• Top Rank , Tuesday, August 19, 2008 1:30 PM

Do you know the way to San Jose? The path goes through China, Japan and Latin America, at least, that's the route that part one of the "Search Around the World" panel took.

T.R. Harrington tackled both the challenges and opportunities search marketers face with China--namely the fact that the PPC interfaces are not nearly as sophisticated, but the sheer volume of searchers warrant at least thinking about an international strategy. "For organic search, the wide range of differences across the Chinese provinces can prove difficult when trying to effectively translate search terms for which to optimize," Harrington said. Monitoring the success of SEO is also difficult, as analytics tools are still in their early stages.

Japan's market is a bit more sophisticated, according to Motoko Hunt, though the most opportunity stems from mobile search. "There's more access to Internet through mobile than PC in Japan," Mokoto said. Still, linguistic challenges await Japan-leaning search marketers as well, since "with four sets of interchangeable letters and characters, multiple spelling variations and no spaces between words, sites in Japanese can be difficult to optimize," he said.

Alicia Morgan stepped up to the plate for Latin America, acknowledging that the Latam audience is much like the Hispanic audience in the U.S.--but search can't be your only channel for reaching them. "Search is another tool in your box, but not the sole thing that's going to make it happen for you in reaching this market," she said. Morgan said that banner ads still work well. And of course, the dialect differences in each country present unique PPC ad challenges.

Author's Note: In honor of SES San Jose (and those of us who weren't able to attend) I'll be highlighting panel recaps and other coverage as it rolls out this week. Enjoy!

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