The need for an SEO friendly translation of your website
The European Commission surveyed Internet users and found out that 90% of them would rather navigate a website in their native language especially when they are about to buy a good or a service. On one hand, you know the importance of expanding your target audience; on the other hand, you still want to create a climate of trust favorable to the development of your company. How to deal with this? Translating and localizing your website! For greater effectiveness, you should ask your translation agency for an SEO friendly translation.
Localize …
Have you ever heard of “localization”? The process of localization goes beyond a simple translation and aims to adapt your message to the target culture taking into account all the special features of the region or country. It implies adapting the content to local conventions (units of measure, currencies, legislation, terminology) and cultural markers (colors, fonts, images, layout).
… determine which keywords your prospects use the most …
First and foremost, make sure you know how your prospects express themselves in search engines. How do they phrase their search requests in Google? What are the keywords most commonly used in your line of business? Is your translator aware of these specificities?
Now that your website has been localized, it’s time to take a step further and to implement a multilingual SEO strategy. First, you need to identify the main keywords your prospects are most likely to use in their searches. Then, incorporate them into your content to optimize your website in search engines.
For instance, you have an e-commerce and you want to translate it into Spanish. You might not know that, in Spain, the expression “tienda online” is looked for 9,900 times per month in Google when people want to find an e-commerce, whereas “tienda in línea” is only used 50 times. You can refer to your e-commerce as “tienda en línea” instead of “tienda online”, as it is a correct translation, but Google will optimize your website based on these particular words, and you’re likely to miss out on 9,850 potential clients since you will not appear on the list of results returned for a search for the most searched expression, that is “tienda online”.
To increase your chances to appear prominently in Google results page when your prospects search for the service you provide, it’s essential to use the same keywords as them. If you use the proper keywords, you have better chances to be ranked in the top results of Google, and by extension it will increase the organic traffic of your website; and eventually, your sales.
… and optimize your entire website
Searching for keywords is also essential to create an SEO friendly website structure by incorporating the keywords in title tags, meta descriptions, header tags, etc. If you want to go even further in your SEO strategy, you may do a comprehensive keyword research to get a complete overview of the market. You may find out which market sectors are the ones primarily searched for by your potential clients, and which ones you are not yet active in. It might be the perfect time to consider redefining or retargeting your business!
When it comes to translating your website, make sure the translation agency you work with also masters multilingual SEO. Simplyaskthem: do youspeak Google?