International Search Engine Marketing Blog

It can be a difficult task for a company operating overseas to select a search engine optmisation firm located in the United States. At Agilis Marketing we hear from an array of international companies, many of which are located in the United Kingdom. This post is intended for companies that are headquartered in the U.K or other regions outside the United States. While Agilis Marketing is always willing to help U.S. companies with a United Kingdom SEO campaign, this article is targeted to our clients and prospects outside the states. 

The most common area of concern when hiring an international company is that of distance. People and companies value face to face meetings. Why should a company located in the U.K. select a firm in the U.S. when there are numerous local firms? The simple answer is that expertise and ROI should determine the decision, not locale. If a United States based company is more experienced with SEO and delivers a higher ROI than the choice is obvious.

Still, it is oftentimes easier to work with a company located in one’s home country. This is an advantages that should not go overlooked. The ability to take a quick flight or drive and meet face to face with representatives of the contracted company can certainly be of value. Whereas if a U.S. marketing company is hired then a face to face meeting is much more time consuming. That said the easier route is not always the most profitable one. Corporate America provides a perfect example of this and it is one reason why many U.S. companies outsource jobs overseas. Hiring a United States company to perform U.K. SEO work is turning into an increasingly smarter move for businesses in part due to the ongoing decline in the dollar.

Even with the aforementioned stated, the issue of distance still comes into play. Therefore our company happily meets with owners and directors of companies in the United Kingdom. Depending on the circumstances, sometimes it is more effective for our employees to visit a U.K. company’s headquarters, whereas on other occasions the converse holds true. Either way, Agilis Marketing does not view distance as a barrier to providing excellent search engine optimisation services to United Kingdom clients or any other international companies.

What is the most effective method of marketing a U.K. company to a U.S. audience? The answer to this depends largely on the product or service that one is marketing. Nevertheless there are a few basic ideas to keep in mind when advertising on the internet. Many of these same considerations can also be applied to international search engine marketing between other country pairs.

There are large differences in the way search engines, such as Google, position websites within their results pages based upon the user’s location. As an example, search for the phrase “seo services” without the quotations on google.com then search for the same phrase on google.co.uk and notice the vast difference in the results displayed. Take a look at the two screen shots further below to view images from when I conducted the search. Now the important question is why does this happen?

There are both SEO principles to remember and general marketing considerations such as proper linguistics. A fairly obvious factor is a websites’ domain extension. U.K. companies should obtain a .com extension, whereas United States businesses should acquire a .co.uk extension.

Of course it is not as simple as purchasing a new domain extension. On on-page consideration to keep in mind is that of duplicate content. While it is understandable that a company will want to relay the same basic message to both countries, it should not use the exact same copy. A company should rewrite copy to avoid any duplicate content penalties.

Off-page factors to keep in mind are largely related to link building. When conducting a links building campaign that markets to the U.S., a United Kingdom company should obtain links from websites headquartered in the United States. Properly, conducting a links campaign in this manner can even avoid the need to obtain a new domain extension.

Linguistic issues are also important to remember. A perfect example is search engine optimisation, which is the correct spelling in the United Kingdom, and search engine optimization, which is the correct spelling in the United States. While there is only a one letter difference, this spelling differential can impact how visitors view a website and how the search engines rank a website. Few United States businesses or people want to conduct business with a company that is unable to use the countries’ linguistics. To me it shows that a company marketing to a U.S. audience did not take the time to even use the United States spelling. Of course the converse holds true to U.S. companies looking to marketing to the United Kingdom.

Understanding your audience is essential. This posts contains only a few of the important ideas to keep in mind when marketing services or products to an international audience. Nonetheless, these ideas are an excellent initial checklist for those companies advertising abroad.

P. Arkwright, of Business Services U.K., kindly contributed the following post:

These days one of the most widely used terms on the Internet is ‘SEO Expert’. It still amazes me how anyone can claim to be an expert in any field without any formal qualifications. This does not even take into account the fact that Search Engines oftentimes have elusive policies and their ranking criteria can change. Take it from me there really is no such person as an SEO Expert outside search engine organisations.

Most of these self appointed experts spend their time hanging around forums, in the hope of finding gullible clients. Their services do not come cheap; they are known to charge a client anything from £1,000 to £150,000 for their work, with no long term guarantees.

I have often caused a stir in these forums by asking a simple question, “How can you offer SEO services, when your own sites have little to no PR and extremely poor SERPS”. As you can imagine this question instantly causes a stir, panic starts to set in as these amateurs start to see £’s disappearing before their eyes. They quickly compose themselves and write an articulate response stating they are far too busy to spend time optimising their own site. I simply reply, “You seem to find the time to post on this forum on a regular basis”. That question is generally the final straw for that particular band of raconteurs. They either pack up their bags and move on to infest another forum or they keep quiet for a few weeks in the hope the thread is soon forgotten. The cleverest operators become forum moderators. This is a first class move, since their status as a moderator adds weight to their services and with one click of a mouse they can ban competing providers or people who ask the “wrong” questions.

There are many SEO providers who fully understand the fundamentals of optimisation and over the short term have the ability to move any site higher in the search rankings. However let there be no illusion, few reputable organizations will ever offer any long term guarantees and it is generally best to watch out if they do.

My advice to anyone looking to use the services of a SEO provider is to stay well clear of forums and only use the services of a provider whose own sites are well ranked for numerous keywords or phrases.