International SEO – Marketing NZ Offerings to Foreign Search Engine Users

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What is International SEO

International SEO is a specialist area of search engine optimisation that focuses on managing and improving your brands presence with foreign search engine and internet users.

This kind of SEO Campaign may follow a broad optimisation strategy, where we look to improve your rankings across a number of countries and regions, or may be much more targeted i.e. focused on users in a particular city, country or region, such as Tokyo, Japan or the whole of China.

In most cases, International SEO strategies are performed alongside a Local or National SEO Campaign. However, sometimes a business may want to focus more heavily on the International SEO Campaign. Reasons for this include the business is already ranking well enough locally or NZ wide, or the business is specifically looking to target only users in a certain region, country or city.

International SEO –  An example: Targeting Search Engine Users in China

John Key recently stated that in the not too distant future, he expects Chinese tourists to NZ to top one million a year. Tourism is a sector that has been booming for New Zealand, with over 330,000 Chinese coming to New Zealand in 2015 alone.

This is just one of a handful of industries where we are seeing a keen interest by government to develop business ties with China. Another area of predicted growth is Film, and recently NZ meat exports to China were also in the spotlight. New Zealand stands to add hundreds of millions of dollars to the value of its red meat exports to China, now an agreement has been reached over allowing our chilled meat into the Chinese market.

New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE) says Chinese consumers are increasingly demanding high quality, fresh products, which is a great opportunity for Kiwi companies.

Also this month, the New Zealand Government and Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba signed an agreement to boost the online profile of Kiwi retailers and wholesalers in China.

From tourism & hospitality, to local infrastructure development, or consumer goods and other export markets these trends present major growth opportunities for New Zealand businesses.

In 2016, more NZ businesses will be looking to invest in professional search & digital marketing services such as SEO, which provide long term, measureable results and an affordable way for SMBs to promote their local products and services to global markets such as China.

Popular Search Engines & Trends in China

China is one of a handful of countries where internet search users are not predominantly using Google to look for products and services online.

Baidu, China’s dominant Internet search engine currently commands a little over half of the Internet search market. Baidu’s market share has actually dropped over recent years, with other Chinese search engines such as Qihoo 360 and Sogou growing in popularity.

Search Engine Advertising (for example Google Adwords Pay-per-click Advertising here in NZ) is also on the increase in China. According to a study performed by iResearch, the market size for search advertising in China increased by 40% in 2015 and will continue to grow at 25% per annum in the next three years.

These trends also present a growing opportunity for New Zealand businesses to utilise search advertising platforms to get their message in front of a rapidly increasing number of online Chinese consumers and businesses.

In 2016, International SEO providers must have a detailed understand of how to effectively optimise business marketing media for popular search engines within New Zealand such as Google, Yahoo & Bing — as well as a growing number of international search engines such as China’s Baidu, Qihoo 360 and Sogou, and numerous others.

Looking at Popular Search Engines & Trends in Other Foreign Countries

In 2015, Yahoo Japan maintained a 40% market share of search engine users across Japan (albeit, note that Yahoo Japan does serve up all of its results using Google’s algorithm).

Yandex is an increasing popular search provider in Russia and Eastern Europe. The Russian Internet company currently has around a 60% search engine user market share in their country.

In South Korea, Search Engines Naver and Daum together have grown their dominance from 90% in 2013, to 97% in 2015.

India is another country that presents huge potential for businesses who are able to effectively market their products or services online to users in this region. Some predictions have estimated that India will have in excess of 500 million internet users within the next 2-3 years.

Our International SEO & Marketing Services

Over the last 10 years our expert team have gained experience working on a number of international digital and search marketing campaigns for businesses and startups across New Zealand, Australia and Japan.

Common international marketing services include digital strategy, market research, business development, translation & localisation, copywriting & content development, as well as web design, search engine optimisation & paid search advertising campaigns.

For a no-obligation confidential discussion on how our search and digital marketing services can help you, please get in touch