I have been using Zemanta for the past few months on this blog to help bring interesting posts to the end of my own creations, pictures to give context, and links within writing to provide explanations. The main point of Zemanta is to provide seamless connections to content that would be relevant to your article, pictures for relevance, tags for organizing, and great links.

What I have found recently is that there is a big SEO benefit of Zemanta as well. I have written about and covered interested (at least to me) topics over the past few months. In return for writing timely and interesting pieces Zemanta “recommends” these links to others who write about similar topics.

This means that folks who are using Zemanta link my articles at the bottom of their posts. The benefit of this is that the authors have to put in little to no effort to find links to similar articles.

From an SEO perspective this is great. I get links from blogs that I did not previously know about and then get a trackback to checkout the article someone else wrote. This means that contextually relevant articles get better connectivity through the web. I have described to people that this provides a TechMeme type of link structure so that you can follow articles around that cover similar material.

(disclosure: my employer Union Square Ventures has made an investment in Zemanta) These opinions developed after using the product for a few months and getting some amazing links back to my personal blog.

From large blogs with big readerships to smaller blogs just starting out – Zemanta provides a way to connect the web that benefits authors in a relevant way that ends up providing an SEO boost as well.

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Motoko Hunt

On my first “real” job, I was a corporate interpreter/translator. Then I got into marketing, and worked as Senior Marketing and Procurement Manager at Japanese trading firm in California. I managed marketing and procurement contracts between the Japanese Government, Japanese Defense Agency, top companies in heavy industry, and the manufactures/suppliers in US. I learned great deal about how the business works locally and Internationally.

Back in mid 90′s, I started to do some web site localization and press release translation work for US businesses targeting Japanese market. Did some display ad purchases, e-mail marketing, site submissions… all the good stuff.

It’s great that now as a Search Marketing Strategist, I get to use my past experiences with language, International business and online marketing work to create search strategies for my clients.

2. International SEM and SEO have become more important in the last few years – what areas should people focus on?

With both SEO and SEM, you need to research the market before you enter. You’ll need the data from keyword research, competitive analysis, market trend, etc. to create effective campaigns.

In Japan, more than 85% of people search to gather information about the services or products that they plan to purchase. Search is what make or break your business now. If you are not sure of the market, the paid campaign is a good way to test the market, keywords and the messages.

If you are targeting Japan, China and Korea, the mobile search is something you should look into as it’s driving so many traffics in these markets.

International SEO and SEM are not just for Multinational Corporations, but also for mid-small businesses. I know many small businesses in US are doing great targeting Europe and/or Asia.

3. What are some resources US search marketers can use to get up to speed on International SEM?

You can find some great information on web. ComScore, Nielsen and eMarketer have great market data. Government websites such as Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, and Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has some good data, too.

Many blogs out there are good resources, too. I write about Asia and Japanese markets on my blog and Multilingual Search. WebmasterWorld.com has forums about International markets including Asia.

Also, if your company has offices or partner companies in other countries, talk to them. They know the market and their target audience.

4. What are some campaign successes or failures you can share recently involving a campaign both inside and outside the US?

It’s not a US company, but H&M just landed in Japan this Fall, and creating a good buzz in the market. They opened mobile site back in July about 2 months prior to the opening of the first store in Tokyo. Through online and off line advertising, they pushed people to mobile site where they ran the pre-opening campaigns to draw interests and create an initial customer base.

The press release was picked up by many bloggers and shopping related websites, which created more buzz for them. As a results, when they opened a website (PC version) in September, they had almost 600,000 accesses to the site in the first month.

This example is not just about SEO and SEM, but a great example of how SEO, SEM and mobile marketing should be integrated to bring a success.

5. What are some tips for optimizing your site for multilingual compatibility?

Once you optimize your site structures and templates, you can use the same one for all markets. You shouldn’t need to optimize the same structure and templates again and again. You do need to optimize the content for each market, and here are some issues to keep in mind:

SEO/SEM Guideline – Create a guideline for SEO and SEM campaigns, and train everyone involved in the process using that guideline. Once the process is started, enforce it so that everyone keeps following the guideline. Setting up a good reporting/monitoring system helps, too.

Domain structures – Engines are set to determine the country of the website using the hosting location and the domain’s country code extensions such as “.jp” and “.uk”. Even if you have a site targeting UK, if the domain is structured as www.companydomain.com/uk the site won’t show up in the UK search results when the users set it to search UK websites. At least with Google, you can now set the Geo Targeting to tell Google that www.companydomain.com/uk/ is their UK site.

6. What are the latest flash in the pan “memes” in International SEM and SEO?

“Globalization”. There are numbers of great benefit of Globalizing SEM and SEO campaigns. You can save time, money, manpower, etc. But at the same time, it is a huge challenge especially for a large size corporation to “nail” it at each market. Perhaps, there is less room to localize content, etc. to make it work better in each market. Perhaps, they don’t have enough manpower or budget in each market to take on the localization part of the work.

