The document discusses international SEO and challenges conventional wisdom about the need for local links. It presents analysis showing that local language links do not strongly correlate with search rankings, and may correlate less than overall link strength. The analysis looked at top search results across many countries and keywords. While local links could become more important over time, the data suggests focusing on good links overall rather than worrying too much about how local they are.

1. International SEO:How not to Suck & A Quest to Challenge Conventional Wisdom

3. 11 years in marketing

4. 5 years – retail marketing (POS / Sales Promo)

5. 3 years – direct response (press / direct mail / sponsorship)

6. 3 years online – (SEO, PPC, CRO & other initialisms)

7. Hair changes colour a lotEmail: hannah.smith@distilled.net Twitter: @hannah_bo_banna LinkedIn: uk.linkedin.com/in/hannahsmith

9. Why you should care about International SEO

10. How not to suck

11. Part Two

13. Good rankings in one country don’t necessarily ‘translate’ - even if there’s no language barrier...

14. UK Results

15. US Results

16. So if you want to rank internationally what do you need to do?

17. “Don’t mess it up & you’ll be fine” Duncan Morris, Distilled

18. Sadly, companies mess this up a lot...

19. Language and Location

20. Pop Quiz Which languages are spoken in Switzerland?

21. Stop! Before you go crazy registering domains and planning out your Information Architecture

22. Check Brand Comprehension Does your brand ‘translate’? Insurance.co.uk Insurance.com Insurance.it Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mtrichardson/4626549119/sizes/z/

23. Process to Avoid Sucking at International SEO (Part I) Define languages Does your brand translate? Define countries

25. I will tell you more about why I hate Sub Domains later...

27. You’ll need to put in some serious link building effort

34. Make sure the search engines (US IP) can crawl all your content not just US versions

35. Do not use this to dynamically deliver content

36. Make sure users can override this

38. Ways You Can Mess it Up Cheap (or just plain crazy) Translation

40. No local addresses

42. Geo-Targeting via Google Webmaster Tools Image credit http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/pages/Geo-Targeting-Countries-For-SEO.aspx

43. Hosting Image credit : http://bodmas.org/blog/red-herring/a-red-herring/

44. Local Links Image credit: http://technbiz.blogspot.com/2010/11/hotpot-is-cheesy-name.html

45. Part Two Conventional Wisdom says you need local links to rank – but do you?

46. I believe in Unicorns

47. & the Loch Ness Monster

48. I would never say ‘Candyman’ five times in front of a mirror...

49. But I don’t like to accept Conventional Wisdom. My Mum says I’m at ‘that difficult age’ and have been since I was 4.

52. Illustration of Strong Correlation – THIS IS NOT REAL DATA (Graph is fake, well actually the graph is real, it’s the data that is fake) Fake Page Authority Fake Google Rank

53. Page Authority / Rank – Real Data PA correlation co-efficient is just under 0.3 which means it PA would account for ~9% of Google’s algorithm (Graph shown for French results) Page Authority Google Rank

55. Armani jeans

56. Diesel jeans

57. DVD

58. Buy DVDs

59. Car Insurance

60. Mortgages

61. Loans

62. Life Insurance

63. Music Downloads

64. TV Downloads

65. Kindle

66. iPhone

67. iPad

68. Cheap Hotels

70. Find out the percentage of local links the sites ranking in the top ten for those keywords have

72. % of local links may not be the best measure

73. OSE might not have picked up all of the external links to a given page

74. Doesn’t weight links for quality

75. Doesn’t take into account overall link profile of a site

77. Generic TLDs are used all over the place

79. Language tool is not 100% accurate but it’s pretty good

81. Illustration of Strong Correlation – THIS IS NOT REAL DATA (Graph is fake, well actually the graph is real, it’s the data that is fake) Fake Page Authority Fake Google Rank

82. Page Authority / Rank – Real Data (Graph shown for French results) Page Authority Google Rank

83. % Local Language Links / Rank Real Data (Graph shown for French results) % Local Language Links Google Rank

85. % Local Language Links / Rank Binned Data 0-200 Links (Graph shown for French results) % Local Language Links Google Rank

86. % Local Language Links / Rank Binned Data 201-400 Links (Graph shown for French results) % Local Language Links Google Rank

87. % Local Language Links / Rank Binned Data 401-600 Links (Graph shown for French results) % Local Language Links Google Rank

88. % Local Language Links / Rank Binned Data – 601-800 Links (Graph shown for French results) % Local Language Links Google Rank

89. % Local Language Links / Rank Binned Data – 801- 1000(+) Links (Graph shown for French results) % Local Language Links Google Rank

91. Page Authority / Rank – Real Data (Graph shown for French results) Page Authority Google Rank

92. % Local Language Links / Rank Binned Data – 601-800 Links (Graph shown for French results) % Local Language Links Google Rank

95. But don’t take my word for it... We’ll be releasing the data & the tool – we’d love to hear your thoughts

96. A Massive Thank You To: Lovely Distilled People - Tom Anthony, Alice Murphy, Phil Nottingham, Duncan Morris, Will Critchlow & Kate Morris Amazing ‘Beyond the Call of Duty’ Buddies – Rob Nicholson, & Gianluca Fiorelli

97. Questions? Email: hannah.smith@distilled.net Twitter: @hannah_bo_banna LinkedIn: uk.linkedin.com/in/hannahsmith