In the not too distant future, the relationship between brands and their relevant surrounding terms will combine to send much stronger signals to Google. Google's ability to relate words to a brand or domain by reviewing all inbound assets to a particular site is improving every year. As such, when developing content strategy, consideration must be given towards brands and their semantically related terms to de-risk the speculated decreasing value of anchor text.*

• Co-citation or co-occurrence, in essence, is the repeated referencing (citation) of brand and key terms across the web - frequently enough for Google to associate them together.
• For example, to search engines, there is no initial relationship between the terms 'Strategic Internet Consulting' and 'Joomla development'. But if the terms are closely cited across a wide reach of sources, search engines learn the relationship, and even display related search results rather than the exact terms entered originally (so a search for 'Joomla development' may return 'Strategic IC').
• Fuelling predictions of the rise of co-citation, many brands are now appearing for terms they have not obviously targeted in any way (such as through title tags and anchor text).

*See SEOMoz's Rand Fishkin's post: 'Prediction: Anchor Text is Weakening, And May Be Replaced by Co-Occurrence,'

Co-citation: associated search for more natural results

Previously the best practise option, link building anchor text (or text links) are easily manipulated. Because of this, it is likely that Google will decrease its value of anchor text signals. Google continuously alters its algorithm to return more natural search results and avoid manipulation. In line with this, recent updates (Penguin and Panda) support speculations that linkbuilding anchor text is diminishing in favour of co-citation.

What are the implications for SEO professionals and content marketers?

Content marketers, in-house content development teams, PR agencies, and in-house and outsourced digital marketing agencies must be proactively aware to tackle the challenges presented by an increased value in co-citation, and should:

Take advantage of latent semantic indexing

• Over time, Google learns the semantic meaning of terms and their relationships to brands.
• Latent semantic indexing allows search engines to display the most relevant results in relation to search context (say location).
• Using latent semantic tools such as 'Google related searches' will provide a picture of which semantic terms are linked to brands.
• Knowing semantically associated terms will then help with co-citation strategy.

Examples of assiociated terms in related search:

Create considered content

• Content value is increasing, so create well-cited, quality copy which optimises for semantic terms.
• Encourage reviews and grow article outreach to widely distribute semantically optimised content.

Don't completely reject anchor text

• The co citation prediction does not equate to the extinction of anchor text - it is still a valuable signal which may return to dominance.

To find out more about Strategic's Internet Marketing Services, please click here.

Why does local search optimisation matter?

Currently, over 20% of desktop search queries (24% for Google specific searches) are local. This figure rises to 50% for tablets and mobile searches, and is set to increase: to take advantage of these local search queries, prominence in local search listings is crucial. Considering this statistic, should local search be a focus for your business?

In a Google search there are three types of result shown.

• Paid results (formed from Adwords, PPC)
• Organic results (or ‘natural’ listings, reliant on site SEO)
• Local results (a mix of organic SEO, locational and social/citation information)

With this in mind, why should you consider local search important to your business?

Local search listings, unlike paid results, are formed through a blend of website information and locational or place signals. Because of this, local search ranking is crucial for:

1. Businesses offering services / products suited to a local market, area or geographic region. For e.g. multinationals delivering services to overseas locations might want to appear for their keyword plus a location. A training company providing business English courses in the Paris area might want to be found for "Anglais des affaires a Paris" on a Google.fr search.
2. Smaller businesses. Appearing well within a local market can eliminate large amounts of competition.

Optimising your local results in Google: It’s not just your website you need to consider.

Considerations other than basic SEO

When providing local search listings, Google creates a mix or blend of results based on relevancy to your location (or where it thinks you are located*). This blended and personalised approach has been in use since early 2012, and is set to increase in the future.

So in order to be successfully listed and found locally, considerations other than basic site SEO to take into account are:

• Your Google+ Local page/Google Places for business page
• Any business linked social accounts or profiles/plus citations across the web which can help with your Google maps ranking and search listing as Google trusts your wider authority

*This location opinion is formed through a number of signals such as relevance of the query, the prominence and listed location of the business/ service in question, and the location of the searcher.