In Asia, mobile search market has been doing really well, in many cases, more effective than regular SEO/SEM campaigns. But, I haven’t seen it taking off in US at all. Even in Europe, mobile search is not as big as it should’ve been.

7. Where can people find you and get in touch?

I speak at SES Chicago and other conferences in US, Europe and Asia including SES, SMX and AdTech. I’m managing SEMPO Asia committee, and attend SEMPO meetings in US especially the ones in NY and New England. I can be reached at motoko “at” ajpr.com. E-mail is the best way to reach me at least initially, since I’m out of US frequently. I’m on Facebook, Twitter (motokohunt) and Linkedin.
Marketing.fm is a Media Partner with SES

This brings up an issue which is becoming more and more important – how you appear to someone before you reach the in person interview.

As HR people and interviewers are becoming more web savvy, your online persona will most likely reach the company before you do. It may not be in the policy books to “Google a candidate” before they come in – but it is certainly happening all the time.

This brings up a new and I feel common trend – domain discrimination. This is the act of judging someone based on the email system they use as a benchmark for their aptitude in other areas. For example – can you make any inferences from two identical candidates where the only difference is that one uses gmail and the other uses aol? What comes to mind? I believe the words used to describe this trend are in fact correct because this is certainly a negative thing to do to someone with only knowing their email address – yet it is very widespread.

The days are now gone where you can get away with putting “partygurl847″ as a reply address on your resume – yet people still do this all the time. Instead of just criticizing I am going to provide a few tips to avoid domain discrimination.

1. Get a professional email address that you can openly share with anyone
2. use a reputable service – or better yet, your own customized domain
3. Use a name or screen name that you can share with a potential boss
4. Avoid using crass or slang in your email adress – an excess of numbers can easily confuse things too
5. Assume people will search for this “handle” on other services

1. Get a professional email address that you can openly share with anyone
Having a professional email address lets you lead your correspondence and resume with a clear communication point. Setting up your email to reflect your address and name in the settings area provide a clear line of communication for someone you will be dealing with. Not sure about your settings now? Send a message to someone using Outlook, Gmail, Hotmail, and other services to see how it comes out.

2. use a reputable service – or better yet, your own customized domain
Having a reputable service behind your email can provide additional information about you before you get a chance to do so. As the NYTimes bits blog recently asked; Who uses AOL.com and why?

Using a customized domain shows that you own a website. Deal breaker? Probably not, but it gives another breadcrumb to your online identity before you have had a chance to plead your case. It also allows someone to see what you are all about and how you view the world if say your domain leads back to an active blog or web presence.

3. Use a name or screen name that you can share with a potential boss
Instant messaging has become a major part of business communications. Having an email address or screen name that you can easily share around the office can provide a seamless way to integrate into a group project from a distant location, or a simplified way for people to reach you. As more services allow an outside login to their walled gardens, a shareable email address is key to joining an IM integrated work environment.

4. Avoid using crass or slang in your email adress – an excess of numbers can easily confuse things too
Is your name taken on the service you want to use? Avoid throwing 6 digits on the end to “make it work” having something like EricFriedman99 is much better than EricFriedman96397635. If that does not work then perhaps a middle initial, shortened version of your name, or simply a simpler number would work better.

5. Assume people will search for this “handle” on other services
This is one of the most important points on my list. Assume people will Google your handle. Not worried? Great – then move along. Do you use this name on all services including social networks, photo sharing sites, video sites, and other networks? Think about a potential employer discovering your group of photos or videos under the same Screen Name you use in correspondence. Again, this may not be a written HR tactic, or even allowed – but people are doing it anyways.

So my point in all this is not to condone domain discrimination, but rather help people not fall victim to judgment before you have had a chance to tell your own story. Tell your own story online and be proud of what is out there. I have spoken on this blog before about Personal SEO and its importance which is more true today.

Think about what information you are putting out there for a potential employer and hopefully you can avoid some of the pitfalls described above.

This topic comes up more and more as I have seen websites with different approaches on handling and manipulating content on the web. There are more questions than definitive answers right now, but I am glad to see an official post about this. Anyone who follows the webmaster forums knows that this information has been around for awhile, but not officially aggregated in one place.

Something worth noting from the post:

Let’s put this to bed once and for all, folks: There’s no such thing as a “duplicate content penalty.” At least, not in the way most people mean when they say that.

and in conclusion:

In summary: Having duplicate content can affect your site in a variety of ways; but unless you’ve been duplicating deliberately, it’s unlikely that one of those ways will be a penalty.

There will certainly be more questions that arise from this but they are at least trying to round up as much information in a centralized trusted place as possible. Maybe somebody should create a knol about it

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