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Issue #055: German SEO Cont.

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             "Understanding Internet Search Technology"
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Moderator:                                          Published by:
Detlev Johnson                                       SearchReturn
               http://www.searchreturn.com
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April 18, 2006                            SearchReturn Issue #055
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                   .....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"

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// -- FEATURED POST -- //

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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

 

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// -- CONTINUING DISCUSSION -- //

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==> 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

 

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==> 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

 

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// -- ESSENTIAL NEWS -- //

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==> 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.

 

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==> 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!

 

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