Organic vs Paid in Multilingual Search Markets

[Bagira]

Do you think that spending more of the budget on organic and somewhat less for paid search will yeild better conversion results in multi-lingual markets?

[seobook]

there are a ton of factors... such as the value and competition in each vertical and language.

if you know what you are doing SEO should be cheaper, but if the market has limited depth and little competition PPC can give you decent coverage at a reasonable price.

[Nacho]

Very open question, this thread should get interesting.

The problem with PPC is that it's not so easily implemented in the Latin American markets, for example. Overture is finally changing its business model from CPMs to CPC and adding the entire interphase available for public. It used to be very complicated before, so some of us are seeing a huge relief. Google on the other hand has made it quite easy since the start. Just choose language, countries and start building your campaigns. Now if you're talking about the U.S. Hispanic market, then it's just as easy as English. The greatest benefit to both these markets is that average CPC rates are a bargain.

SEO, is always the best long term solution IMHO. In the Hispanic and Latin America markets there are usually less documents indexed to compete against and hardly any spam, so it makes life easier.

Now, for the other markets, I know there are people who know them very well but I would imagine that you might find silimarities with countries in high Internet growth.

For the U.K., Europe, Japan and others it's probably another ball game.

[Ahorre Hispanic Marketing]

Bagira,

Each category has different points. But in the multi-lingual arena, you should allocate your time to both organic positioning and ppc. Some categories are extremely inexpensive so they address your current needs, but organic saves you dollars long term.

[Nacho]

What about other markets? What do you see as the difference about doing SEO & PPC from Market A to Market B rather than Market B to Market A (example: A company from Mexico doing SEO & PPC for U.S. compared to a company from U.S. doing SEO & PPC in Mexico)?

[Jorge]

The first thing to consider is that the US SEO market is a good 5 years ahead of the profession in other countries. In Europe it is relatively easy to reach good organic positioning just by doing the basics. In Spain for example I am only now beginning to see an interest from major companies in "positioning" their sites. the reason for this is that web sites in Spain and in Europe are still only meant for additional support for businesses. You see few pure Internet companies and thus little interest and little competitiveness for search engine positioning. In my opinion and experience good organic results are very easy to achieve in the European market (the UK being an exception). One major barrier is the language factor if you do not speak any of the major European languages. Keyword research is also difficult. Wordtracker, adwords or overture have limited results for keywords in Spanish, French or even German. By the way Nacho I would be interested in finding good keyword research sites for the European market. I am not saying you cannot use the tools I just mentioned but their results are very limited.

[Nacho]

By the way Nacho I would be interested in finding good keyword research sites for the European market. I am not saying you cannot use the tools I just mentioned but their results are very limited.
I understand exactly what you mean, as I see the same problem with Latin America. For that market we use TeRespondo.com's support keyword tool but you must have and account as it is not available in the open market.

I will ask around other Members and Moderators that know very well those markets in Europe. Hope they have better tips for you.

[Jorge]

"What about other markets? What do you see as the difference about doing SEO & PPC from Market A to Market B rather than Market B to Market A (example: A company from Mexico doing SEO & PPC for U.S. compared to a company from U.S. doing SEO & PPC in Mexico)?"

Regarding your question:
I do all my work from Spain, directing my efforts to the markets in the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Brasil, Holland and Spain. Language localization is the major factor. you need to transmit a message that will be understood and trusted in each market. You need to have a .br, .fr, .it, de, and . nl site for each market, for the US you need US based servers. You need to comply with safety and privacy policies in each country. Other than that I see no reason why a company from any country could not do well in any foreign market. I am well positioned in every language and of course the US is the toughest.

[Jorge]

Thanks Nacho. A good spanish speaking SEO is bound to make a fortune in Spain in the next few years. I have professional friends in many sectors that are beginning to spend obscene amounts of money on SEO consulting. We are talking a lot of money for what in my opinion seems outdated information in most cases. I even know of one new Spanish SEO company offering one of the largest businesses in Spain a plan that includes black hat techniques. Incredible. I recommended they do not hire these people although I had a hard time making them believe there are activities that could get you banned in Search engines. They are light years away...

