The Paint-by-numbers Guide to Creating Linkworthy Content

SEO is a confusing field, full of buzzwords and jargon, and here at Plug in SEO we want to change that. You've told us that you want guidance on what to do, and how to get started. 

So here's the first in our series of Paint-by-numbers Guides - in just two sides of A4 we're condensing the key steps you need to take in order to tackle a particular aspect of search optimization. 

First up is our guide to Creating Linkworthy Content.  Learn how to pick topics and get ideas for creating innovative content that will invite other sites to link to yours.

If you like this guide, please feel free to pass it on to any friends and colleagues who might find it useful - and do let us know if you have any feedback. 


The Paint-by-numbers Guide to Linkworthy Content by Plug in SEO is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Localizing your SEO. Are three quarters of the world passing you by?

How do you SEO for non-English locales, and why would you want to? Christian Arno is Managing Director of Lingo24, a global translation services provider. In this guest post he tells us why he thinks it's important to localize SEO and how to do it effectively.

Multilingual marketing, localisation and SEO

Countries where English is the official or de facto official language

English has emerged as the global language of commerce and the lingua franca of the internet, but it’s worth pointing out that three quarters of the world’s population speaks no English whatsoever.

So the need for businesses to speak to international consumers in their own tongue can’t be overemphasised. Even though English is the most widely spoken second language, the fact remains that most consumers will search for services/products in their mother tongue first.

So for any business looking to go global, the need to ‘think local’ means you should consider the multitude of cultural and linguistic complexities that you will face when entering new, emerging markets.

Dialect difficulties

For example, the French in France and the French in Canada (Québéquois) is largely the same, but there are enough dialectal distinctions between the two forms of French to mean that separate marketing strategies are essential when targeting each market.

By way of illustration, ‘email’ is simply email in France, but in Canadian French it is courrier électronique (literally, ‘electronic mail’). And déjeuner means ‘lunch’ in France, but ‘breakfast’ in Switzerland and Belgium.

There are many such differences between the French dialects in France, Canada, Switzerland and Belgium which help to highlight the importance of properly localizing your services for each specific target market. The same can also be said for German (Germany)/Swiss German, Portuguese (Portugal)/Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish (Spain)/Latin American Spanish and, closer to home, US/UK English.

How to localize your SEO

So assuming you intend to properly localize your website for international markets, there are a number of issues you must consider when optimizing the content so that you gain as high a position on search engines as possible.

Firstly, there is the domain name. Your choice of name is entirely up to you, though you may want to consider something that is suitable for the country that you’re targeting – your brand name may work just as well abroad, but you are best using the services of a specialist translation/localisation company who can research any potential negative connotations of your name in your target market.

Equally important is your choice of web host as the server they use should be located in your target country – Google considers the IP address of the server in its algorithms, so make sure you ask where their server is based before committing to using their services.

Then there is the issue of keywords. There is a strong argument that says you should NEVER translate keywords, simply because even a direct dictionary translation may not be what people use to search for a service or product locally. They may use colloquialisms, abbreviations or acronyms instead.

In the same way as you would use something like Google’s keyword tool when identifying the most popular industry keywords in English, you should thoroughly research the key search phrases that are incorporated into your new foreign language website too.

Localisation and SEO should underpin any international online marketing strategy, as it will not only help ensure linguistic and cultural nuances don’t impede your entry into new markets, but also your visibility is maximized on foreign search engines.

About the author
Christian Arno is founder and Managing Director of Lingo24, a global translation services provider that specialises in website localisation. Lingo24 has over a hundred members of staff working across the UK, Europe, North America, Asia and Panama and clients in over sixty countries. They are on course for a turnover of £3.65m in 2009.

Thanks to all our beta testers

Today's a big day for Plug in SEO. We have just emailed all our wonderful beta testers, so that they are the first to know about our new pricing plan.

We've done our best to come up with a plan that's fair to our users, whether they are just starting out with a brand new website, or have an established site with many thousands of visitors. Here's what we're doing:

Firstly, you'll only pay if your traffic increases. The whole point of SEO is to drive more traffic to your site, so we have to help you do that - and if we're not, it's only fair if we don't charge you.

Secondly, you'll pay according to the amount of traffic to your site. And if you have less than 1000 visits in a month, we won't charge you anything at all.

Finally, every user gets 30 days free usage to try out the product and see if it suits their needs.

In all, this is a no risk pricing plan for our users. As always, we invite your feedback.

We'd once again like to thank all our beta testers, who have generously shared their experiences and feedback over the last few months. We wouldn't be here without you.

A paint-by-numbers guide to building inbound links

Our 15 minute link building webinar shows you how to create linkworthy content and build relevant links: boosting your SEO.

You'll see Yahoo! Site Explorer, uberVU and Plug in SEO in action, with brief appearances from BackType and Majestic SEO. Tools that make creating great content and finding linkers as easy as paint-by-numbers.

Take My Keywords, Link Suggestions and Competitor Links for a spin in Plug in SEO.

Webinar - building inbound links

As I'm sure you all know, getting inbound links from relevant sites is critically important to improving your site rankings, but finding those link sources can be non-trivial.

Join us for a webinar on Thursday 5th November, when we'll be discussing how you can identify meaningful, high quality link sources.

Update: We're having a few technical difficulties with the webinar widget below. If it's not working for you, please simply email us on hello at pluginseo.com and we'll make sure you get an invitation.

Update: come back soon for the webinar recording!