Organic SEO + Social Influence = Your Local Results
How local results form: the factors influencing your local result appearance

In order to improve your local search result optimisation, it's important to understand and recognise the differences in how Google forms and displays local search results in comparison to organic or 'natural' SEO listings and paid results.

Paid results

From Pay Per Click and Adwords campaigns, these display at the top, and down the right hand side of SERPs.

Organic search results

Organic results are a product of 'natural' site SEO, and normally appear in Google SERPs underneath paid or advertised results.

Local search results

When optimising for local search, diversity is key. Local search results are formed through a combination of organic search factors, geographical location and social influences (such as a having a successful Google Places campaign).

Social influence

In addition to including organic results and geographic location, local search results take into account other influences across the web relating to your business, such as citations from blogs or review sites (Yelp, Citysearch, Tripadvisor etc) and social media presence. Having a strong social presence (with fully completed and active profiles; especially Google + if you are targeting Google search results) can help your business.

The local search piece of the online marketing jigsaw

So how does this obviously important local search piece fit into the online marketing jigsaw as a whole? For localised businesses looking to improve their SEO, displaying well in local results (without the expense of a PPC campaign) can be hugely beneficial. And as local search results do not just rely on on page SEO, but on a mix of organic search optimisation and social optimisation, by improving this, in collaboration with providing correct location information (info from Google Places for Business for eg) you can improve your relevancy in local searches and rank with better authority.

The considerations of hosting a multilingual site are numerous and complex as challenges can arise no matter where you host. Choices when targeting multilingual and multiregional audiences are generally split between three main options, though each comes with its own individual benefits and challenges. So how do you decide where and how to structure your domains, and what are the pros and cons of each method?

Hosting options & their pros/cons

When organising your site infrastructure to manage multilingual versions of your site and adapt content for different country targets, there are three main hosting options:

• Root domain ccTLD’s (example.fr, example.co.uk,)
• Subdomains (fr.example.org)
• Subdirectories and subfolders (example.com/EN’, ‘example.com/EN-UK’ or ‘example.com/EN-US)

As each has unique pros and cons, the option you choose will depend largely on the size of your organisation, the locations of your likely target market, and of course your budget.

Option 1: Using root domains:

Using root domain ccTLD’s to create completely separate domains managing separate language content (eg: ‘example.fr, example.co.uk, example.com.au’) is widely regarded as a best practice option, and of all URL structures, provides Google (and users) with the strongest signal of your intended target location. With root domain ccTLD’s, major pros and cons include:

Pros

• Clear and simple geotargeting when targeting parts of your site to different regions.
• Sites are easily separated into unique regions/ languages.
• Content and currency can be uniquely adapted to suit individual country preferences and requirements.
• Root domains are region friendly: By hosting in individual countries, sites appear faster, as search engines recognise where the site is based and can improve the relevancy of search results. This also renders your server location irrelevant.
• ccTLD’s solve the issue of searcher bias: Users in different countries show biased behaviour and preferences when it comes to selecting sites, so are more likely to choose, browse and buy from sites displaying their ccTLD – these sites are more likely to cater to their needs. (So a French user would prefer ‘example.fr’, and a UK user would prefer the more specific ‘example.co.uk’ over ‘example.com’)
• The page language is obvious. As Google determines the page language from visible page content, using a single language for navigation and to compartmentalise content would remove the issues involved in having separate language content. This also avoids having bad automated translations.

Cons

• Root domain ccTLD’s require a much larger infrastructure to support them.
• Though it’s easy to have separate sites for different regions and languages, inbound links will not combine and contribute towards one domain. This means links directing to separate sites (say example.fr) won’t boost the authority of other language sites as well (example.ca). Considering authority, however it’s worth noting that root domain sites do not require as much authority or ranking power as subdomains or subdirectories.
• As you’re hosting in a number of countries, using root domains is a more expensive option. Investing in a strong presence by building specific country ccTLD’s may be beneficial in the long run however, and because of this they are considered the best practice option, and are common with larger organisations.
  
  

Option 2: Using Subdomains:

Considered the easiest and least complicated choice, option 2 uses subdomains to categorise site language and region/audience, hosting under a gTLD (for instance ‘fr.example.org’).