[Bagira]

This is exacly why I asked this question. It seems like since there is little regulation in foreign markets it is difficult to get real results. I agree that average CPC prices are a bargain, but traffic quality is at least questionable.Search engine ratings help, but are often deceitful. I find myself trying to persuade my clients to spend more on organic.

Which markets do you consider the most advanced?

-Bagira

[Nacho]

Which markets do you consider the most advanced?
Excellent question, but it will take this thread off topic. I would appreciate if you can start a new thread which you may title something like "Advanced Multilingual Search Markets in SEO" then ask your question. Sounds like a hot topic.

[Carlos Chacón]

Do you think that spending more of the budget on organic and somewhat less for paid search will yeild better conversion results in multi-lingual markets?
Spanish markets –talking about central America- are not educated in the SE business.
So, in that case I suggest analyzing a little bit of the Multi-lingual market in which you want to go.
Take a look and discover the SE’s education level first.
;)

[AussieWebmaster]

Great topic! Have been so busy working on developing our new French, German and Spanish sites that I missed this.
I have found that optimization efforts for the engines apart from Google that seems to have a global sandbox going work well and definitely drives solid traffic. This aspect needs to be addressed by anyone looking to market into other languages.
First, the traffic like the competition is less. To be able to have a couple of listings on a page improves your overall chances of getting them to visit you.
Second, the cost of doing both is quickly offset by the lower cost and quick ROI.
Third, organic search may have an initial cost but it is one that keeps on returning - sort of like an interest bearing investment.

[Jorge]

Investing in SEO is the right way to go. Sometimes in non-us markets an initial effort will last for years due to the lack of competitors. This makes it much more cost effective than PPC. I invest 1% of my efforts towards the Spanish market and get great results. Something similar happened in the french, german, italian, dutch and portuguese markets. I do have to say that our sales/visit conversion rate follows the world economy almost exactly. For example, Portugal has a .85 % conversion rate while the US has a 3.2%. I know there are many factors that must be considered but we have put a lot of effort into good localization and translation. We are not even physically located in the US and we still get great conversion rates. So, although positioning is easy, you will have to have success in a combination of countries and markets. As I said the US SEO efforts are harder but I get back 50% of my sales for my efforts. The rest of the world, with sites in 6 other languages, make up for the other 50% of my market, almost 168 countries in my case.

[AussieWebmaster]

Investing in SEO is the right way to go. Sometimes in non-us markets an initial effort will last for years due to the lack of competitors. This makes it much more cost effective than PPC. I invest 1% of my efforts towards the Spanish market and get great results. Something similar happened in the french, german, italian, dutch and portuguese markets. I do have to say that our sales/visit conversion rate follows the world economy almost exactly. For example, Portugal has a .85 % conversion rate while the US has a 3.2%. I know there are many factors that must be considered but we have put a lot of effort into good localization and translation. We are not even physically located in the US and we still get great conversion rates. So, although positioning is easy, you will have to have success in a combination of countries and markets. As I said the US SEO efforts are harder but I get back 50% of my sales for my efforts. The rest of the world, with sites in 6 other languages, make up for the other 50% of my market, almost 168 countries in my case.
I hope you are analysising the cultural differences and adapting them to improve the site and hopefully improve the conversion rates.

[Jorge]

I hope you are analysising the cultural differences and adapting them to improve the site and hopefully improve the conversion rates.

Well it would be almost impossible to try to localize a web site for every country but I do use local translators for the 7 countries I concentrate on. It is important as you said to let the (good) translator adapt your message to the specific culture. As an example of what you said you have terra.es that has a different version of their Portal for Spain and for every South American country, they not only change the news and weather information, there are also language and cultural differences that are taken into account.

