Foreign SEO has its own set of best practices as each country has widely different regulations.  If your business expands beyond the borders of the USA, there are special considerations you should take to ensure International SEO success. [caption id="attachment_4217" align="alignright" width="300"]International SEO Best Practices SEO across the globe[/caption]   1) Buy the domain that is native to the countries you are targeting.  For example, if you want German visitors, buy the www.website.de as most German residents search on their local search engine. 2) Host your foreign domain in country if possible so you will have a local IP address. 3) Establish a physical location/mailing address in each country if possible 4) Set Google Webmaster Tools to reflect each country you are targeting. 5) Translate several pages of your site into the language(s) most used in the countries where you do business.  Have a professional translator re-write your copy to keep your message intact.  Do not rely on automated translators, as they are notoriously bad. 6) Translate your keyword list into each language and be sure to include keywords in the meta data of your site. 7)  Foreign copy can create odd graphic design and page layout challenges, especially with languages that read right to left or vertically like Chinese or Arabic.  Most popular website platforms like WordPress or Drupal offer plug ins to solve this program. 8) Attract inbound links from other websites in each country. 9) If you plan to use Google AdWords, be sure to geo-target your campaigns. Each country has its own set of rules and regulations when it comes to website design and SEO, so it pays to have a professional search firm on board.  Fruition is happy to help you navigate foreign waters. Bon Voyage! 303-395-1880

Improve your International SEO with these best practices - optimize domains, translations, Google Webmaster Tools, inbound links, and geo-target AdWords to grow global traffic.

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International SEO Tips: Localization, Translation & Domains

Recently, Google released information about a big upcoming Google Adwords update that will be launched around June 2013. The update will affect how Google Adwords will segment mobile campaigns and different types of advertisements targeted at users with mobile devices. Google’s new update will allow advertisers to target mobile and tablet users more 'efficiently' with ads based on context – like location, device type, and time of the day in a single campaign.

#### Optimizing for Mobile Users
Google says that this update is due to the recognition that users are becoming increasingly more mobile, and using a variety of devices to find information and view ads. No argument there. Google is trying to optimize the AdWords experience to account for this type of user behavior, and allow advertisers to capitalize on the many ways internet users experience online ads. This update has three main parts:
1. Campaign and budget management. Advertisers with a local presence can increase bids based on searcher’s location or type of device.
2. Ads based on context. Advertisers can change ad content based on the type of mobile device.
3. New conversion types. This will add click-to-call and app download data from mobile devices into Adwords performance data.

Currently, this update is optional, but will become mandatory around June 2013. AdWords users can switch over to this new platform while it is still optional to test the new mobile-targeting features. These are all good features for some advertisers, and may be very useful for those who want a simplified approach to managing AdWords.

**Enhancement? Think Again**
beware the deceptions of marchGoogle’s update for mobile devices is well-intentioned, but unfortunately will ultimately do more harm than good for most power users. In almost every Adwords campaign I've worked with, mobile devices and tablets perform much worse than computers and laptops, and often times need to be shut off completely, or have bids reduced by 50%-80%. However, Google is now removing these options as a 'simplification' and 'enhancement', when in reality it will likely increase costs for advertisers because Google is taking away both the ability to control bids at the keyword level for mobile and tablet traffic, and also the ability to control daily budgets for these devices. Currently, advertisers have the ability to assign separate budgets and keywords for mobile and tablet devices by breaking them out into separate campaigns. Yes, this makes the whole system more complicated, but the trade-off is a lot more flexibility and ability to optimize your campaign. Many businesses either have no need or desire to target mobile or tablet users, and/or the performance of these campaigns isn’t worth the budget and effort involved in running them. The ability to control and/or remove mobile and tablet traffic from a campaign and to assign unique budgets and bids for mobile and tablet devices is important to avoid wasting budget on this traffic which tends to under-perform regular computer and laptop traffic on a cost per conversion basis.

