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Having been in another meeting with a company who’s having difficulties with their international SEO strategy I thought it would be appropriate to write a quick post about the various international SEO approaches.

Possible strategies include:
- using local domains and/or local hosting
- building inlinks from local websites
- IP delivery
- GWT geographic targeting
…etc.

Unfortunately it’s usually not as simple as this because the client’s circumstances can make things rather complex. Be it technical limitations (CMS, site programming, technical management problems/limitations etc), financial limitations not to mention duplicate content. Or it simply goes against the business strategy.

Below is a great video discussing this further – starting from 3mins to 8mins.

Please note that this is the extreme seo session from a4uexpo which sometimes goes into some gray and black-hat seo. Contains some swearing.

On the panel is Dixon Jones, Joost de Valk, Marcus Tandler, Jason Duke – moderated by Ciaran Norris.

Happy searching
Claudius

Our SEO pro and recently-become iPhone owner, Mo, combines his expertise to perform an SEO-related iPhone app review…

The holidays are around the corner and surely everyone is thinking of buying Christmas gifts. I’m sure everyone has heard a lot about the iPhone and its hype, so I thought it would be a good time to do an SEO-related iPhone app review, so if you are thinking of buying an iPhone or iPod touch for your SEO-savvy friend, this post might help you to make sure these gadgets will be more than just a phone or a MP3 player to the lucky receiver – it might help you justify the price you pay for it a little more as well.

Let’s get down to business. The application I am going to talk about is called proSEO and it seems to be the only noteworthy SEO application in app store till date. You can get to the app by visiting this iTunes store link. First things first: this app costs £8.99 or $14.99 if you reside in the U.S. Below are some of the features this app offers:

- The full HTML source code of the page
- The page’s META data (including META keywords and descriptions)
- The information about <title> tag.
- The anchor tags
- The image alt tags

The user interface is very straight-forward; just browse to the page that you would like to review and press the ‘Analyze’ button, and all the data about the page will be presented to you in the form of 4 tabs: Source, Meta, Tags and Title.

In terms of page content analysis, this app offers two features: the body text listing and phrases window. (more…)

Kaila attended Media and Marketing’s Advertising in the Recession seminar last week. Here’s what she learned about why you shouldn’t keep your online advertising spend locked up.

It was a bit of a hidden venue for a conference, through a barely-noticeable door on London’s busy Shaftesbury Avenue, up a long flight of stairs, but actually it was quite impressively done for an event put together on such short notice.

The event began with Adam Smith of GroupM discussing advertising expenditure in 2009. He pointed out that media growth is on a big downward spiral in 2009. Bit of a downer, but onward he went. He demonstrated how in 2009, China will make by far the largest contribution to global advertising spend, with the US making by far the least (no big surprise there). What was interesting was that Brazil came in second to China in this category, and next to it was Indonesia!

I suppose this again reinforces the massive contributions emerging markets are beginning to make in the global economy. I, personally, had no idea that Indonesia was so advertising-keen.

Another fact he pointed out that was again not a huge surprise, was that Internet is by far the most popular medium by which this advertising would reach its audience. Television was next, with magazines quite far down the list. While internet advertising is predicted to grow by £120 million in 2009, regional newspaper advertising is predicted to decrease by £250 million. Yikes. Perhaps we really are coming to the death of regionals, as so many are predicting. (more…)

Hi everyone,

Hope you’re all doing well and looking forward to the upcoming holidays, whatever you celebrate.

Just wanted to let everyone know that Oban has finally unveiled its formerly top secret project on ITP.net, the Middle Eastern internet technology portal.

The project will reveal the various cultural reactions to tourism websites, and what influences them.

Results will be released in January 2009 to ITP.net.

Mark was inspired on Friday and wrote this lovely piece of code for detecting whether daylight savings time is enabled, which he is particularly proud of.

I have found it tends to be quite difficult to define what people mean when they specify a date and time.

* Do they mean GMT time? Unless they are living within the GMT timezone, more likely is that they mean their local time.
* What is the effect of daylight saving? It may or may not be in effect at a particular point in time, and possibly not even being used in the local timezone.