[MarZ]

just curious, are your translators just (don't want to make it sound belittling) translators or do they have some background+understanding of SEO?
I've talked to a few translators that I know personally, and they told me that they generally stray away from outsourcing work for languages they are not familiar with, due to quality control...or lack of rather. Since they don't speak the language they can't check the work.
We brand new/still in the works bilingual seo company in Spain actually and have plans for working in other markets and other languages in the future, my primary concern is 1. translators with no seo background, meaning i have to some how figure out how to work alongside them without speaking the target language and 2. how do you check monitor the quality if you don't speak the language.

I'm curious how others go about this.

[AussieWebmaster]

The SEO can be done in English first.

[Jorge]

Well in our company we hired a person with SEO experience that speaks 6 languages. You would be surprised as to how many languages many Dutch people speak!

Any translation job should be done by a translator from the target country and then the translation must be checked by an editor, also from the target country. Notice I say country not language as you must target a particular culture; as an added benefit you may gain visitors/customers from other countries that speak the same language. This alone assures you a valid translation. Now if you want to add SEO you need someone that speaks the language with SEO experience to research your market's keywords (as you would in English) and send the list to the translator. The translator is told to include when possible the keywords sent to him/her. It is not perfect so the SEO will then tweak the web site once it is finished. You may also contact translators with SEO experience. This is something that is becoming more and more common. What does become time consuming is making any major changes in your site if you have it translated into 7 languages as we do.

[Jorge]

As for SEM you definitely need a professional that speaks the target language, but as I said before the European competition is so poor in general that with little effort you can position yourself where you want to be with the search engines. There are also a few services that will translate and send your press releases all around Europe if you want to go that way to gain exposure/links. PPC campaigns are in many cases unnecessary and you can always use the researched keyword list you used for your translation. MArZ you mentioned you are doing SEO work in the Spanish market. Who are you guys? I know there aren't too many people doing that here..

[MarZ]

.....Jorge, I knew it would generate at least some curiousity on your part.
I'm wondering the exact same thing (about you). Do tell.

We are two consultants (one American and the other Spanish, both of us speak each other's language) and we're fighting all odds to start a company, because as you said in a previous post either in this thread or elsewhere, the Spanish market is excellent and is really starting to pick up speed. its an excellent time to get into. By spanish I mean Spain in this case. U.S. Hispanic market is great also, but there are some great guys that are already quite on top of it as we speak.

At any rate, if you are in Spain, could be interesting to keep in touch, bounce ideas of off each other, etc. Are you working as a consultant? or from within a company? From your posts, it sounds like you're involved in a very complex setup (considering all of the languages and markets you are covering).

Your turn...

[Jorge]

I'll send you a private message

[MarZ]

should i be worried? :p

[Jorge]

HAHA! No worries, on the contrary, it is good to meet people in the Spanish market. I was beginning to think I was all alone. I sent you the message by the way.

[MarZ]

just got it and thinking of how to respond and what to tell you about me/us/plans.

you're right, i'm actually also very excited to find someone who's in Spain and experienced in SEO. Have you seen all of the Spammy SEO companies here. It's unbelievable and for now its so easy for them to dupe people.

[AussieWebmaster]

MarZ and Jorge can you post in this thread your insights of the Spanish market:
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=4205

[MarZ]

so sorry, i realized we were taking over the thread.

[AussieWebmaster]

so sorry, i realized we were taking over the thread.
I didn't see it as that... just wanted you to add some of your perspective to another thread in the general area.

[Nacho]

Back to the topic guys please.

[AussieWebmaster]

I find paid a lot easier to oversee and its quickness makes it the first choice and then you wait for the organic stuff to kick in.
By just doing organic you wait a long time and maybe it is not a good result.

[Jorge]

I find paid a lot easier to oversee and its quickness makes it the first choice and then you wait for the organic stuff to kick in.
By just doing organic you wait a long time and maybe it is not a good result.