**Enhancement for Google, Negative for You**
Google’s Adwords update will make the following negative changes:
- For mobile traffic – You will no longer be able to have mobile-specific campaigns nor the ability to control bids at the keyword level. However, you will be able to adjust bids up or down on a percentage basis (based on the bids you set for computers) at the entire campaign level.
- Tablets will be combined with desktop and laptops, which means that you will not be able to have tablet-only campaigns, not be able to adjust bids for tablet traffic at all, and not be able to opt out from tablet traffic. This is especially bad because tablets statistically tend to perform even worse than mobile on a cost per conversion basis.

Paranoid? Maybe, but we speculate that this is a way for Google to force people to spend more money on AdWords budgets since it will be difficult or impossible to opt out or bid lower for lesser quality traffic. AdWords Express is like this as well. We highly recommend that advertisers should resist this change until Google forces them to switch in June.

**What the AdWords Update Should Include**
enhanced adwords feature listDon't get me wrong, some of these new features can be really powerful to some, perhaps many, users. Google’s update does provide many valuable features to localized businesses that gain a lot of value from mobile and tablet traffic, however this does not reflect the majority of AdWords users and will ultimately negatively affect campaigns for most businesses. Google should edit their update to allow the ability to opt-out of mobile and tablet traffic, include the ability to bid for unique keywords for mobile and tablet devices, and include the ability to adjust budgets individually for mobile and tablet rather than including those devices in with other segments of traffic. (In other words, they should leave these existing features in the system as they are now and not take away control from advertisers and try to spin it as an 'enhancement'.)

**What Can You Do to Help?**
The PPC and online marketing communities are buzzing with frustration about this change, and petitions are circulating to ask Google to rethink this update. Online marketing professionals are hoping that the uproar and petitioning will cause Google to wait on the release of this update to amend it to serve the majority of AdWords advertisers better, and rethink removing these important features that advertisers rely on. Please call Google directly at 866-2-Google and tell them not to take away your ability to manage mobile and tablet traffic, and then sign the AdWords Update petition on change.org here to send a message to Google that this update needs to be amended.

It's important not to make changes or enhance your Adwords account unless you understand the updates and know what you are doing when it comes to changes.

Why You Should Rethink the New AdWords Mobile Update

We are very happy to announce that our client, the Cherry Creek Arts Festival, was recently presented with 15 awards by the International Festivals & Events Association (IFEA) at its annual conference held in Pittsburgh last week. The Cherry Creek Arts Festival, a premier cultural event hosted annually in the Cherry Creek neighborhood of Denver, highlights work by award-winning artists in visual, culinary, and performing arts. Over 350,000 people attend each year. The IFEA/Haas Wilkerson Pinnacle Awards recognize innovation in planning, promotion, and operation of various events & festivals throughout the world. Judges recognize performance in 68 categories, and the Cherry Creek Arts Festival’s retail website, CherryArtShop.org, earned a bronze award for Best Organization Website. Organizers of the Cherry Creek Arts Festival came to Fruition® with the vision for a website where the loyal following of festival attendees could go to view and purchase art from the show on a year-round basis, instead of just during the 3-day festival held each July. They also wanted all featured artists to be able to manage their own pages so they could update inventory as pieces were sold or as new pieces were available. 

Our developers used Drupal as the site platform for its flexibility and straightforward interface. The result was a user-friendly website that has attracted significant post-show traffic and art sales. Site visitors can read artist biographies and see high quality images, sizes, descriptions, and prices of artwork for sale. Artwork can be filtered by artist, color, medium, and price range, so festival goers can easily find a piece of art they may have seen at the show or perhaps discover a special new piece. 

The Cherry Creek Arts Festival was also the recipient of the Grand Pinnacle award, which honors festivals & events that have demonstrated a comprehensive understanding of what it takes to run a successful event. This prestigious award recognizes the Cherry Creek Arts Festival as the best event worldwide in its budget category. We’d like to offer our wholehearted congratulations to everyone involved with the festival for their fantastic work. Keep doing great things! 

If you're inspired by the design and development we did for the Art Shop site, be sure to give us a call - we would love to discuss your website project with you. 

For more information about the festival, visit www.CherryArts.org. While you’re on the site, be sure to check out the exclusive and unique pieces available in the Cherry Arts Shop. The 2014 Cherry Creek Arts Festival will be held July 4-6, 2014. We’ll see you and the best artwork in the country next year!