Pros

• Subdomains are easier to set up than root domain ccTLD’s or subdirectories. They also enable hosting on different server locations.
• Geotargeting setting advantages in Google: If your site has a gTLD, you can signify your preferred country target using the geotargeting tool in Google Webmaster tools. If a site has multiple country targets however, this is not recommended.

Cons

• Authority. Sometimes subdomains still won’t inherit the domain value, trust & authority which content hosted on a single root domain would receive.
• Searcher bias & geotargeting confusion: Considering the issue of searcher preferences and bias, using a subdomain may confuse users of your intended site target. Is ‘fr.example.org’ for example displaying the targeted language or the regional location?
  
  

Option 3: Subdirectories and subfolders:

As the most economical option, using subfolders or subdirectories with gTLD’s enables you to place all content onto one site, then use subfolders to split content into separate languages and regions (‘example.com/EN’, ‘example.com/EN-UK’ or ‘example.com/EN-US’ for instance).

Pros

• Easy to set up, subdirectories are also economical as a result of being lower maintenance and easy to manage; each subdirectory has the same host.
• They resolve the inbound links authority association issue. The main domain ‘example.com’ receives all the authority. This authority should then trickle down into individual subfolders giving them weight as well.
• Geotargeting setting advantages in Google: As with subdomains, subdirectories with gTLD’s can use Google’s geotargeting tool in webmaster tools to set the preferred country target.

Cons

• Searcher bias & geotargeting confusion: Similar to subdomains, subdirectories may confuse users of your intended site target. Is ‘example.com/fr’ for example displaying the targeted language or the regional location? Equally, as seen through the use of root domains, searchers tend to prefer sites displaying their ccTLD, which could mean an ‘example.de’ site holds more searcher weight than ‘example.com/de’.
• Though the issue of authority association and credit is resolved by using subdirectories, they tend to require a higher level of authority & ranking power.
• Subdirectories require a single server location rather than multiple servers located in each targeted country. Separation of sites is also much more difficult.
  
  

So which hosting option is best?

This decision is entirely dependent on individual organisations and unique audience and targeting considerations, for example: do you want to build separate regional sites for content in the same language?

Ultimately though, root domain ccTLD’s (option 1) are considered best practice, and provide Google with the strongest signal of target location. Subdomains (option 2) are the easiest to establish and manage, and have additional webmaster geotargeting advantages, but subdirectories can also provide these geotargeting benefits. In addition to this, though ccTLD’s (option1) are best practice, due to being the most economical option, using subdirectories (option 3) is the most commonly used option.

Below is an infographic of our approach to B2B social media marketing. We find clients like this approach as it dovetails their own target client list and offers a clear set of deliverables, i.e. the provision and development of a set of social relationships they didn't previously have.

The strategy can be broken down into four parts:

1. Consultation

The objective of the consultation phase is to gain an in-depth understanding of our clients niche / market / vertical. We also ask the client for a list of their top 10 target prospects.

2. Identification

 In this phase we reverse engineer our clients prospects digital environments and create a comprehensive a list of their major social profiles and subsequent followers / influencers.

3. Communication / Positioning

In this stage we develop a 6 month communication plan that positions our client as an expert and thought leader in their niche. Messages, posts and tweets are socially distributed to connections of our clients prospects with the objective of achiveing a connection, follow or subscription.

4. Connection

The connection phase converts the new social relationship into a LinkedIn connection, twitter follow or client blog subscription. This relationship can now be used to build brand, trust and drip feed a combination of thought leadership and the odd sales message to encourage offline conversions.

Like my previous blog post Brands that use Joomla this blog post will focus on an alternative CMS solution called Drupal.

Drupal is another big player in the CMS market and like Joomla, Drupal is well known and widely used to power the websites of large B2B, B2C and government websites.

Should I use Drupal or Joomla?

This is a tough question and I believe it is down to personal preference (from a developers point of view) and what you as a user want from your website.

They both have different advantages and disadvantages and the associated communities surrounding their respective CMS platforms will argue that theirs is better. However one thing that they have in common is that they are both used by Large B2B and B2C companies.

