A common issue online marketers have is coming up with unique differentiators. SEOs have this problem – it takes virtually no effort for an intermediate or advanced SEO to understand a competitors’ main link acquisition strategies in an hour or less. That allows new entrants into the field to easily duplicate your hard, pioneering efforts. Affiliates have this problem – there are so many people vying to sell the same thing that it’s hard to stand out. User friendliness and pricing no longer help – price comparisons, coupons, deals and reviews are now commodified. So let’s define the problem: Differentiating your site in a lasting way is difficult, because competitors can copy you without much trouble.
But what about throwing up a language barrier?
Suppose you’re an SEO blogger and you start reaching out to Russian SEOs. Suddenly, it’s a lot harder for your competitors to build the same links. Even if they see where you’re getting the links, they can’t immediately figure out how you earned them. Google Translate may help, but it’s not great. Besides, it doesn’t even begin to allow them to get in touch and solicit the links. And if your competitors try to outsource Russian language link solicitation, they have to initially put blind faith into the outsourcing company that they’re not spamming and that they’re doing what they promised, and doing it well. They sure as hell aren’t going to start checking the Russian outsourcing company’s grammar.
Suppose you’re an affiliate who starts producing content in French. The same problem applies to competitors – how are they going to source French language content? How will they proofread it? This simple tactical idea applies advanced SEOs’ 7 curiously obvious rules. For example, it questions the assumption that you need to do business in the same language as your competitors. Why not mix it up? And whoever moves first, will likely have a big advantage.
Another example of applying the principles, is that this idea was inspired from experience. I’m currently planning a new SEO plugin, and my friend Jacob Share (who teaches folks to find jobs) asked me whether I’d want it coded in a way that enables translated versions. That seemed an excellent idea to me, as my first WP plugin – Internal Link Building (details on V3 here) – got loads of links from around the world, and was even translated into Russian and ported to other CMSes.
If you liked this, get a free chapter from my book on advanced SEO. The text is done, and we’re finalizing the cover for printing :D.
photo credit: Photospin