There is huge online potential for marketers in Asia and Latin America, as long as they understand each target market and tailor their campaigns for both local search engines and users, was a key message to come out of the International Search Summit SEO in London last week.
The Chinese, Japanese and the key Latin American markets were all presented by native search experts, who aimed to give attendees actionable information and tips to help them improve their online marketing performance in some of the leading global markets.
China has more internet users than any other country, yet the dominance of its local search engine Baidu makes it more difficult for international marketers to reach them. Ching-Yun Huang, an SEO specialist at WebCertain gave an insight into how the leading Chinese search engine operates and highlighted the most important things to consider such as which variant of the language is used in your target market and the quality and source of your inbound links.
While China has only recently become a major online market, Japan has been at the forefront of technological development for many years and marketers hoping to succeed there need to ensure their websites and campaigns are suitable for mobile search. 90% of the 94 million Japanese web users access the internet via a mobile, and using an official carrier website and making submissions to mobile directories are just two of the means suggested by Koichiro Fukasawa of Wasabi Communications of achieving good mobile ranking results.
The session focusing on Latin America highlighted the dangers of treating the whole of the region as one country, and recommended that wherever possible marketers use individual country domains, with localised language and content such as local currencies and contact numbers. Brazil is currently seen as one of the world’s leading emerging markets and is by far the leading internet market in Latin America, Ana Leckenby of WebCertain suggests that organisations also consider the opportunities in Mexico, the second largest marketing in the region, as well as Argentina, Chile, Venezuela and Colombia which are growing year on year.
As well as focusing on country specific topics, the International Search Summit covered a range of SEO topics, including International Keyword Research, Local Search, Universal Search and Advanced Link Building. Speakers included Peter Maxmin of Bing, Will Critchlow from Distilled, Bill Hunt from Back Azimuth Consulting and Massimo Burgio of SEMPO.
Andy Atkins-Krüger of WebCertain, the multilingual search marketing agency that runs the Summit says, “We had a very high calibre set of speakers at this event, who gave delegates insights and information that they can implement into their international campaigns. Each session ended in a lively question and answer session, with much debate on all of the topics and a lot of interesting point of views”.
This was the 5th International Search Summit, the 4th to be held in London. Details on the next event have not yet been released. Previous speakers have included Xerox, Yandex, Bebo and Microsoft adCenter.
About WebCertain Global Ltd
WebCertain’s “world language hub” consists of a team of search specialists of many languages all working together on search engine optimisation and pay per click campaigns under one roof. WebCertain also has local partners for that extra local edge.
Visit WebCertain at www.webcertain.com to find out more about the multilingual search marketing services.
For further informations, contact:
Gemma Birch
Marketing Executive
WebCertain Global Ltd
Northminster Business Park
York
YO26 6QW