A Fruition client, Cherry Creek Arts Festival, was presented with 15 different awards, including the Grand Pinnacle award. Learn more.

Fruition® Client Wins Industry Award for Outstanding Website

When building a new site from the ground up or optimizing an existing one, webmasters encounter a myriad of decisions regarding various minutiae in SEO. Among these decisions, the choice between using dashes and underscores in URL structures is often overlooked. Many website owners wonder why such a seemingly insignificant detail matters in SEO. The answer is straightforward: Google interprets dashes and underscores differently.

### Underscores as Joiners, Dashes as Separators
Google considers underscores as connectors between two keywords, while a dash (or hyphen) indicates a separation of the keywords. For instance, to Google, "blue_shoes" is perceived as one term: "blue_shoes". However, Google interprets "blue-shoes" as two distinct keywords: "blue" and "shoes". Consequently, if your URL contains "blue_shoes", Google will only serve that page if the user searches for "blue_shoes"—a less likely scenario. If your URL contains "blue-shoes", that page can potentially appear in the search results for "blue", "shoes", and "blue shoes". According to Google's former head of webspam, Matt Cutts, this distinction between punctuation originates from Google's early days when its engineers—being primarily computer programmers—wanted to easily locate specific terms within the code. The practice has since carried over and evolved with Google’s search algorithm. Treating underscores as joiners is still a part of Google's latest updates as of my knowledge cutoff in September 2021, and there hasn't been any indication of changing this interpretation.

### The Real Impact on Search Results
While there is a significant difference between how the two punctuation marks are treated, Matt Cutts suggested that using dashes instead of underscores in URLs "doesn’t make that much of a difference" in relation to Google search results. It is a "second order effect" rather than a primary one. Take Wikipedia as an example: the website encompasses millions of URLs that contain only underscores, not dashes. However, this does not affect Wikipedia’s ranking as there are numerous other signals Google considers when determining SERPs. Apart from Google, as of my last update in September 2021, Microsoft's search engine Bing does not distinguish between underscores and dashes—they are both seen as separators.

### Advice for Webmasters
If your website already utilizes underscores in its URL structures, and it ranks well due to other factors, it may not be worth the time and effort to rewrite all of them to include hyphens and create 301 redirects. Altering all of your website’s URLs could potentially create more problems than merely sticking with the underscores. However, if you're starting a new website and have yet to establish your presence in search rankings, it's advisable to use dashes between keywords in your URLs. From a user's perspective, dashes offer greater visibility and usability. Underscores can get hidden by the link itself and appear as spaces, potentially confusing visitors. Consider these two URLs:

![Image showing two URLs: one with a hyphen (blue-shoes.com) and one with an underscore (blue_shoes.com). A red arrow points to where the underscore is hidden under the hyperlink, illustrating how underscores can be less visible and confusing for users.](https://cdn.fruition.net/dashes_underscores_difference3_53e5a9ac7a.png)

The underscore disappears into the underlined text, making it difficult for users to decipher the real URL and possibly link back to the website.

### Our Perspective
Based on Google's stance, dashes do hold an edge over underscores as the preferred URL punctuation. While this does have an impact, it's also important to consider other SEO factors. Even for established websites, it might be worth considering a rewrite of your top-performing pages' URLs if they use underscores. Google has shown a clear preference for the dash.


Explore an in-depth comparison of using dashes or underscores in URLs for SEO optimization. Gain insights on their impact on search results, tips for webmasters, and best practices.

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Dashes vs. Underscores in URLs: Which is Better for SEO?

While Google algorithm updates have a history of altering the SEO landscape, the release of Penguin and subsequent Penguin updates introduced drastic changes to the industry and historically common SEO practices. The latest on Google and using AI for SEO: https://fruition.net/blog/ai-seo-for-ai-search-engines 

## Nearly 10 years ago Penguin Rolled Out
At Fruition we just so happened to have hired two new SEO services analyst the day penguin rolled out. What a baptism by fire for them. One of them quit within a few weeks ("it was too much stress") the other turned into a phenomenal director of marketing. Sylvia, said "Within one hour of my arrival, the entire office was buzzing and running around about a huge new update from Google that was affecting websites, rushing to check all client sites to see who was impacted. Welcome Penguin 1.0. While the team was running around and analyzing all the information, I was left with my head spinning trying to wrap my head around all the new developments. However, I knew that same day I had made the wise choice choosing Fruition (from 3 job offers) in seeing that we were very minimally affected by the update and that most clients remained steady in rankings and traffic."

