10 Rules and Keys for Hebrew SEO in Israel

Around the world Search engine marketing and search engine optimization are mostly done in English and languages written from left to right. When it comes to doing SEO/SEM in Hebrew there are many other factors you need to take into account when marketing your site via search engines.

Here are a 10 rules and keys for doing  SEO in Hebrew. Some of these tips are relevant to other localized languages as well.

1. Localize your domain: When marketing a site in Hebrew and Israel you should start by building your site on a local Israeli domain which is "co.il". Google and other search engines will treat local domain names better than international ones. This applies to other countries as well – always use their local domain. Even if your site is in English, but still targeted at Israelis living in Israel you should localize it.

2. Store your site locally: You should store your internet site in Israel. Your target audience is Israelis who live in Israel; they will access the site faster when it is stored locally. Google and other search engines will give better rankings to locally stored sites.

3. Encode your site properly: When building an internet site in Hebrew you must verify that the site is encoded properly so that every surfer will see the Hebrew fonts properly and won't get the fonts in Gibberish. My favorite encoding is UTF-8.

4. Look in the mirror: Remember that Hebrew is written from right to left and not from left to right, that means that you shouldn't use a regular site template – you have to use a mirror version of the left to right template. You must verify that the direction specified is right to left and that the text is aligned to the right. Otherwise the Hebrew fonts won't be shown properly and Google will read your site the wrong way round.

5. Hebrew keyword research: Up until July 08, there were no tools to perform keyword research in Hebrew. Tools such as keyword discovery, and wordtracker didn't provide services in Hebrew. In order to get search volume in Hebrew for your keyword research you had to spend part of the SEO budget on a Google Adwords campaign. In July 08 Google started publishing average monthly search volumes on its Google Adwords keyword tool. After verifying the numbers opposite a few Adwords campaigns we came to a conclusion that these numbers can be trusted. Today the keyword research is done by using this tool among a few others.

6. Hebrew competition: Israel is a small country and there are less internet sites in Hebrew than in English, so fewer sites are competing on the top 10 positions on the first page of the search results. A site can rank on the first page within a few months on almost every keyword (although there are a few extremely competitive keywords which require more time and effort).

7. Marketing budget: The competition in Hebrew is lower than that in English, but the search volume is lower as well. A word searched in Hebrew has about 10% search volume of its equivalent in English. Because the competition is lower and because eventually you will drive less traffic to your site the SEO budget for sites in Hebrew is lower. If you will pay 10,000$ per month for SEO services for a word in English, you will pay 1500$-3000$ per month for its equivalent in Hebrew (these numbers are estimates and not exact ones).

8. Google is still learning Hebrew: When optimizing a site for Google in Hebrew you need to take into account that Google is still learning Hebrew. Only lately Google learned to differentiate between single and plural of the same word in Hebrew, Google also learned common misspelled words.  Google is improving its Hebrew knowledge every day.

9. Other search engines hardly know Hebrew: Google holds almost 90% of the searches in Israel. The main reason is that other search engines such as yahoo And Live, and even local ones such as Walla, Know only basic Hebrew which is enough for basic major searches and not for elaborate complex ones. Their results are less relevant than Google's. Almost all searches in Hebrew are done via Google.

10. Last year's technology: Google.co.il technology is about a year behind Google.com technology. This is why SEO methods which are less effective in Google.com, still work for Google.co.il. These methods mainly include link exchange and link buying. This isn't a recommendation to use Methods which are less relevant for Google.com, because after a few months they will apply to Google.co.il as well.

Conclusion: Marketing a site locally in Israel, in English or in Hebrew, should be done by an Israeli SEO/SEM company knowing and living the local language and more important the local mentality.