign up for accounts there and use those to reach your audience.

• Local Blogs and Websites Again, this may feel like an obvious point, but don’t forget its importance to increasing your international audience. If all your links for your Spanish site are coming from websites in the US, Spanish search engines may not feel that your site is very relevant to Spain. And if the Spanish visitors to your site go through all your US-based incoming links, they won’t see the value of your site to them or may not even be able to understand what’s on those other sites. Instead, you want your Japanese water fountain site to have inlinks from sites like Japanese home decorating blogs and relevant Japanese associations. The easiest way to go about getting links from local blogs and websites? Find those who are writing, researching, or working with your products and services in your foreign regions and languages. Get in touch with those sites and network!

When trying to do some international link building, put yourself in the shoes of your international customers and visitors. Look for the websites that cater to those specific audiences. Google and many other American-based websites may feel like they’re the center of the internet, but that’s not always the case. There’s nothing against using a few well chosen links from home on your international site, but your site’s international value will really increase if you get international links that will attract the attention of your international audience. You want to make sure to establish a presence abroad that will show your customers the relevancy and value of your site to them, just as you would for your website at home.

• Have your site professionally translated. It may be great that your neighbor’s kid studied Spanish or German in high school and still remembers most of it, but that won’t cut it for translating your website. Use a professional translation service that employs native speakers working or living in your target region. They have the abilities and resources to make sure your pages read well for your intended audience. Spanish in Mexico is not the same as that in Spain. There are regional differences in vocabulary and use for most languages, including English. Translators that specialize in medical or technical translations are another good step to consider based on your website’s content.
• Get a Country Coded Top Level Domain. As we mentioned previously, a ccTLD will give your site better visibility in searches for your targeted region. A domain for Germany will end in .de, while one for India will be .in. Search engines will search based on location and relevancy, and an engine in Germany will consider a page with .de to be more relevant to the searcher’s needs than one with .com or .us in the address.

If you can’t afford a ccTLD, Google’s Webmaster tools now offer the ability to create subdomains for your site, like china.yoursite.com. You’re then able to optimize those subdomains for different regions. It’s not as desirable as a ccTLD, but will get you started.
• Get a local IP address, too. Search engines and visitors will be able to see what the IP address of your domain is. Although it may be more expensive to have your site hosted in the target region, a local IP address will increase your relevancy in foreign searches. They’ll consider a site hosted in Germany, for example, more relevant to a German user than one hosted in Canada. Be sure to ask your web host what they do in terms of foreign hosting and whether or not they have hosting ability in your target region.

• Put your local contact information on the site. If you have international contact information or regional representatives, advertise that on your site. Search engines like Google can read your address information and consider that when indexing pages. It will also be beneficial to your foreign searchers to see local contact information when possible.
• Research your foreign search engines. What standards do they require for sites? Does your entire site have to be translated or only one region-specific page? How many keywords or characters are allowed? Questions like these should be considered when creating, optimizing, and submitting sites for inclusion to foreign search engines. Just like Google and Yahoo! in the US, they have standards that should not be ignored. For example, yahoo.de requires your entire site to be translated into German for inclusion in their index. Japanese and Korean websites will consider the numbers of key characters your site has, not number of keywords.
• Get links from foreign sites. Just as you link build on your home site, you should do some link building on your foreign site.
The only difference? Get Australian links for your Australian site and Japanese links for your Japanese site. These increase your relevancy in foreign searches and will help open the door to you in other countries. Be sure to link your regional site to your home site so visitors know they’re connected, but don’t over do it. As with all link building, international link building should be done thoughtfully and well.

Getting into the international market is a big deal for any company, and implementing the appropriate SEO can seem daunting. But once the basics of establishing a local presence are taken care of, international SEO can be fun and exciting. It opens your site up to a world of new customers and ideas!

As the expansion overseas is gaining more attention Ecreativeworks has deepened their knowledge base about the best techniques and strategies for the International Markets. This post is the first of our International Marketing Series. Like our other posts, we are hoping to educate you and get your feedback. What do you know about International Search Engine Marketing or International Marketing in general? Join in on the fun and let’s expand our knowledge base together!

Here are the two most important steps in gaining the visibility you want out of the United States: a ccTLD and a translated website.

A ccTLD, for those of you that are thinking “huh?,” is a Country Coded Top Level Domain. A ccTLD might be: www.google.fr or www.htico.com.mx. The .fr is for France and the .mx is for Mexico. Having a ccTLD is important because it tells the search engines what audience you are targeting. Everyone knows that Google can cater their results for a region. The search results I get for a particular term in Minnesota is going to be a little different than the search results my coworker is going to get in California. This would also be the case in other countries when they are searching Google. The search engines will cater their results to the domains that seem the most relevant. Www.htico.com.mx is going to get better visibility in Google Mexico than www.htico.com.

It also helps that www.htico.com.mx is translated from English to Spanish. If you want to respect your International audience, gain their trust and create a relationship you need to take the step into their culture and language. If you have a Mexico website, you should be able to serve the customers you will be attracting by providing your product information in their language and also respond to them in their language when they inquire via an online form or by telephone. If you can’t communicate with them, your efforts are lost. You can’t expect everyone to be able to read and speak English!

Combining these two steps and you are off to a great start. Expanding your services and target audience can be exciting, but also overwhelming. There is a lot to learn about the search marketing trends of an area, the culture and language of the country and what marketing techniques work or a complete no-no. If you are interested in expanding into the International Markets, let’s chat and see what we can do together!