An example of a large corporation that uses Drupal is MTV UK. This has allowed them to develop an aesthetically pleasing site and to easily manage the sites content.

Choosing between these two platforms is near enough impossible, they are both very similar, they can both easily do the same job and as you can see from the graph below they both have very similar market shares. Whichever you pick, you will have made the right choice.

Wordpress has a bigger market share, why should I use Drupal or Joomla?

While Wordpress does indeed have a very large market share, this is in my opinion down to its popularity with bloggers. In recent years blogging has really taken off and the developers have capitalised on this by actively developing this platform to meet user and developer needs as well as creating a tool for anyone with no technical knowledge to create their own hosted blog as a subdomain of the main wordpress.org website.

Wordpress is an excellent and powerful choice as a CMS platform, however given that it is designed from the ground up as a blogging platform, scalability is it’s biggest weakness.

As companies grow bigger, their website needs to grow alongside and while there is a large selection of plugins to enhance Wordpress and a large active community developing Wordpress and these plugins, Wordpress is still ultimately a blogging platform.

Having up-to-date, relevant and new content on your website is one of the keys to a successful website. There are many different content management systems available on the market today, all of which have different advantages and disadvantages and different main purposes.

One of the best multi-use content management systems is Joomla. Joomla is a free and open source content management system that is used by large B2B, B2C and Government orgainisations across the world.

When choosing a content management system solution, there are many things to take into consideration to make an informed choice. Many businesses will look at what other large corporations use as well as collating reviews and recommendations to make that overall choice.

Who uses Joomla?

One example of a large business using Joomla is Tesco, they have chosen Joomla to power their academy website which is a training portal for Tesco’s 400,000 staff.

As well as companies that use Joomla, 3173 (at the time of writing) government websites across the world use Joomla as their CMS solution.

An example of this is Sussex Safer Roads, they have chosen Joomla 1.5 to power their main website

A few of the main things that a large B2B corporation may need to consider that I will highlight in this blog post are:

• Multiple user groups
• Scalability
• Back office integration

Multiple User Groups

Having multiple user groups is very important from a security point of view. It is important for users to only have access to what they need to prevent unauthorised access to other resources.

Another benefit of having multiple user groups is that different user experiences can be created on your website and the users associated with this can be managed more easily.

Joomla provides this functionality that has proven to be a great success with large corporates.

Scalability

As your business grows, it is important for your website to grow at the same rate. Joomla is constantly evolving making use of the latest web technologies that will help give your business a high profile web presence.

There is a large active community that is constantly developing components and plugins that can easily be added to Joomla in a few clicks to give your site things such as a forum or blog etc.

As businesses grow outside of the UK, it is important to have a multi-lingual website. Joomla manages language variations of your website and can automatically detect what part of the world a visitor is viewing your website from and direct them to the correct language variation of your site.

Back Office Integration

Many businesses will have existing back office systems that work well for them. Rather than having a new system, integration with existing systems works well for businesses.

Joomla provides this functionality and can be easily integrated with your existing systems.

An example of back office software that Joomla can integrate with is SugarCRM. The user database between SugarCRM and Joomla can be shared so that you can create a user experience for your website.

Strategic Internet consulting offer commercial Joomla development so see what we can do for your business today.

You know when you look at this webpage that its a blog post; The title at the top explains what it is about, the picture at the bottom is most likely to be the author and the text alongside that his name, there is a phone number at the top of the page and further contact details at the bottom.  Essentially though, all Google sees is an endless list of code surrounding some recognisable English. 

Granted, it is very good at recognising that English and making sense of it, but if we are able to structure our data more then Google will make better sense of it and subsequently show you more information on it's results pages.  Google wants you to spend as much time with it as possible, so it is in their interest to present expanded listings and prettified information.  The same goes for Bing. 

This is where Rich Snippets come in. 

Take a look at the screenshot below:

Over the last year or so you will have noticed your google results looking more and more like the above.  The few lines in grey underneath a listing are designed to provide the user with more information about what is on the page and why it is relevant to their search.  This is a snippet.  If we provide Google with that further structured data then it will create a Rich Snippet - detailed information intended to help users with specific queries.  Although the above depicts a place and not a business, it features a number of rich snippet examples that serve to highlight the listing:

• Google Reviews of the attraction
• Nearby Restuarant reviews (Zagat)
• Contact details
• Direct links to ticket purchase pages nd opening times
• Photo's
• Expanded information on the right as informed by Google's Knowledge Graph.
  
