One of our most in-demand services at Upstream Connections is multilingual SEO work.

Our office has always been a multicultural place, with native German, Spanish and English speakers among the full time staff and a raft of nationalities working with us on a part-time basis.

We currently offer internet marketing and SEO services in Spanish, German, French, Italian and Swedish. The work is all based in our Hove office, which means that we can maintain the high level of quality control that clients expect.

We do not outsource and we will not take on work that we cannot fully understand. Your brand is worth more than that.

One of the most interesting aspects of multilingual work is gaining insight into the way that different markets work. There is no substitute for genuine local knowledge, which is why we work closely with our clients and staff to find the right approach for multilingual campaigns.

Some important things to remember when planning a multilingual SEO campaign:

Do market research.

There is no substitute for local knowledge. This is true for every step of the multilingual SEO process, from website translation through to link building and content promotion work.

Don’t assume that your keywords will translate directly.

…and be aware of local differences within a language. I learnt Spanish in Buenos Aires, which has left me with a different vocabulary to the Spanish staff in our office. An ordenador to them is una computadora to me.

We have the same quirks in English. Our US travel clients provide vacations while our UK clients offer holidays. The same is true of cell phones and mobile phones (in Spanish too, with celular and telefono movil). These are significant differences that need to be addressed before you start promoting your site.

Get a translator that really understands your business.

When translating a site, there is a risk of the dreaded literal translation. This problem can arise if a translator is not fully briefed or does not understand what your website and business are really about.

It always makes sense to have a trusted native speaker check over your translated site before it goes live.

At enterprise level, literal site translation is not usually a problem, because there are (usually) native speakers within the organisation who a) understand the business and b) speak the relevant language.

Don’t underestimate the power of images

Images transcend language barriers. Be sure to translate the ALT tags and, where appropriate, image names on your translated website.

If you want to rank well in overseas search results, create a great resource for your target markets.

While the idea of translating a couple of pages of your website into foreign languages and hoping that this will “do the trick” can be appealing, it is highly unlikely to actually “do the trick”. Foreign language search markets are less competitive than English language markets, but the rules of SEO are just the same – a great site deserves visibility.

There is a balance to strike. For some less-spoken languages, translating a couple of pages of content can be a great “easy win”, especially if you are offering a location-based service. If you offer something niche and are the only website with relevant content in a specific language, you have a good chance of gaining some easy results.

Do you have someone who can handle enquiries in foreign languages?

Again, this isn’t a problem at enterprise level, because foreign language enquiries are likely to go to the relevant office/department, but it can be a real issue for smaller businesses.

Depending on your industry, it could be that enquiries will arrive in English, whatever the language used to find your site. However, in many cases you will receive enquiries in your targeted language and need to find a way to manage these.

Appreciate different business cultures.

While the EU has made international trade relatively easy within Europe, be aware that different customers will be used to different treatment.

There’s a wide world out there waiting to do business with you. With our experience in planning and executing multilingual campaigns, we can help them find you.

If you’d like to discuss our multilingual SEO service, email alex@upstreamconnections.com or give us a call in the office on +44 (0) 1273 773 616.

Longstanding Upstream client H Forman and Sons – top in Google for Smoked Salmon – has recently moved to amazing new premises in London’s East End.

The striking, salmon pink building doubles as a unique, 600 capacity venue for parties, conferences and much more. It is also the closest venue to the rapidly developing London 2012 Olympic stadium (you can check out progress with the new stadium with Forman’s Fish Eye View webcam).

Among the delights on offer are an on-site restaurant with food from former Tate Modern chef Lloyd Hardwick. As Forman’ s is the UK’s leading salmon smoker, you can expect excellent fish on the menu!

After successfully working together for a number of years on formanandfield.com, Upstream Connections was the natural choice to create a visually striking website for the new venue. The results can be found at www.formansfishisland.com.

If you are interested in the venue, call 0208 5252390. If you would like a striking, new website, ask Upstream.

Spotted this today, which is a rather amusing use of the Google Maps API:

http://www.tomscott.com/realworldracer

This just in from Hitwise:

During February 2009, 1 in 35 UK internet visits was to a video website. That’s up 40.7% on last year, when the figure was 1 in 50.

At Upstream Connections, we love video. Quality video content on an ecommerce site helps inspire confidence and greatly improves conversion rates (if applied correctly). Did you know that a well-timed video can also be a route into Google’s top 10 results?

This is a result of Google’s much vaunted (and much maligned) Univeral Search. In a nutshell, Universal Search is an attempt to provide search results from a variety of sources, including blogs, images, authority sites like Wikipedia and video sites like YouTube. If you can create an interesting video with the right title, you have the potential to leapfrog onto Google’s front page. This can be particulary useful if you are selling a product that people search for using its name.

If you are interested in our video production services, drop us a line and let’s talk!

For anyone who’s interested in how the Upstream office building looks, check out this video which we made last year:

Sadly, you won’t see our subterranean office itself, but what a nice building, huh?

