International Search Summit - Oslo

The first International Search Summit to be held out of the UK was held on 13^th March in Oslo, Norway. The venue was the SAS Radisson and attendees had travelled from across the Nordic countries.

The day began with a welcome from WebCertain Norway's Manager, John Brenne, followed by "Guidelines for Setting up Sites for international markets" from WebCertain Managing Director Andy Atkins-Krüger. Andy gave an overview of the different search markets around the world, with facts about both multilingual seo and multilingual ppc from different markets, including the emerging markets of China, Russia and Brazil.

Andy was followed by Efva Gabrielsson of Lawson Software, who looked at the issues faced by in-house teams carrying out online marketing activities. She considered the questions which should be asked by companies sourcing an agency to work with, examining the relationship which needs to develop between both parties and the integration required between search and other marketing activities, both on- and offline.

After a short coffee break came a session all about using ‘SEO for B2B Sales Support Internationally' from Gard Jenssen of Seobra. His presentation focused on the specific nature of B2B buyers and how websites and search campaigns need to be tailored to their behaviour in order to be effective.

Content Management Systems (CMS) were up next, with Kristjan Mar Hauksson of Nordic eMarketing offering tips for ensuring your CMS is SEO friendly, followed by Jens Peter Nielsen of Dynamic Web who presented a case study from a global client. He shared the challenges faced such as dealing with 40 different languages and over 200 domains, and how the CMS system helped to overcome some of these difficulties.

A networking lunch gave delegates an opportunity to digest the morning's information before returning for another few hours of international seo discussion. In order to beat the post-lunch lull, Andy and Kristjan were joined by Sergey Dmitriev of zett.no to share some ‘SEO Howlers' - SEO mistakes that major brands have made on their websites.

A session on writing for the web was up next, with Beate Lofseik of MakingWaves sharing her experiences from working on the visitnorway website. She offered tips and suggestions for writing seo friendly content which will improve your rankings and conversions.

WebCertain took the helm once again, with Client Services Manager Paul Reeve offering an insight into agency structure and which structures are most effective for organisations operating multiple campaigns across multiple markets. Peter Kersbergen, SEO Strategist at WebCertain, then took a more detailed look at the aspects involved in running a multilingual SEO campaign - how that differs from single country efforts and what online marketers can do to boost the rankings of their websites.

Another short break before the final few sessions, which turned their attention to behavioural targeting and tracking. Pontus Kristiansson of Avail Intelligence discussed how through analysing search behaviour, the product pictures used on e-commerce sites can be targeted at specific users, increasing conversion on the sites.

Andy Atkins-Krüger delivered the next presentation which looked at tracking international seo and international pay per click activity - explaining how search patterns are different in different markets yet how the tracking for all these markets must be synchronised in order to compare results and benchmark ROI. The tracking theme was concluded with a case study from Jørgen Brunborg-Næss from Synlighet who used a campaign for Norwegian Airlines to demonstrate how to set up effective tracking across several regions and languages.

A networking reception allowed the delegates and speakers to chat about the topics of the day, and make some useful contacts.

Another successful International Search Summit - time to get ready for the next one in May now!