The global financial crunch (or crisis if you prefer) is hard to ignore at the moment, and there are certainly many people and governments scrambling to protect their investments and financial industries. At home, people are cutting back on their expenses and doing what they can to weather these uncertain economic times. You may even be thinking about cutting back on some of your business services. But wait! SEO could help you make it through this storm. If anything, this is a great moment to really concentrate on improving your organic search results and any paid search you may be doing as well.

Why? Search is still growing on a daily basis around the world. More people are constantly coming online, and as countries develop their internet technology and people become more sophisticated in their internet habits, more and more turn to search engines. Your organic search results will continue to be a key player in bringing your website traffic and the conversions you need. So what should you do at this time to make sure your SEO is at its best and will give you your return on investment?

1. Develop your plan. Any SEO done at any time won’t pay off if there’s no organized plan of action. Developing a good plan and some long term goals will help you prioritize your website’s needs and how to go about gaining your visibility.
2. Take care of the basics. Take this time to do a review of the content on your website. Is it unique? Informative? Look at the usability of the site as well. Is it easy to find critical information? Are your landing pages strong (this is especially critical if you’re doing paid search)? Review your titles and metas and any ALT tags as necessary.
3. Keep up on your keyword research. If you’re updating content on your site, you may need to update your keywords as well. Look for new keywords, variations, specifications (like location), etc. It’s helpful to think like your customers when doing this. Looking at the keywords that bring you traffic and even words that your customers use when talking about your product can give your some good insights.
4. Boost your local search capabilities! Make sure you’re in the appropriate local directories, listed in local business centers, and pinpointed on maps if possible. Local search is a growing segment of the industry and getting into it now is a good things to do.
5. Pay just as much attention to your foreign language sites. Make sure to do steps 1-4 for your international versions as well. These are just as important to you and benefit from SEO just as much. In many markets, doing effective SEO now may also give you a solid long term base in international search engines.

Sticking with your SEO through these tougher times is a good idea. Boosting your organic search visibility will really help your website weather the economic storm and ensure that people looking for your products and services continue to find you.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 9th, 2008 at 11:25 am and is filed under International Internet Marketing, International Keyword Research, International Marketing Basics, International SEO, Local Search, Website Content. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.