Paid may be easier to oversee but you have to think in numbers. In the Spanish market and other European markets it is very difficult to make any profit if you don't have a widely used product such as travel or computers for example. There are just not enough people searching for you. If you sell a very niche specific product or service you need to be able to reach every single person that makes a query in the search engines (google for Spain almost 100%). This is because there are few people out there as potential customers. Paid listings have a much much lower click through rate than organic results in the first positions. I cancelled my adwords account in Spanish because I was getting 2 visitors a day! My visitors through organic results reach the hundreds. I don't know maybe Spaniards don't like clicking on ads (and no my ad copy is not poor ;-)). That is why I mentioned above that you need a combination of European markets to reach enough customers in some very niche specific markets. In my experience a well positioned site in the US will reach the same amount of people as a combination of well positioned site translations in the Spanish, French, and German markets combined. Also the conversion rate is always about double in the US (much better buyers). So I would only use paid listings if you are not positioned otherwise and in the beginning while google takes its time to put you up there.

[AussieWebmaster]

Paid may be easier to oversee but you have to think in numbers. In the Spanish market and other European markets it is very difficult to make any profit if you don't have a widely used product such as travel or computers for example. There are just not enough people searching for you. If you sell a very niche specific product or service you need to be able to reach every single person that makes a query in the search engines (google for Spain almost 100%). This is because there are few people out there as potential customers. Paid listings have a much much lower click through rate than organic results in the first positions. I cancelled my adwords account in Spanish because I was getting 2 visitors a day! My visitors through organic results reach the hundreds. I don't know maybe Spaniards don't like clicking on ads (and no my ad copy is not poor ;-)). That is why I mentioned above that you need a combination of European markets to reach enough customers in some very niche specific markets. In my experience a well positioned site in the US will reach the same amount of people as a combination of well positioned site translations in the Spanish, French, and German markets combined. Also the conversion rate is always about double in the US (much better buyers). So I would only use paid listings if you are not positioned otherwise and in the beginning while google takes its time to put you up there.
I do not know what niche you were marketing - and possibly that is the reason - but I know a number of people that are doing extraordinarily well with PPC in the Spanish market. Both in listings from Spain and from Latin America.

Poor creatives can cripple a campaign. Using English to push into a foreign country is such a waste of time and money. Landing people at pages that are in English after using a foreign language ad is a poor decision.

You need to use all the tools in the arsenal for this. It becomes harder to nonspeakers since they are tracking results from various engines of words that are in various languages. But it can be worked around.

Don't give up on this market or your competitors will gain more ground on you.

[Jorge]

The software market mainly. I am bilingual in Spanish and English, my mother is Spanish and I have a degree from a Spanish university. Most of my professional experience is in the Spanish market. Our products always use local language landing pages. Language is not a problem. The problem I have is NOT a language, skills, or technique issue. The problem is the size of the market. It is small in Spain for my particular niche. That is why I said you need a mass consumer product in Spain to make any real numbers. Answer this: What gets a higher click through rate, the first 3 organic results or the first three ads in google? Click through rates is key
As I said, if I am well positioned in the SERPs I do not need PPC other than for support, and I do use it for support. If my competition is there at least I'll be there for those who do click on ads.

I mentioned two situations I would rely on PPC, first when I try to position a new site and until my position is good. Second, as support for my organic results. My ideal is to be number one and two in the SERPS, and let my competitors (and my one added listing) sit on the side paying PPC. Of course this does not happen always but I still prefer to aim for that than pay PPC as my main strategy.

[Jorge]

Also, I use it myself but I do not like to distinguish SEO from PPC or paid listings. It's all marketing, PPC is just one marketing option. Site optimization and link building is another, of many more factors in selling a product or service. I simply prioritize and PPC is lower in my list than what is considered strictly SEO activities. In getting into other markets PPC is the last thing you do out of a huge list of activities including in depth market research, creating a strategy for a particular market as part of a global strategy, localization and translation, page optimization, brand building etc...

[Patrick Berry]

Organic or Paid.

depends on the time line the client has in mind..

I would go most organic, means lots of translation work here in europe.

I am based in Galicia, Spain, and I have a client that has 250,000 euros for this year for both. In the last three years I have managed to get the client to move more into the organic, but it is hard, everybody has a boss to answer too and paid gives good fast results.

my 2 cents of a euro worth.