Javascript gives us the Date.getOffsetTimezone however AFAIK there is nothing similar for DST. The following Date protoype extension (based on the technique by Josh Frasher) detects whether DST is enabled:


Date.prototype.getDST() = function() {
var now_local = this;
var jan_local = new Date(now_local.getFullYear(), 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0);
var jun_local = new Date(now_local.getFullYear(), 5, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0);
var now_utc = new Date.UTC(now_local.getFullYear(), now_local.getMonth(), now_local.getDate(), now_local.getHours(), now_local.getMinutes(), now_local.getSeconds(), now_local.getMilliseconds());
var jan_utc = new Date.UTC(jan_local.getFullYear(), jan_local.getMonth(), jan_local.getDate(), jan_local.getHours(), jan_local.getMinutes(), jan_local.getSeconds()), jun_local.getMilliseconds();
var jun_utc = new Date.UTC(jun_local.getFullYear(), jun_local.getMonth(), jun_local.getDate(), jun_local.getHours(), jun_local.getMinutes(), jun_local.getSeconds(), jan_local.getMilliseconds());
var now_diff = Math.round((now_utc - now_local.getTime()) / (1000 * 3600));
var jan_diff = Math.round((jan_utc - jan_local.getTime()) / (1000 * 3600));
var jun_diff = Math.round((jun_utc - jun_local.getTime()) / (1000 * 3600));
return jan_diff != jun_diff && now_diff == Math.max(jan_diff, jun_diff);
}


Feel free to use/modify this code as you see fit.

Update: l8nite (see comment #1 below) pointed out a few errors when the times are right on the cusp of a DST update. This was down to the Date object doing internal conversions based on the user’s timezone (thus messing up the UTC times being passed in).

Update 2: Unfortunately this code relies on the operating system’s timezone settings and whether DST patches (DST changes all the time!) have been applied. Having done some testing in Win XP SP3 it seems that DST settings for the U.S. are a bit messed up.

Update 3: Updated to use UTC method from the class rather than a new object and added milliseconds (thanks l8nite comment #6)

Update 4: Using Math.round rather than parseInt to avoid rounding issues (thanks Eyal comment #7)

Mega Monday was explosive. Carol explains.

The Monday after November’s pay cheques have cleared (the second Monday) has become an X-mas shopping phenomenon over the last few years. This year was no exception, despite the fact that many people, including me, are planning to reduce their X-mas spend.

According to IMRG, the body representing the online e-commerce world, Monday December 8th, 2008 was the biggest online shopping day this year with sales volumes up 18% and values up 14%, compared to the same Monday last year, as consumers flocked online to purchase their Christmas presents. But it wasn’t quite as busy as expected, and it may be that shoppers are still doing their research to find the best deals in a cash-strapped season.

I am a big fan of online shopping – especially as it means avoiding the crowds. I particularly like to buy things online which I am familiar with, and don’t need to browse for. I have even been known to persuade suppliers from German and other European websites to ship specialities to me even though they were not set up for overseas orders! Roll on the Single European Market in e-shopping!

Cheers! Carol.

Grant on baby’s first Christmas and online Christmas shopping…

Following my recent arrival into parenthood I’m particularly looking forward to Xmas this year for obvious reasons. Although the usual round of drinking and subsequent hangovers has been somewhat reduced (apart from the recent Oban Xmas party of course where I have vowed never again to mix numerous Sambucca shots with 4am nappy change) it’s no change in our house in preparation for the festive season.

This weekend the cobwebs will be dusted off the decorations, I’ll be taking out a 2nd mortgage to purchase the tree and several vats of wine are on route to my house as I’m writing this blog. From recent reports it seems everyone else is planning on doing exactly the same and not letting anything effect their Christmas. In fact as per Kaila’s recent blog many families intend to increase their online spend this year so as ever its essential that companies position their online marketing strategy to take advantage

Happy Xmas and a prosperous 2009 to everyone

Cheers

Grant

Sinead Comerford, Business Development Executive at Oban, searches under every stone to find an SEO/PPC opportunity.

Two interesting occasions happened recently which turned into interesting opportunities.

I recently attended a networking event in Eastbourne hosted by the Sussex Enterprise where my MD, Greig Holbrook was presenting on SEO for the European Markets.

