B2B Marketing magazine
April 23rd, 2008
 |
| Greig Holbrook |
Published 31 January, 2008
http://www.b2bm.biz/news/?groupID=120508&articleId=27599
By Greig Holbrook, MD, Oban Multilingual
Search engine optimisation and search engine marketing are topics on the lips of many marketers in the digital arena. With over £1 billion per year spent on paid search in the UK alone, search is considered integral and vital to many a digital marketing campaign.
SEO offers compelling benefits for many companies including those in the B2B sectors - when companies are looking for new suppliers, often an internet search is their first port of call. The theory behind this is that we as individuals use search engines so much in our normal lives that it’s a natural progression to use search in our working lives.
What many companies fail to understand is that the majority of people searching the web do not speak English (approximately 70 per cent), and therefore many opportunities are lost through invisibility of their websites on a global level. This is where multilingual SEO comes in.
Each culture searches the web in a different way. Whether looking at searches by brand name or by product, as multilingual SEO specialists, we at OBAN have found significant differences in the way cultures search.
For example, Brand UK, or Brand RU are used as terms. Without these terms being optimised into the relevant language version of the site, searchers are either unlikely to find the site or to find only the English language version.
In Russia they may add the phrases ‘brand‘+ ‘global,’ whereas in Italy they use the phrase ‘online’ + ‘brand‘. All of these searches offer good opportunities to the company but without multilingual optimisation these searchers will not receive the results they wanted.
Another compelling reason for multilingual SEO/SEM in B2B is that it can provide excellent return on investment. Many businesses still haven’t realised how important search can be and therefore stick to traditional methods. A B2B company can advertise in any specific location they want, with ads showing in particular regions if need be. This highly focused and selective system means that a company can have ads in Moscow and Mumbai - each tapping into local B2B searches for as little as 2p. Paid search often works on an auction basis, so if there aren’t many bidders on that phrase you can generate leads globally at a fraction of traditional media costs.
There is often less volume of searches for B2B but the relevancy is much higher and more specific. This is yet another reason why any business with global potential needs to think long and hard about multilingual SEO and if they can afford not to be doing it.