  

How does this help my business?

It has been proven that a user is now compelled less to look at the top listing in the page, but at the listing that stands out or at the photo which immediately draws the eye.  Of course we need to have employed a good overall standard of SEO in order to make sure you are on that first page and preferably above the fold.  But if we can add rich snippets to your listings then we can benefit in many other ways:

• The user will be drawn to your listing as it is enchanced and clearer on the page
• More relevant information tailored to their query will encourage them further to click through to your site.
• You have proved that your site is up-to-date and in use
• Because of this you have immediately engendered trust in the user
• More link juice from content included in Google's Knowledge Chart (the expanded info on the right of the above screenshot).

How might we apply Microdata to a B2B website?

Remember that fundamentally, adding any of the below will help your listing stand out...

• Contact information can be added. 
• Your company's management hierarchy can be included in your listing.
• Forthcoming events can be added under your listing and the titles made appealing to the searcher.  Google will show the next three events in chronological order and they will link straight through to the booking/info page. 
• Latest Blog posts can be included.
• Relevant Videos can be optimised for inclusion.

By including some of the above rich snippets and enhancing your listing, you can achieve more value than you might from a number 1 position.  It also has no bearing on your standard organic listing position and should be considered a separate form of optimisation. 

We know when and how to employ these strategies in order to benefit your business.  Strategic Internet consulting offer commercial Drupal, Wordpress and Joomla development open-source CMS services all of which are optimised to include dynamic rich-snippet information.

Keep 'em peeled on our Blog over the coming weeks for a more detailed case study.

Whether you are a local business looking for local international visibility or a multinational seeking a cohesive approach to your organic search strategy make sure you consider the following:

Keyword research:

Don't expect english terms to translate literally and deliver a. volume or b. relevant traffic. Your keyword research process should be similar but understanding and researching in the local market is imperative. Obtain briefings from employees and local suppliers. Understand how they would search.

Select your target search engine carefully:

Don't assume Google is the dominant engine. China is a case in point here where Google does not rule the roost.

Local competitor research is key:

Research the local competitors. Reverse engineer their back links, social strategy and onpage optimisation to get an idea of what terms they are targetting. Use these as starting points for your usual keyword research tools.

Local links equal local authority.

Of course an even and natural spread of links is important, but when trying to obtain local search visibility, make sure your off page equity have local IP ranges to the country being targeted. A good extension for managing this process is flagfox, a firefox browser plugin displaying a country flag for each site you visit.

Site infrastructure: Global domain or local domain extension

Possible site structures managing multiple languages typically take one of the following forms:

• Domain based: One site per geography. yoursite.com, yoursite.co.uk, yoursite.de, yoursite.fr
• Directory based: Yoursite.com/en, yoursite.com/fr, yoursite.com/de, yoursite.com/de

Things to consider when making this choice are:

• Your businesses capacity to manage multiple sites. How often will the content change, how much resource do you have at your disposal to manage.
• How competitive is the local market. The more competitive it is the more likely you will require a locally hosted local domain extension, i.e. yourdomain.fr hosted in france.
• Domain age: If you already own international domain's, how old are they and do they have indexed content published to them.

Site content: Automated translations vs Manual

Never automate translations. 9 times out of 10 they are are grammatically incorrect and will reflect badly on your business.

Year on year organic traffic increased by over 90% for one of our clients, Bundles of Joy Shopping, online market leaders in personalised christening and baby gifts. In addition sales increased by 20%.

Strategic Internet Consulting launch new mobile website to improve site accessibility and take advantage of increasing levels of traffic via a mobile device. Play video below to see in action:

The B2B Alliance is a collaboration between eight trade associations (Direct Marketing Association, ABBA, BPA, BPMA, iab) to help promote best practice within their disciplines focussing purely on the B2B market.

B2Balliance.info was developed as a resource to distribute this best practice documentation.

See some of the results we achieved for them in this short video below: