Ask Kalena

Oooh you're back! Lookin good. Have you lost weight? Yes, that was a compliment designed to butter you up for my next question. Subscribed to my feed yet? :-)

Twitter quietly rolled out a new feature today that enables users to choose a regional preference for viewing trending topics.

Called Twitter Local Trends, the new functionality gives users the option to set their regional location and view trending topics happening in their part of the world. For example, one of the screenshots pictured shows that the topic “Trafalgar Square” is trending for users that have United Kingdom set as their region (because it relates to a well known London icon), but not for users that have set their region to Worldwide.

At this stage, only seven countries and 15 cities in the US are available for selection (see screenshot below) but more will be added soon.

According to a post on Mashable, the feature has only rolled out to around 1 percent of Twitter users, but there’s nothing official on the Twitter Blog about it yet. I noticed it in my account this afternoon so I’m not sure if I’m part of the lucky 1 percent or whether it has rolled out to a larger audience since it went live this morning.

Regardless, when it does roll out to everyone, it will make a huge difference to how we use Twitter to target a regional audience. The benefits for geo-based mobile apps like Four Square and Gowalla should be immediately apparent. Add to that the ability to pinpoint regional trends in real time search and this becomes a social media game changer.

Everybody knows a business that is still sceptical about using Twitter. But when they see they have the power to follow and influence social media conversation in their specific target markets using Local Trends, I think even the sceptics could be convinced to start using Twitter as a full time marketing channel.

Did you know that Search Engine Wiki – the world’s first vertical wiki dedicated to search engines and search engine marketing is now two years old? It’s true!  To celebrate, we’ve taken the site out of BETA and given it a facelift.

Long time readers of this blog will remember when we first launched the site back in November 2007. The idea behind Search Engine Wiki is to provide a collaborative online library of search engine marketing (SEM) resources.

We’ve been spending a lot of time on Search Engine Wiki lately, adding new resources and checking for broken links. We’re particularly proud of our comprehensive list of worldwide search engines and directories, categorized by country and region.

Our list of Australian search engines has just been updated this week, so if you run link building campaigns for Australian clients, you might want to pop your head in there and make sure their sites are listed in all of them. We’ll be making a post here soon featuring all the new Australian search engines and directories.

Another popular section of Search Engine Wiki is our Niche Search Engines category. In here you’ll find lists of search engines and directories categorized by niche, industry or theme e.g. weddings, business, travel or government.

So if you haven’t visited Search Engine Wiki for a while, now’s a great time to pop in. It’s a community wiki, so if you have additional search engines, tools or resources to add, we’d welcome your contributions.

Dear Kalena

I understand how to put keyword phrases together – I think, but with my target markets in the US, Australia and the UK, how do I target those markets? I assume I want those markets to see my page and not necessarily other countries.

How the heck do I do that?

Cliff

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Dear Cliff

It’s a tricky business targeting different regional markets using SEO. A couple of things to keep in mind:

1) Think about how users search differently in each market. Think about regional spelling and grammar uses. Research the market and the top ranking sites for your target keywords in those markets. Then build pages that are optimized for those regional search terms and patterns.

2) Make good use of Google’s Regional Location tool.

Hope this helps!

Hi Kalena

I was wondering if you would be able to give me some insight on a question that I have. I am working on launching a spanish version of my company’s website. It’s a mirror of our current site where when a user goes in should they select Spanish they can view the pages in Spanish.

Will this pose a problem to SEO if the pages remain the same name?  Our hosting company has created a new folder where the spanish files sit, and the structure mirrors the English version of the site.   If the spanish version of the website is set up this way, will the search engines consider these duplicate pages?

Thank you,
Heather

Hi Heather

If the mirror pages are in Spanish, then they are not duplicates and won’t be treated as such. Smile! You have nothing to worry about.

Hi Kalena

I have a client who is going into different International markets. Here are my questions:

1. Does he need hosting based in each country for each project? (please refer to a Google backed up answer)

2. If yes- can you recomend an Aussie based company that can assist with his .com.au site?

Best regards

Paul

Hi Paul

1. As far as Google is concerned, no.  In October 2007, Google released a new feature in Google Webmaster Tools that allows you to associate each of your sites with a specific regional location. Apparently, this works on a per-domain, per-subdomain, or per-directory level, but I haven’t tried that yet.

When used correctly, the tool ensures your site is displayed in country-specific search results and relevant search results for specific geographic / regional queries. From what I understand, this takes a lot of the guesswork out for Google in determining your site’s market, whereas before Google would use the location of your site host and other factors to determine this. So my recommendation would be for your client to set up sub-domains for each country/region they are targeting.

As for a Google backed-up answer, please see Matt Cutts’ post Subdomains and Subdirectories, particularly the comments section where I asked Matt:

“What about sites that target different regional markets? Does it still make sense for them to use sub-domains e.g. australia.site.com, uk.site.com and use the new Regional Association tool in Webmaster Tools to indicate which searcher region each sub-domain should be associated with?”

and he replied:

“Kalena, using subdomains for stuff like fr.example.com or de.example.com is still a great approach, because those sites may be similar in idea, but the language is usually completely different.”

2. Yes, I can recommend lots of lovely SEO helpers located in Australia. If you still need these, please email me again via the big red button.