We all think Google’s beta browser, Chrome, is rather spiffy around here. Speaking personally I can say that it gets quite a lot of use on my netbook: the clean, minimalist interface makes the most of the small desktop real-estate, and Chrome’s ability to crunch code like virtually no other browser means it’s perfect for casual browsing on a mid-spec machine.

It’s that ‘clean interface’ malarkey that inspired this sweet little Japanese stop animation, which calls upon memories of 8-bit gaming as it uses Breakout-style gameplay to emphasise the clutter-free nature of Chrome.

Well. I liked it, anyway.

Upstream Connections started as a specialist SEO company in 2003. We recently celebrated 5 years in business… which is a long time in this industry.

I started working here as a freelancer way back in 2005, when Upstream operated out of a small office in the Brighton Media Centre. Since then, we moved to a bigger office, then an even bigger office and more recently to an even bigger office in Hove. During these years, we have been very privileged to work with clients in a huge range of industries, from language schools to power tools, via mobile phones, secured loans, tourism and financial software.

A lot has changed in those five years. When we started, most people would be slightly baffled by the mention of “SEO” or “Search Engine Optimisation“. Fast forward five years and the mainstream press is full of Search-related stories, journalists are given SEO training (which sometimes leads to bizarre coat tail grabbing headlines like this) and a little huddle forms at parties when you mention that you know how to get sites performing better in Google. The final point is not necessarily a good thing.

We are, first and foremost, an SEO company. But did you know we offer a whole range of internet services?

As you may well have seen on our homepage, we regularly design websites for clients. One big advantage of an Upstream-designed site is that you needn’t worry about whether it will be search-engine-friendly. You can be sure of it.

You can see some examples of our design work here and here.

We have a dedicated team of designers and programmers. We also work with a selection of highly talented freelancers, who can give a different perspective on a project.

Having great search results is only one part of doing business online. If users are not convinced by the site they arrive at, they will not want to do business with it. People are more trusting of quality websites now that they were even a couple of years ago, but are arguably less trusting of sites that appear dated or in any way suspicious. It is very important to keep on top of your image.

One of the great attractions of doing business online is being able to attract custom from around the world. To really connect with different cultures, you need to be sure that your website expresses exactly what you want it to. Our in house translation agency can ensure that you get a quality translation for a competitive price.

With the Pound set to struggle against the Euro for the forseeable future, now is the time to start appealing to overseas clients. Quality, localised text on your site is a big step forward. The next step is…

Upstream Connections offers SEO in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian and Portuguese.

Britain has one of the most developed internet economies in the world, but continental Europe is not far behind. If you want to make the most of your potential customer base in the coming years, you may want to look to the other side of the channel.

If you would like to see some examples of our work, get in touch and we would be more than happy to show you what we can do.

Links to your website are still a very important part of search engine optimisation. There are a number of ways that you can acquire these links, but the best way is to create quality content that people want to link to.

We have a specialist team in place to promote quality content in the places that bring the best return in terms of links and visitors. Check out our accent game and evolution of mobile phones video for a couple of examples.

So…

Making money online is a matter of providing the right service at the right price and making sure the right people can find you. Sounds familiar? The methods may be slightly different to traditional business, but the bottom line is just the same. If you want our help in making your website profitable, get in touch.

We spend a lot of time using Google products, whether the ubiquitous search engine, the "zeitgeisty" Zeitgeist or the fantastic Analytics package.

The beauty of Google’s products is in their simplicity. The search engine is less cluttered and more intuitive than any rival. Google desktop allows you to search your computer quickly and thoroughly with two taps of the CTRL key. Gmail has arguably the best spam filters on the market.

Beneath the surface, Google’s products have tremendous depth and a raft of features that you didn’t know were there. As they say about Othello, it takes “a minute to learn, a lifetime to master”.

Here is the first in a series of tips for some of our favourite Google products. We are starting with the seach engine.

Site Search

Looking for something specific within a site? You can search every cached page of a website by structuring a search like:

For this example, Google would show every instance of the word “tips” that occurs on www.upstreamconnections.com. This can be very useful if you are looking for a specific topic in a large website.

Super Stars

If you are suffering from memory loss, you can substitute a star (asterisk) symbol for any word in a phrase. For example:

The star acts like a joker or wildcard in a pack of playing cards.

Currency Conversion

Interested in watching the value of your Pounds Sterling plummet against every currency this side of Zimbabwe? Too lazy to visit XE.com? You can ask Google for a live currency conversion:

Google can provide thousands of different conversions, including length, mass, currency, time; basically most of the things we used to go to school for.

Definitions

The internet can be a confusing place. If you ever want to find out what a word means, you can ask Google to search its cache for definitions. For example: (click for bigger)

The quality of the definitions obviously relies on the quality of the source, but there is plenty to be learned from this tool. Have you come across any unusual results?

You will shortly be treated to a special, free downloadable guide on making the most of your blog. It’s just having the final touches applied now.

In the mean time, check out this rather interesting post on SEOmoz, which touches on some of the topics that will be included in the guide and some that will not:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/so-what-should-we-be-asking-bloggers