Guest post from Lingo24.com

How to go multilingual with your online marketing: localisation and SEO

While English remains the most commonly used language on the internet, it should be remembered that for three-quarters of the world’s population, English is not their native language. While many people do speak English as a second language, studies have shown that the majority of web users put more trust in websites written in their own native language, especially when it comes to buying and spending money online.

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Clearly, a monolingual approach to online marketing can be severely limiting when it comes to the opportunities offered by the web for reaching out to a truly global market.

There are numerous practical considerations that must be taken into account when designing a multilingual, cross-cultural website, including such issues as ease of navigation, written language or script provision and culturally appropriate imagery. Perhaps the most important is the translation, however, and this is an area that crosses over from design to marketing considerations.
There are various ways to translate your content. The simplest way is to add a translation widget such as Google Translate or Babelfish to your site, allowing visitors to automatically translate the content into their language.

Inline translation code can also be used but Google’s Webmaster Central Blog warns against allowing automated translations to be indexed as they might not make sense and may even be viewed as spam.

The most effective method of translation is to employ the services of a native speaking translator, as this will help to preserve the nuances and meaning of the content and to avoid the mistakes and amateurish, ‘clunky’ feel that machine translation can throw up. Even if you do decide to use automated translation however, you should never directly translate your keywords.

Keywords deserve special consideration

Words and terms that work as keywords in one market might not work in another. Colloquialisms, synonyms, abbreviations and even appropriations from other languages might be more popular in certain areas and a little local knowledge coupled with additional keyword research will pay dividends here.

It’s also worth remembering that, while it’s certainly the most popular search engine in global terms, Google might not be dominant in your target market. Yandex is the most popular search engine in the Czech Republic, for example, while Yahoo! Japan is more widely used in Japan than Google’s own Japanese search engine. The criteria for successful keywords may vary from one search engine to the next and, again, it’s worth investing a little time researching keywords for the dominant search engine in each target market.

Geotargeting and language

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You may consider a single translated site adequate for each language (one for Spanish, one for English, one for French, etc) but you should bear in mind differences in regional dialects. For instance, Septante is used for “seventy” in both Belgian French and Swiss French, as opposed to soixante-dix in Standard French (i.e. the French spoken in France).

Similarly, in Spain, coche means “car” while in Spanish-speaking Latin America, the same word means a baby-stroller or pram. If you target a number of countries by language you should ensure that all your content means what it’s supposed to across geographical and cultural divides.

Targeting each country separately will help minimise the potential for linguistic mistakes and will allow you to make cultural references in your copy that might not otherwise cross over between cultures.

Localised domains

If targeting specific countries you might want to invest in country code top level domains (such as mysite.fr for France) for each localised version of your site. This will help boost your rankings on Google’s local search engines and other local competitors. Separate top level domains (TLDs) can be expensive to set up and time-consuming to maintain, however, and it may be enough to have a single TLD (such as mysite.com) and to set up separate subdomains or subdirectories for each language version of your site, for example fr.mysite.com or mysite.com/fr/.

It’s important to at least keep your different languages on separate pages in this manner as multiple or side-by-side languages on the same page can confuse search engine bots and adversely affect your rankings. If you do decide against separate country code TLDs, Google has a Geographic Target tool in Webmaster Tools that allows you to specify particular geographic targets for different subdirectories or subdomains.

By keeping in mind that you need to address each country personally with your online presence in order to reach them effectively, and then putting into place localisation and SEO strategies comparable to your efforts in the English internet, you can increase your potential audience by up to 75% – not an increase to be scoffed at!

About the author

Christian Arno founder of Lingo24

Christian Arno is the founder and Managing Director of global translation agency and localisation specialists Lingo24. Launched in 2001, Lingo24 now has over 120 employees spanning four continents and clients in over sixty countries.

Contact Lingo24 with a translation request mentioning www.reallysimpleseo.com before 30 October 2010 and we’ll give you a 10% discount on your first order.