Businesses are often excessively cautious and feel paralysed when presenting themselves in foreign languages. There are many misconceptions when it comes to translating corporate websites and SEO, in particular, is not well understood. However, armed with the facts you might find that there is a world of new potential markets for your international business to tap into.
With 75 per cent of the world’s Internet users speaking a non-English language as their mother tongue, there is no doubt you will need to localise your web content in order to reach this massive market. Businesses often make the mistake of assuming that Europe and North America represent the highest percentage of Internet usage in the world, when in fact Asia is accountable for a booming 43 per cent of the worldwide usage. Imagine the opportunities if you were to customise your web content for the Japanese market, for example, where over 70 per cent of the population is already online.
Correctly adapting keywords locally is crucial in order to reach your target group as most non-English speaking users will type in keywords in their native language when using search engines. Locally customised SEO is actually one of the easiest ways to get higher rankings on search engines and more website traffic.
The technical process of SEO does not differ from one country to another. It is the procedure of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a website from search engines via unpaid algorithmic search results. The biggest challenge when adapting your website and translating your web content into another language is getting the actual translation right.
So how do you enter the world of multilingual web content and what do you need to take into consideration in order to do it properly?
1. Get it right the first time
Using a native translator who knows the language, nuances and dialects will bring a larger amount of higher quality traffic to your website. Remember that words have different cultural associations depending on locality. Cutting corners on getting the text right is a false economy and almost always leads to problems.
2. Keyword analysis
Once the translation is done, make sure that someone who has a good knowledge of SEO reviews the keywords and adapts them according to local search habits in order to achieve the most effective result.
3. Local hosting
You should also take into account the IP address, which should be in the same location as the target audience. If you want to set up a site in Germany, for example, then make sure that your server is in Germany. You risk being treated as a .com if the IP address and your website location are different.
4. Regional domains
If you are concentrating on search engines in one specific country, register a domain in that country. In Japan, for example, that would be the .jp domain.
5. Link building
The major search engines changed their algorithms last year making the destination of the links back to websites a critical factor for multilingual SEO. Using 10 quality phrases or relevant links within the target country can be more valuable than 100 links from directories, especially if the directory is not in the same language or semantically relevant. Remember to include the correct links both to and from your English site to your foreign language site.
6. Local search engines
Another common mistake is to think that Google dominates the search engine market across the world, when in many areas local search engines are the preferred option for the local Internet users. It is therefore important to identify any significant local search engines in the countries where you are targeting your SEO efforts. As the number of Internet users has increased, local search engines have become quite a common thing and you can no longer trust the main search engines to do the job for you when it comes to SEO. In Poland, for example, the majority of Internet users prefer to use the local search engine called Onet.pl, which is the number one portal in the country.
7. Local contact information
Having a physical local address and local contact phone numbers on your website is always a good idea. Search engines might use this information to verify the area you are targeting.
8. Account for misspellings
Every country and its population are different. Keywords typed into search engines might differ according to cultural spellings, which can vary a great deal. Misspellings of keywords should be taken into account when optimising your SEO.
9. Stay ahead with multilingual SEO
An online multilingual marketing strategy is essential for international businesses today. It is no use spending a large sum of money on adapting your website locally if it cannot be found by your target groups.
Getting your website localised and optimised for different markets will make it an effective marketing tool. The process requires language skills, technical skills and local know-how. Few companies have all the necessary resources in-house, but that should not be a reason to hold back. Make sure that you stay ahead of competition and make your SEO multilingual sooner rather than later.
