May 30, 2008
Queue Up: Gaining a Competive Edge By Optimising for Colloquialisms :: Link Marketing News
Posted by buybigtires
My company is very focused on the global marketplace. Thus far this year, we’ve targeted the Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, and British languages in search results.
If you’re playing "One of these things is not like the other…" you probably feel the urge to inform me that "British" just doesn’t belong. On the technical merit of your argument, I would have to agree. In the world of search, however, it is an entirely different language. Pay close attention, and I’ll show how to leave your domestic competitors in the dust by leveraging your knowledge of other cultures.
First off, you may notice that the first portion of the title is "queue up" rather than "line up." Britons typically use this term, along with "queueing up," "stand in queue," and various other terms to express standing behind other people single file. Why is this important? I’ll show you:
So, we have 134,000,000 results. It’s probably going to be pretty hard to rank for this particular term. Now we’ll do a search for the term "queue up":
With just over 1,000,000 results, this term is far easier to optimise and rank for. An added benefit is that you are catering to an audience that speaks the British variant of English worldwide. What? Yeah, that’s right. You’re also hitting Australia, India, Canada, South Africa, and portions of the Middle East. Your clients will be miles ahead of the US market by adopting an International SEO approach, and gain valuable business contacts in the process. If you think I am kidding, apply this concept to a PPC campaign. You’ll pay far less money for far more leads and sales.
America is the only place where we turn our "s" into a "z" when we spell. Yet Google still thinks I might have made a mistake when I search for "optimise," even when I check with the UK variant of Google:
In case you were wondering, the results for "optimize" clocked in at 44 million. I won’t bore you with yet another Google screenshot because I think you get the point. "But," you might say, "we are only marketing our product to the US market. Why should I care if we rank for the funny spelling of the word?" One word: Expatriates.
When people leave their own country to attend university, marry, or start a new job, there is a good chance they will not leave 20 years of spelling habits behind. It is also very likely that they will continue to use their country’s portal for search, even though they have left that geographical location. As an aside, if they are searching, then they will probably do it in their primary language, so position your strategy accordingly.
Now that we’ve established a "why," I’ll give you a few suggestions to help you rank for these "odd" spellings:
- Put the term in your page title with its Americanized equivalent.
e.g., If you are trying to rank for cash registers internationally, put the terms "cash registers and tills" in your title tag.
- Use the term "interchangeably" and "synonymously" in your body text.
This will help you rank more highly, and you will educate your audience in the process. That way, when some poor Scotsman asks where the till is, he won’t be inadvertently pointed towards the restroom.
- Anchor Text, Anchor Text, Anchor Text
If your search terms are similar, you may get some nice overlap.
e.g., You’re anchoring with "car tires" and the international spelling "car tyres". Because they share the common KW "car" you should see a synergistic boost in rankings for both terms.
Maybe you think my advice is elementary, basic, downright common. It is. You have every right to chuckle and dismiss everything I just said. I advise you to give this method a real chance. You may be pleasantly surprised at the results.
I also know that my knowledge in this area is very limited, so please leave your geotargeted, JavaScripted, User Agent redirected, AJAX boosted, keyword arbitrage solution in the comments below. 
Signing off…
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