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Todd shared his case study on internal link building
as a speaker on the Internal Linking panel at
SES Latino in Florida and also shares the highlights
with us on this show.
In addition, he will share some of the highlights
of the SES conference. Find out why you just might
want to be there next year!
Recorded Live July 28, 2006
Highlights from SES Latino
2006 in Florida
  
Todd Sarouhan and his partner, Rick Long have
been establishing a network of hotels on their
website, www.GoVisitCostaRica.com.
Three years ago, they started attending the Search
Engine Strategies conferences and quickly learned
the value of the education they received. By putting
SEO best practices to the test, they were able
to increase traffic by leaps and bounds. Watching
their rankings closely, Todd is always on top
of what is happening with his pages and when he
implemented internal linking and added some contents,
he noticed his rankings and traffic increased.
Highlights from SES Latino 2006 in Florida
We have really underestimated the importance
and the huge marketing potential of the Hispanic
market. In this show, we find out why the Latino
market is set to show exponential growth. We also
find out how to use internal link building to
increase traffic to our websites and to increase
conversions. Todd shares all the amazing facts
he uncovered while working on his website and
provides excellent tips gained from experience.
SES Latino was held in Miami, Florida. Todd
had been invited by Nacho Hernandez to speak at
the Link Building Session. He spoke on the topic
of ‘internal link building’, citing
his website GoVisitCostaRica.com as an example.
Todd and his partner Rick have established a
network of hotels on their website. Three years
ago they started attending search engine strategies
conferences, and quickly learned the value of
optimizing their site.
Todd informed listeners that there were two tracks
at the show- the fundamentals track which was
all about the “techie” stuff (e.g.
link building and how to design your websites)
and the Landscape and Tactics Track, which was
more marketing related. This track dealt with
the opportunities offered by the U.S. Hispanic
and Latin American market. According to Todd,
‘Spanish is most widely spoken in the world,
not English.’
SES Latino really tangoed. Todd stated, “I
love Miami because wherever you go, people just
assume you speak Spanish. It’s awesome,
it’s really fun”.
The Argentineans, Brazilians, Cubans, Mexicans,
Puerto Ricans, Columbians were all there, speaking
in those unmistakably stylish, expressive and
hyper-cool Spanish and Portuguese dialects. It
pleased Todd to see this growing diversity and
respect for ethic traditions and culture in America.
Almost 90% of the people who attended the conference
spoke Spanish, and 95% spoke English.
The SES Latino conference had a great vibe because
of these warm and expressive people coming together.
When we talk about the appeal that the Hispanic
speaking population holds for marketers- there
are two figures that explain it all- there were
44 million Hispanics in the US in 2004 and this
number is estimated to jump up to 68 million in
2015. This is a 55% growth and shows what a great
market it is going to be.
Marketers are waking up and realizing the incredible
opportunities targeting the Hispanic market will
offer. This market is also much easier to break
into because it is, at the moment, far less sophisticated
compared to the English speaking market. Some
of the very large companies have just started
to think “maybe we should target the US
Hispanics’. Cindy commented on this, stating
that Nacho Hernandez has been saying this for
the last three years!
Todd informed listeners that most of the participants
were consulting companies like ad agencies. The
representatives of these agencies did not know
what SEO was but they had clients who are targeting
the Spanish market. According to Nacho, 400 people
signed up for the show and because clients of
these agencies are demanding effective techniques
to target the Spanish speaking market, this conference
is set to grow a great deal in the coming years.
Todd talked about the superb bash that Google
threw for the participants at one of Gloria Estefan’s
restaurants. The place was jam packed with people
doing the Salsa and Marengo. This provided a great
opportunity for Todd to meet a lot of people working
in the Hispanic Search Engine Market.
There are some problems, however. Although growing
rapidly, the Hispanic market, at the moment, is
behind the US market. The reasons for this are:
1. There used to be very few websites in Spanish
2. Computers were more expensive
3. Internet connections were not as easily available.
Todd elaborated on some other problems that Hispanics
face. Shipping in Latin America is totally different
than in the US. You don’t ship. The postal
service doesn’t operate as well as we would
like. As a result, people have to depend on delivery
drivers or customers are asked to come and pick
up their package. Apart from this, not everyone
in Latin America has credit cards and if they
do, they don’t necessarily trust the Internet
yet with credit card purchases. In Costa Rica,
for example, the interest rate on credit cards
is 50% and as a result people reserve use for
emergencies.
Replying to Brooke’s question about whether
people in Latin American countries use Pay Pal,
Todd explained that Pay Pal is not popular in
Latin America but there are other services similar
to Pay Pal. Whether or not Latin American websites
are secure obviously depends on the way the website
in question has been designed and developed. They
can be as secure as English sites if the design
is good and if they use the secure SSL certificate
etc.
Todd spoke in the Fundamentals Track at the show
and he was surprised to see that many of the participants
had no idea what SEO was and generally didn’t
know anything about the basics. Danny Sullivan
gave the attendees an introductory talk about
SEO. Todd is certain that this great effort being
made by Nacho to introduce SEO in the Hispanic
speaking market is going to bear fruit.
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