The case for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and multilingual marketing is quite a simple one really.
If a business ranks highly on Google for its industry’s most popular key search terms, then they are far more likely to succeed than if they have a poor ranking.
This is reflected in research conducted by the European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA) which found that two-thirds of marketers planned to increase their SEO resources in 2009.
However, many small businesses could be missing a trick by limiting their SEO scope to domestic shores – the world is a big place and 75% of the earth’s population speaks no English at all. Furthermore, whilst English may well be the most widely spoken ‘second language’ across the globe, people simply prefer to do business in their own tongue.
So how does a business broaden its online presence in foreign lands? Well, before the SEO process begins, you’ll obviously need to have a foreign language website in the target market.
But before you do this, you must identify which is the best market to target, and this will vary greatly from business to business. You will have to do your research and see where there is a gap for you to exploit. If there are other similar businesses operating already in a specific country, then that’s a good sign as it demonstrates a demand for the product or service. However, be wary of too many companies, as it can be difficult to gain a foothold in an industry that is already saturated.
The next stage is to buy a locally hosted domain name in the target country. It may just be your company name with a local domain extension, for example .es in Spain or .fr in France, or if your company name is a direct reflection of the services you offer (e.g. ‘Web Design Services’), then you would be best translating your company name into the target language and buying that domain name instead.
This lays the foundation for you to translate your website into the desired language; however, there is a strong argument that says you shouldn’t translate the keywords. And here’s why.
The correct dictionary translation of a keyword or phrase may NOT be what people use to search for the desired product or service locally, they may use abbreviations, colloquialisms or a different word that means the same thing. So in the same way as you identify your industry’s highest ranking keywords for the English market, such as via Google’s free keyword finder, you have to research the keywords for each target country, to ensure your foreign language website is properly optimized.
Once you have your keywords identified for each country, you can then incorporate these into a professionally translated website. It’s important that native speakers are used to translate your website as it must exude professionalism in all your target markets.
English may still be the dominant language in terms of content on the Web, but the majority of the world’s internet users’ first language isn’t English. And this disparity creates a rather lucrative opportunity for those seeking to enter new markets: the competition for key search terms is much less on the non-English language internet, therefore it’s possible to achieve high search engine rankings far easier than in English.
About the author
Christian Arno is founder and Managing Director of Lingo24, a global translation services provider that specializes in website localization. With operations across North America, Europe, Asia and Australasia, Lingo24 is on course for a turnover of $6m USD in 2009.