## Penguin Google Update
Penguin 1.0 and its subsequent updates have gradually become a major source of anxiety for many SEO firms and really has shaken up the industry. Given its impact, adapting your strategy and updating your website and approach is unavoidable. Although it’s all but impossible to truly understand Google’s algorithms and predict changes entirely, there are often hints of what is to come.

### Penguin hit link building
At the core of all Penguin updates is link building. In order to understand just how this traditional SEO practice of networking was affected, let’s take a look at the importance of links, what they do, and how each Penguin update specifically impacted the Internet landscape.

### The Importance of Link Profiles
Establishing a link profile, or “link building,” is a broad term that means different things to different people. Ultimately it takes the traditional marketing-based practice of networking and injects it into the Internet marketplace. To put it in other terms, if the Internet were a reality television show, your link relationships would be your strategic alliances.

### The Purpose of Establishing a Link Profile
Forming friendships and developing business relationships with others is important in establishing your brand. It takes groundwork. In the Internet world, links are the foundation of your website’s reach. The more links you have, the more popular you are. The more popular you are, the more visible you are to potential customers. A site without links is like a storefront in the middle of nowhere with virtually no access roads for potential customers to find you.

### The Bad Side of Link Building
Networking, establishing link profiles and link building aren't inherently bad. In fact, link building makes sense—particularly if you are a new site. Unfortunately, the problem isn’t with links or link building. The problem is with those who abuse the system. Once link building was established as a means of networking and promotion, some sites began to abuse the system. Links appeared in unrelated keywords or on directory sites. Demand for links not only affected link quality, but also made link building a business with sites requiring payments for links without disclosure. This is cheating, but not strictly “illegal” in the eyes of Google—at least in the past.

### Enter Penguin 1.0 (April 2012)
As link profiles became increasingly shady, Google took an aggressive stance against it. Each update went one step further in sending a very clear message. Upon Penguin’s release, Google took aim at the practice of link building as a primary form of SEO. While there were two subsequent installments of Penguin (1.1 and 1.2), the updates looked at three main issues.
- Over-optimized anchor text
- Links to (and from) bad neighborhoods
- Irrelevant inbound links

The first Penguin installment all but broke the Internet, but it only touched the surface of what was to come.

### Enter Penguin 2.0 (May 2013)
A little over a year later, Penguin 2.0 was released. Penguin 2.0 built upon 1.0, taking the fight against dodgy links a step further. It crawled beyond the homepage, delving inside a website’s inner workings to investigate its link profile. Penguin 2.0 penalized sites, evaluating links in relation to three issues.
- Contextual links
- Article spinning
- Tiered link building (micro-sites using an established parent site’s link profile).

All contextual links in internal content needed to be relevant to the article and your site. Article spinning was also targeted. This is a common practice that often leads to bad quality content and subpar grammar (at best). Another trick of the trade, so to speak, that was targeted in 2.0 updates is the practice of tiered link building, where microsites use an established parent site’s link profile in order to provide instant ranking.

### Reactions and Fallout
Each Penguin update has resulted in many sites being penalized. This leads to a drop in traffic (sometimes drastic), which then results in a loss of revenue. You can clean things up, resubmit to Google, but it can take a few weeks or more to get your site back in Google-approved order. The hit your site takes directly depends on its organic site traffic, ultimately making it harder to grow your business. Unfortunately, many websites were unaware of the issues. And since 2.0 went beyond the homepage, a website’s past practices could easily come back to haunt them.

### Advertising and Disclosure
Advertising drives traffic to your site. Some of this is in the form of paid links. You advertise because you want to drive traffic to your site. Advertising is not intended to directly drive organic traffic. There are certain rules in place about advertising and sponsored posts that simply require sites to mark paid links as “no follow” links. It is still a link that drives traffic to your site, but by marking it appropriately Google does not factor that traffic into its ranking. Google has no problem with you making money off of your site; it is the under-the-table deals that try to undermine its system Google takes issue with.

