At the outset, Netflix licensed existing shows and movies and made them available to members in the US and Canada. Marketing efforts concentrated on the product, explaining how easy it was to stream content. The catalog grew, Netflix started expanding internationally, and Netflix Original deals were signed. Orange is the New Black, House of Cards and several DreamWorks TV shows needed marketing! In no time, each title got its voice on multiple platforms and languages.

More teams found their place in the workflow, but not without governance hiccups: regional marketing and SEO teams had different ideas about vanity URLs, and keyword strategy needed a global focus.

Regional teams favored country code URLs: they added local relevance. Search optimization folks squealed at the idea: “vanity” URLs affected search engine page results. It was time to talk. Search team members had no trouble bringing data to the discussion. Netflix is a data driven company, and the issue quickly settled in favor of a unique, global URL.

Next was the strategy around content keywords. The marketing copy came with a tidy set of keywords. In English, naturally. Each keyword was dutifully translated. And that was the problem. Keywords are like living organisms that thrive within an ecosystem. Every country has a living culture and market of keywords. Simply translating them loses their purpose and misses opportunities to land higher in page results.

Over time, we culled the most frequent terms and developed glossaries and keyword review cycles to ensure we were hitting the most frequent ones. Most importantly, we were able to add value beyond translation, helping people find great content to watch.