----------------------------------------------------------------- SearchReturn Discussion List "Understanding Internet Search Technology" ----------------------------------------------------------------- Moderator: Published by: Detlef Johnson SearchReturn http://www.searchreturn.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- April 18, 2006 SearchReturn Issue #055 ----------------------------------------------------------------- SEND POSTS: ----------------------------------------------------------------- Refer a friend: http://www.searchreturn.com/subscribe.shtml ----------------------------------------------------------------- .....IN THIS DIGEST..... // -- FEATURED POST -- // "German SEO" ~ Mike Moran // -- CONTINUING DISCUSSION -- // "German SEO" ~ Barry Smith ~ Michael Melone // -- ESSENTIAL NEWS -- // "Exposed Conversion Value Parameter" "Ten Years of Writing About Search" ----------------------------------------------------------------- // -- FEATURED POST -- // ----------------------------------------------------------------- Topic ==> German SEO From: Mike Moran Let's try to tackle all three questions you asked: Most search engines will consider your site to be from Germany if it uses a ".de" top-level domain regardless of where it is hosted. In addition, they consider your site to be from Germany if it is hosted in Germany (even without a ".de" domain). So, as long as your do one of the two (which you do), you should be OK. Keyword Discovery is a relatively new entrant to the keyword research tool market, but quite a good one. I wrote a review of several new keyword tools in my Biznology Blog a few months ago which may help: http://www.searchreturn.com/digest/refs055.shtml Given your purpose of country-specific search marketing, you might want to also check out the tool I reviewed from Hitwise, in that same article. One fundamental difference in search marketing for the German language is an understanding of "decompounding" -- longer German words frequently are compounded from several smaller words and your keyword planning needs to take into account that some search engines are better at decompounding than others. So, as part of your research, in addition to checking the popularity of various keyword variations, you should also perform some test searches with those keywords in the search engines you are targeting. You sometimes find that more popular compound keywords are not correctly matched to the simple words that make up your compound word, so in those cases you would want to target a different word in search marketing (or spice up your copy with enough occurrences of the simple words to make up for it). Good luck! Mike Moran Distinguished Engineer and Manager of Web Experience ibm.com Co-author of IBM Press book, "Search Engine Marketing, Inc." http://www.mikemoran.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- // -- CONTINUING DISCUSSION -- // ----------------------------------------------------------------- ==> German SEO From: Barry Smith Hi Kelly. We are going through a similar process and have also struggled to find any decent resources on SEO'ing a different language site. I believe the keys are: German Language .DE domain German Hosting de subdomain (de.mydomain.com) de subfolder (www.mydomain.com/de/) In that order of importance. If you go to Google.de, you see there are 3 options - search the web, search sites in German (language), search sites in Germany (hosted). The overhead that goes with managing multi-location hosting and domain management is incredible, so it's a huge shame that this is taken into account for relevancy ranking. What's to say that a site created in the UK or US in German, isn't as relevant to a German site located or created in Germany. We do quite well in the "search the web" for DE but obviously nowhere for "search sites in Germany" - but then again, we would need to know what the surfing habit of most Germans are. I'm not sure if any of this helps in any way, but I wish you all the best - do share any experiences you may have. Kind Regards Barry Barry Smith SkyScanner Limited The Bourse Business Centre ----------------------------------------------------------------- ==> German SEO From: Michael Melone Try Cyberpromote.de . . . Their entire team speaks English and they have incredible search engineers and custom software in-house. Michael Melone e-Marketing Manager Intellext, Inc http://www.intellext.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- // -- ESSENTIAL NEWS -- // ----------------------------------------------------------------- ==> Exposed Conversion Value Parameter http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060417-123032 Essentials: Placing values in parameters of url strings is a very common tracking method for populating data destined for reports. This is no exception with Google. When you select to calculate conversion value with AdWords Conversion Tracker, the values you assign appear completely exposed. It is very simple for a curious competitor to go through your conversion process, and to capture urls with your sensitive information. It is made simple given the fact the assigned parameter name is: value. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ==> Ten Years of Writing About Search http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060417-130526 Essentials: Danny Sullivan reflects on ten years of writing about search engines. He started well before Google, and even longer before people came to know Google. Many of the most important search engines from earlier times no longer exist. It all started life as A Webmaster's Guide To Search Engines, and became the focal point of a multi billion dollar industry. Thank you Danny! ----------------------------------------------------------------- Stay Tuned. Got feedback?: http://www.searchreturn.com/feedback.shtml Archives: http://www.searchreturn.com/digest-archive.shtml Alternate formats: http://www.searchreturn.com/info-formats.shtml Manage Subscriptions: http://www.searchreturn.com/help/manage-subs.shtml Problems unsubscribing? Contact the postmaster: mailto:postmaster@searchreturn.com Information on how to sponsor this publication: http://www.searchreturn.com/help/advertise.shtml Published by SearchReturn http://www.searchreturn.com Website Membership: http://www.searchreturn.com/register.shtml The contents of the digest do not necessarily reflect the opinions of SearchReturn or Detlef Johnson. SearchReturn and Detlef Johnson make no warranties, either expressed or implied, about the truth or accuracy of the contents of the SearchReturn Digest. Copyright 2006 Detlef Johnson. All Rights Reserved. -----------------------------------------------------------------