### What This Means for the Future
Google is serious about fair play online. Each penalty rollout, in their eyes, forces site owners to recognize and pay close attention to the rules. Until Penguin was released, sites often relied on creative ways to get around the rules; some even profited from this. Google sees this as unethical and has vowed to stop the practice of link building as a form of SEO. If you haven't used Fruition's Google Penalty Checker get setup and check your website against both Penguin and Panda updates (over 100 updates). It's the fastest, most accurate, and easiest, way to see how your website was impacted by Google's algorithm changes. Each Penguin update has further emphasized this point, quickly reacting to new threats and doubling down on their own. The times have changed, yet in some ways, the Internet landscape has come full circle. Just as in life, building your site takes hard work and patience. Organic links should be just that. It’s not an easy task, but your site is your business. “Get rich quick” schemes do not work, ultimately fail, and overnight link building will get you penalized. In this business, you have to work hard to ensure continued success. I love telling the story of my 'crazy' first day at Fruition and have been asked several times "How did you choose to come back and why did you stay in the industry?" The answer is simple: I love working in this challenging and ever-changing industry where we are always learning and adapting strategies to best serve clients. The success of helping clients excel in their business combined with choosing to work at a quality company like Fruition that employs white-hat SEO best practices and has a true passion in helping clients keeps me coming back to work every day – with a big smile on my face and ready for the next challenge!

Learn about the seismic shift in SEO strategies caused by Google's Penguin update. Understand how it changed link building, and how to adjust in light of these transformations.

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Impact of Google's Penguin Update on Link Building Practices

## Custom Plugin Development for Same Day Delivery API
It’s hardly un-common for our clients to come to us with a special need for a tool to help their e-commerce site function more smoothly. Nearly all online sites and stores have their own unique circumstances and will need help with any number of custom product ordering scenarios, CRM integration or other type of custom configuration. In every case the Fruition team does their best to answer the call through a variety of readily available extensions and plugins - and we have yet to be stumped. We are experts at finding the best solutions and configuring these to work on a variety of ecommerce platforms. Recently, we encountered a great example of one such special request for a custom shipping plugin for a client based in London, that wanted to be able to offer their local clientele an option for same day delivery within London. The delivery service they selected was able to provide everything they wanted – except for a way to manage and integrate the API into the ordering process on the site. The client came to us and asked if we can find a solution for integrating the shipping API into WooCommerce. After looking into what would be needed, we found that there was no existing plugin or extension and this would have to be a custom built solution requiring the development of a custom plugin to work with the client’s e-commerce platform (WooCommerce). Being a client with us has many perks, and in this case we were able to quickly determine the process requirements and propose a very reasonable development time and cost. In the end, we provided them with the exact solution they needed.

## Implementing the Custom Shipping API Integration
In brief, for those who are curious about some of the processes involved, the plugin works off of the WooCommerce code to create a new shipping method for the customer and also adds additional options to the products which can then tie the product to the shipping services inventory. This all happens through an automated and seamless process during the product ordering. After testing, we have launched the new plugin and are excited to help the client promote this new feature for same day delivery service to their customers. The ability to offer same day delivery to their customers gives them one more competitive edge to stand out in the online marketplace. If you have questions or need help with any ecommerce solution, contact us! Whether a new ecommerce build, transfer to new platform or help with a custom development project, we look forward to helping you make your online store the best it can be! Contact us to discuss robust solutions and custom development for Magento, WooCommerce or any other online store.

Streamline your store's operations with Fruition's custom Shipping API. Seamlessly offer Same Day Delivery options, specifically tailored for WooCommerce platforms.

Strategy & Research

Digital Marketing

Web Development

Creative

AI Data & Analytics

Ben Smith

Researcher

More articles by Ben Smith

International SEO Tips: Localization, Translation & Domains

Why You Should Rethink the New AdWords Mobile Update

Fruition® Client Wins Industry Award for Outstanding Website

Dashes vs. Underscores in URLs: Which is Better for SEO?

Impact of Google's Penguin Update on Link Building Practices

Custom Same Day Delivery API Integration for WooCommerce