[AussieWebmaster]

It amazes me that people actual choose.

If both work do both. You may have to balance the spends a little in the beginning as organic is a higher initial outlay with longterm benefits well after the money has been spent.
But to deny one is like saying I have two moneytrees in the backyard - that one over there gives me more so I am chopping down the other.

[Patrick Berry]

Had a big meeting with the client yesterday (based in Santiago in Spain) and I used this threads idea as a pitch. They went for it, and this year 80% of the budget goes to organic.

on a professional aside, this is great news since my margin is way way better for organic work than paided campaigns.

[AussieWebmaster]

Had a big meeting with the client yesterday (based in Santiago in Spain) and I used this threads idea as a pitch. They went for it, and this year 80% of the budget goes to organic.

on a professional aside, this is great news since my margin is way way better for organic work than paided campaigns.
And you have hedged your position for 12 months. I would have gone for a higher margin for PPC but explained to them you can manage it and improve the cost per acquisition and then they would want to increase the budget since why would they stop spending money when for every $10 they give you they make $20 back.

[Patrick Berry]

I believe it is completely unreasonable to charge 100% on PPC or banners camapiagns.

It is basically media buying (ok its a little more). As such a 10% margin seems reasonable to mean. But 100%, no.

Maybe it have my wores lose on this one.

[AussieWebmaster]

I believe it is completely unreasonable to charge 100% on PPC or banners camapiagns.

It is basically media buying (ok its a little more). As such a 10% margin seems reasonable to mean. But 100%, no.

Maybe it have my wores lose on this one.
If all you were doing was helping pick out the terms and getting the text ads from the customer and submitting them.... okay 10% - but to track them, rewrite ads, find new words, work on landing pages etc. that involves a lot more and is worth more.
You are doing alot that directly improves sales for the customer.

[Patrick Berry]

Yes I think you are right.

Shame my clientes are don´t. I am based in a little lost corner of Spain, even getting them to place adwords is tough. Web useabbility is not a term to be mention ed yet !!

Maybe in a couple of years we will get there.

[Jorge]

Some companies in Spain are starting to pay atention to SEO and even usability. The larger corporations are for sure. But as you say it will take a couple of years to become mainstream.

[Patrick Berry]

Hi Jorge, yes no doubt in Madrid, Barcelona, but up north in Galicia, very very few.

Just take a look a the xunta web site. It is shocking.

In Galicia approx 70% of all marketing/communicaicon proyects are government ones.

Its still tough up here !!

But we are getting there.

[kenpomachine]

Patrick, at least you counted with a budget in your company. I have worked previously inside a company with online stores, with 0€ budget, so I had to go all organic out of necessity. And even with the increased metrics they decided my position should go to a programmer that could do the market research and the seo (which seing the results couldn't), and they passed the maintenance of the PPC campaign to a media agency. And even though I was transfered to another branch of the company, I still had access to see that the Adwords campaign was bringing like 10 000 visitors a week.

In that other branch I supposedly counted with a much bigger budget, but my boss wouldn't allow me to spend 300$ a month on PPC, not even 300$!!

[AussieWebmaster]

Patrick, at least you counted with a budget in your company. I have worked previously inside a company with online stores, with 0€ budget, so I had to go all organic out of necessity. And even with the increased metrics they decided my position should go to a programmer that could do the market research and the seo (which seing the results couldn't), and they passed the maintenance of the PPC campaign to a media agency. And even though I was transfered to another branch of the company, I still had access to see that the Adwords campaign was bringing like 10 000 visitors a week.

In that other branch I supposedly counted with a much bigger budget, but my boss wouldn't allow me to spend 300$ a month on PPC, not even 300$!!
If that stays a countrywide habit then those businesses are going to fall prey to the savy internet marketers from outside who see the response in the language and country and move a couple of people in to buy up the traffic.

[kenpomachine]

It's not the same everywhere, but I think what I've encountered is much too common around here.

But then, one of the biggest companies in Spain only expends in Adwords when they have spare money from the marketing budget :eek: