OBAN Newsletter - June 2011

At OBAN we know that nothing benefits a campaign more than sharing information - whether it is learning more about your company or educating you on new aspects in global Search!

Each month our team will present their favourite sources of new features in Search Engines and techniques to optimise PPC and SEO on a global level. If you would like more information on any of these topics, techniques or advice then please do not hesitate to contact us anytime.

The OBAN Multilingual Team

The Face Of Global Search

Chinese search giant Baidu announced changes and improvements to their ranking and indexation process in Mid-May. These have affected the frequency to which rankings are updated and the relative SEO power of certain link types.

Links in blog comments and forum posts are now weighted so that the first comment has the most linking power. The search engine had previously only updated rankings each week but from May it can show changes for 1st to 4th positions much more frequently - even on a daily basis, where appropriate.

http://hi.baidu.com/michael_space/blog/item/dee40c0fb4dd1d3d6059f381.html

For businesses social networking and having a "social" presence online is becoming more and more important. Therefore Google is rolling out its new Social Search feature to 18 further language markets. At OBAN we understand that Google Social Search is a way for Google users to find out relevant information from their online contacts.

You might have probably read it in one of our articles, however as a multilingual Search agency we cannot preach enough that you need to "localise" your Search and online Marketing strategies. Social Media can be a great marketing tool; however, you need to be aware it is used very differently across the globe. For example, in China QQ.com is by far the most popular social networking site, whereas our good old friends Facebook and Twitter are banned. To maximise the effects of social media marketing, make sure that your social media strategy is specifically tailored to the region and market you are targeting.

Source

http://googlesocialweb.blogspot.com/2011/05/social-search-goes-global.html

Twitter is now in its 5th year and continues to increase its popularity. In March 2011 the company announced that the billionth tweet had been made and that there was an 182% increase in mobile users over the past year. When the service was launched it was predominantly used in English. Soon after the Launch it has been rolled out in several languages. In February 2011 the "Twitter Translation Centre" was introduced with Brazilian Portuguese being the most recent addition.

http://blog.twitter.com/2011/06/oba-twitter-in-brazilian-portuguese.html

New advanced snippets for websites of International organizations

(Новые расширенные сниппеты для сайтов организаций)

For our Russian Clients Yandex has announced the release of special snippets to appear in Map Search Results for certain business/organisation types. Snippets are important for influencing Click through Rates in search results.

This article explains how these snippets are created and how they can be controlled.

http://webmaster.ya.ru/posts.xml?tag=12393381

Social media, although often seen as synonymous with social networks, encompass a much wider range of online platforms, which offer their users a variety of tools to communicate and create content. These include blogging and microblogging sites, instant messengers (IM), forums or message boards, photo- and video-sharing sites, as well as social networks which aggregate many of these functions within one interface.

Around the world, social media have experienced an explosion of popularity and have revolutionised the way we communicate today, but different countries have shown different attitudes and preferences when it comes to social media. For example, Russians and Brazilians are by far the most engaged social network users in the world, Spaniards spend a lot of time watching online video, and the Chinese particularly enjoy instant messaging and reading/writing blogs.

Apart from different communication modes in social media, it is also the tools themselves that vary from country to country. Since the launch of Facebook in late 2004, the online landscape has changed for good, but it hasn't changed the same way everywhere. The idea itself was quickly picked up by other entrepreneurs and programmers, who then created social media sites in their native languages and tailored to the local audiences. And when it comes to social networks – the 'first-mover advantage' is definitely not an empty phrase. After a considerable time investment involved in creating your virtual profile and friends network – it is unlikely you'll be going elsewhere!

And so, we have seen the emergence of many home-grown social networking sites which continue to be important local players despite Facebook's global expansion: Renren or Kaixin001 in China, vKontakte and Odnoklassniki in Russia, Nasza Klasa in Poland, Xing in Germany, Orkut in Brazil or Cyworld in South Korea, are just a few such examples.

Smart businesses have gaged the importance of their brand visibility in social media and have already expanded their online marketing strategy to include social media as one of their customer interfacing tools. But when it comes to operating in many international markets, it is perhaps not so easy to make strategic decisions and distribute the resources wisely. OBAN can provide consultancy on international social media to help your business make the right choices and target the appropriate local sites and audiences.

If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to contact us anytime or simply visit our website www.obanmultilingual.com