International Link Building

[RyanOD]

Can anyone weigh in on their own efforts to build links into international TLDs?

Which tactics have been successful? Which have failed? Have you engaged any agencies to manage this for you and if so, how did they perform and who are they?

We have nine ccTLDs plus our .com site to manage so it's a bit overwhelming! Fortunately, we have teams dedicated to managing day-to-day operations of each site. Each team is comprised of managers who speak the targeted language as their first language and have intimate knowledge of the targeted culture. I want to leverage them to help my SEO efforts, but I'm not sure how my advice should be different than what we do for our .com site.

[RyanOD]

Thanks for the input, Barry. I like the idea of sharing exclusive content. We have considered that, but haven't ever moved on it.

[StalkerB]

Well, the biggest protip is that international version search algorithms are a bit behind the .com

Ultimately there's not too much difference, but be aware of location specific sites. For example if you're in Brazil get on Orkut rather than (or actually as well as) Facebook. Be prepared to switch off your anglo-centric brain, the sites we all know and love could be completely different to the big sites in other countries. This should be discovered through analysis of competitors and any real engagement with customers though.

Ultimately the same metrics are used to evaluate ranking, so getting quality editorial links from ccTLD specific sites is the long term way to go.

The way you approach people in each country is generally a little different though (and with your local knowledge you should be well placed to adapt to this), for example in the Scandinavian countries they are all very web savvy, know the value of a link and don't respond well to straight up link requests.

In these countries it's best to avoid buying links (were you to do such a thing anyway) as you'll very quickly burn through your budget and instead focus on offering people you want links from exclusive access to something. In your case, maybe an exclusive gameplay video or could even go as far as giving them a code for their site that if people put in game will unlock an exclusive costume, that kind of thing.

Other countries have their own particular idioms but it's hard to just give you a overview of what people are like in each

[RyanOD]

Thanks for the reply. Are you able to weigh in on actual tactics you've employed (or heard about) that have been successful internationally? What I'm getting at is...are there link building methods that are specific to the international market that differ from the domestic market? The answer here might be "no" and that would be fine (in fact, I think that might be what you are saying with "Apart from that it's not much different to normal link building.").

Yes, we do have a great setup - thanks for mentioning it! We've been dedicated to the international market for years and we invest heavily in it. Every game we publish on our international sites has been localized by hand by someone who speaks the language as a first language and knows the culture well. Much of this work happens in our office in Cork, Ireland.

Thanks again for your feedback.

[StalkerB]

Building links from same ccTLDs, sites hosted in those countries and sites in the same language are all preferred links when dealing with country specific sites (with preference to the first two). Apart from that it's not much different to normal link building.

You've got a great set up if you have managers who can speak the language and know the culture, teach them how to build relationships and evalutate sites for links. Get them to run independant social media channels as well if possible (as mixed languages in a single account really doesn't work) and don't be afraid to give each language it's own, slightly different, identity.

And don't discount normal .com links entirely, if it's more relevant to get a link to the ccTLD do that.

Agency wise you just need to make sure they have somebody in the country you're targeting and this was kind of discussed here - http://www.seomoz.org/q/would-you-hire-several-local-seo-company-s-if-your-targeting-multiple-countries