7 Weirdest SEO Mistakes Big Companies Make Abroad

Ever since I concentrated on SEO for international clients entering the German market I not only was astounded by lots of localisation mistakes. It strikes me even more how international clients, big companies or should I say corporations literally sabotage their own SEO success.

Working for small business clients is fine but doing it for several years bored me after a while. Nonetheless it seems in comparison even the most clueless small business owners are better equipped for search engine optimisation than some big clients who in my opinion should rule the Google results.

So what are the 7 weirdest SEO mistakes big companies make abroad?

1. Big international clients never approach me directly, instead their SEO company contacts me which results in a “no feedback possible” situation. The SEO company just has fixed tasks it needs to outsource and is unable to adapt to the market.
2. They have more lawyers than marketers it seems as I always get the NDAs first and am not allowed to even tell my mother who I work for. Imagine a web designer etc. not able to brag about the brands he works for. They (both) lose so much publicity!
3. Big foreign clients spend ridiculously limited budgets on SEO, sometimes I work for small ecommerce sites as well as for big brands at the same time and the big brands just spend twice the amount as the tiny online shops with niche audiences.
4. I am not allowed to use the simplest and most effective SEO techniques. The corporate structure is sometimes so monolithic, the CI so rigid, the technical limitations so many that basically everything a SEO does usually is not possible or permitted. How do you build links when no press releases, no blog posts, no link baits, no nothing is allowed?
5. They insist on outdated SEO practices like directory submission and meta keywords tags. Instead of using methods that work quickly or over time such clients just want me to write meta keyword tags and submit to directories. There are something like 10 general, 10 paid and 10 niche directories I can recommend in Germany, do you really think it’s enough for link building for a big company in a competitive field?
6. They (could) get free links organically but they insist on paying for paid directories or tedious link building instead of encouraging natural link growth and making the influencers aware of them or their new product and service.
   
7. They don’t do market research it seems beforehand and do not heed my advice afterwards. This is really so counterproductive. Foreign investors enter Germany and want to clone their business model without any significant research of local customs or demand it seems to me. You don’t sell Hummer SUVs in Germany like you don’t sell Suzukis in the US. Even WalMart failed in Germany and finally left after their American business model didn’t work.

So isn’t that weird? The weirdest part is that in the Google results the local “3 guys in a basement companies” outrank global leaders just by using gray area methods because big companies are using only 10% of their potential. I am not only writing about one company. It happens again and again.

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