Why Do You Need International SEO?

As the world moves away from traditional marketing to online methods, the importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has taken on a global importance.  Any company doing business abroad or even domestically should develop and execute an international SEO strategy as part of their global marketing.

The keywords you use to attract customers to your site are just as vital in the other languages your customers speak. That’s why using the right keywords, after researching your target market in accordance with their language, is an important task in your website translation project. 

Whether you have Hispanic customers in the US or potential buyers in China, these 5 insights on international SEO can start you off in the right direction.

 1.  There is a world beyond Google – Although Google does dominate web searches in the US and many countries it is not the only search engine in town and is not the top preference in every country. For example, Baidu.com is the top search engine in China and in Germany Google.de and Amazon.de are more used than com.  A great free tool is Alexa.com, which offers an updated list of the Top 500 sites in every country: www.alexa.com/topsites/countries

2.  Use Unicode – Ok a little geek-speak here, according to the Unicode Consortium, “Unicode provides a unique number for every character, no matter what the platform, no matter what the program, no matter what the language”. In other words, use UTF-8 encoding for your keywords and text on your website pages so the characters show up properly to search engines and your keywords are effective. An example that most Americans are familiar with is the ñ character used in Spanish.  Visit the non-profit Unicode Consortium for more info at www.unicode.org. The Unicode Consortium makes it possible for internet users around the world to surf online in any language they are comfortable with.  Unicode is a valuable aid in software internationalization for search engines and websites.

3.  Don’t use free automatic translation! –Google produces many wonderful, reliable products but Google Translate is not one of them- yet!. You get what you pay for and auto translation software and websites are notorious for making large-scale errors. What’s more, these services do not translate the meaning of what you are saying so that the website for your fan company could end up being about electric fans or fans of rock music. The investment of hiring a professional businesses translation service when doing marketing translation is a smart investment.

4.  The right keywords – The other key component is choosing the correct keywords for each language- a crucial activity that can only be performed by an experienced Translation company specializing in International SEO. This is where having a culturally competent professional translation team that knows about SEO and keywords tools, pays off. An expert helps you understand how customers think, search and the cultural context for buying your products. It is not about simply translating keywords, but adapting by using the right keywords in the selected target language.For example, the keyword phrase “legal translation” can be translated into Spanish as “traducción legal “ and “ traducción jurídica”. Both options are right, but the second is searched 2010 times compared to 60 searches per month for the first. Remember to do your homework ahead of time by researching to find out which keywords are most fitting for your target audiences.

5.  Build a separate navigation per language –Whether it’s as a sub domain on your server, a specific folder per language using codes for the representation of the name of the language, or an entirely different domain in the country. as the example below for acme.com for Italian.

Subdomain (i.e. www.italian.ACME.com)

A folder under the same domain name (i.e. www.ACME.com/it/)

A Different domain in the country (i.e. www.ACME.it )

So, build a site where your navigation, content, keywords and titles match the language and culture of your clients.

For help with your International SEO projects please consider using Eging Translation Services. We are experts in Website translation, providing solutions for your multilingual sites and Multilingual SEO. We’ve even been hired to do translation work for Google products!