There I got chatting to a local business man whose company specialises in “Fulfilment & Transport Solutions”. After a little while, we discovered that we may be related as he comes from the same line of Collins’ as I do from Co. Cork. (I’m famous, don’t you know, related to Michael Collins, who helped fight for and secure an Independent Ireland from the British back in 1921) Oh the wonderful fighting Irish!.

This enjoyable encounter lead to the client emailing some distant cousins that he has not be in contact with for a while and I received a lovely email from him the next day asking for more information about what Oban do and how can we assist and improve his international marketing strategy

Since then, we have met up, chatted more, proposal has been sent, a Directors meeting took place with his colleague in Vancouver Canada. A verbal agreement has been spoken and I await with baited breath the next step.

The moral of the story: always be nice to strangers as they may turn out to be family. Also people buy people and not necessarily the product and service alone.

The second opportunity arose when I was travelling on a packed train to get to the World Travel Market. I was on the Jubilee Line from London Bridge trying to get to the Canning Town to change for Excel when I was literally pressed against this gentleman. Luckily he was very pleasant and smiley–faced and we endeavoured to keep positive and bright despite a horrid journey. We got talking and I gave him my business card. The next day, he emailed me saying that he was interested in what Oban Multilingual does and requested more information. Since then he has a wealth of reading material which he says will give him many hours of enjoyable reading on his endless train journeys.

Moral of the story: Try and keep positive even in challenging times, you never know who you may meet and which business opportunities could arise.

xxSinead

Despite the tough economic climate, online sales are actually faring quite well this Christmas season.

According to a report in the NMA today, many families are actually planning to spend more online this year than last.

The study, done by MRG, found that 75 percent of the 100-plus families surveyed were planning to make online purchases over this Christmas period, and 40 percent were planning to do so more than last year.

It noted that customers are doing more research online before they make their purchases. High street stores were the favoured venues for such research, follwed by online retail sites, and then manufacturer’s sites.

The NMA quotes Richard Wainright-Lee, MD of online gift retailer Iwantoneofthese.com, saying that the social dynamics of online shopping have also changed: “Families will do it while chatting together and sharing,” he says.

Furthermore, PhoCusWright recently released key findings in its European Online Travel Overview (4th Ed). The study found that at the close of 2008, online leisure/unmanaged business travel bookings to represent nearly 30 percent of the £212 billion European travel industry – the world’s largest regional travel market.

This report explains that the global economic conditions have put pressure on European travel growth in 2008, which will cause a softening of overall demand for travel, and heighten customer price sensitivity – which will drive more cost savings online. “This presents an opportunity for online channels to flourish, with complementary forces of demand and supply drawing consumers to the Internet marketplace.”

Another interesting fact pointed out by PhoCusWright is that traditional air carriers are gaining ground, since low-cost carriers are beginning to reach online saturation. The hotel sector, it also mentions, saw a 30 percent increase in online bookings in 2007.

Cheers and happy online shopping! Kaila x

This week in the SEO news section, Mo goes through some of the highlights of comScore’s latest metric report, Baidu’s paid ad scandal, the latest addition to Google’s search tools and a piece of search engine related news about Black Friday shopping in the U.S.

Ok let’s start with Baidu, for our very few readers who do not know what Baidu does, it is sufficient to say that Baidu is the Chinese internet giant that runs the most popular search engine and has more users than Google (in China, of course).

It has come to light that four of the major medical advertisers on Baidu did not have valid medical licenses. Baidu took a lot of heat because of this, the stock prices suddenly fell by 60% and the search ad revenue has dropped by approximately 10-15%. Baidu announced that the employees who were involved in this were fired and it is now double-checking all the licenses submitted by medical advertisers. One difference between the way Baidu deals with paid search ads and other search engines is that Baidu lists the paid ads the same way it lists the natural search results. This may soon change.

comScore and Nielsen Online published the search metrics reports

Here are some of the highlights:

According to comScore’s search engine market share in Japan, Yahoo is still a major player in that market. In September, Yahoo beat Google in searches. In September, 5.9 billion searches were conducted in Japan with each searcher conducting an average of 96 searches in that month. Yahoo is leading the market share with more than three billion searches on Yahoo sites which allocate 51.2% of the market share to the company. Google is the runner-up with 2.3 billion searches and 39% market share. As can be seen here, Yahoo and Google are ruling the Japan’s market share with a combined share of more than 90%. (more…)