Why Should I Consider Multilingual SEO?
The Internet: Connecting Cultures with One Click
Understanding the pivotal role of the internet in marketing is only the first step towards grasping the impact of website translation in reaching global audiences. Today, online platforms offer unprecedented access to information, compelling businesses to shift from focusing only on traditional marketing to aggressive online strategies.
Localization: Connecting with The Right Audience, The Right Way
Now, your website is reachable to the entire world—but can they understand what do you offer? There are potential markets all over the world, but the right audience won’t engage with your content if they can’t understand what it is about. At the most basic level, once you define who you want to talk to, you must literally speak their language: That’s where translation and localization come into play.
Note that simply translating content is not enough. Localization is the critical part where cultural differences are taken into account and your content is understandable for specific people in a specific place. Take the English language, for example: It is spoken in many cultures around the world, however, English idioms and connotations of words can mean completely different things to people from different cultures. In England, the term “bang” can have sexual connotations, while in the U.S. “starting with a bang” means getting off to a great start.
This is exactly why the localization process has to be done by professionals who will not only translate the message to the target language but also write the content with the targeted culture in mind. Using key phrases and words that attract and appeal to the target market allows the right message to be delivered from inside and not from the outside the culture, which drives awareness, engagement, and ultimately, revenue.
Translating and localizing content opens doors to diverse and significant markets, removing language and cultural barriers, and accelerating business growth. But speaking their language will only take you halfway—you must also know how people search for content online.
Multilingual SEO: If I Can’t Find It, It Doesn’t Exist
SEMRush defines SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as “a set of processes aimed at improving a website’s visibility in search engines, like Google, with the goal of getting more organic traffic.”
To avoid talking to the void, your content must reach people who will read it. On the internet, this means that your audience needs to find your content through a link connection—the web is, after all, a huge network of devices around the world. An effective SEO strategy puts the right content in the right place at the right time. In other words, multilingual SEO helps a business build awareness for their brand and for what they offer to the target audience through organic online traffic. Once the target audience finds the content, the localization work you invested in helps answer questions from their search and shows how the fitness of your business without communication barriers.
If a tree falls and there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?
According to a study by Backlinko on organic clickthrough rate (CTR) on Google, the top result in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) gets almost 30% CTR, with the percentage dropping considerably to just 2.4% by the 10th result. Given that only .63% of people bother clicking on any link from what used to be the second page of search results (now Google has a continuous-scrolling interface), if your website ranks even as low as the 20th position, it may as well not exist.
Users now, more than ever, are aware of what they need and would rather find products and services themselves through the internet than wait for information to be thrown at them. Potential consumers rely heavily on major search engines, like Google, to find the products and services that meet their needs, thus website SEO is essential for online awareness. Working with a professional SEO expert who understands the specific language requirements and culture for any particular region can best equip a marketing executive to rank their website high and appear in the first few results of a SERP.
By the way, did you know that Google holds 83% of market share in the search engine market? While SEO practices should work for any search engine platform, you might want to focus your efforts on making Google notice your content first.
SEO & Localization ROI
Every business with an online presence should invest in SEO. However, if you have the resources and decided to pursue a robust strategy in localization and SEO to reach new audiences globally, please remember that Search Engine Optimization is always a long-term project. SEO is a process that takes into account several aspects related to a website, not only keywords and terms. You might even need to do some coding work on top of just building content.
A lot of effort is required to keep up to date with the many changes implemented by Google and other search engines to continually improve the searchability of a website or page, to build link authority (having other websites link back to yours), and to have people actually click, engage, and recommend your content on the internet. It may take weeks, or even months to see results.
Keep in mind: SEO strategies must be specific to the target language. Not all SEO practices work the same in different parts of the world.
Website localization and multilingual SEO are well worth the effort
If done properly, multilingual SEO can considerably boost the number of website visits, improving brand awareness and driving conversions in an important foreign market which would have been out of reach otherwise.
Embarking on a translation and localization project for website content and SEO can be very complex and time-consuming. More importantly, if done wrong, both SEO and localization can actually cause significant damage to a business. Both processes demand professional knowledge and experience to allow businesses to penetrate new markets and shine among local audiences. But with the right marketing strategy, and with the expertise of a trusted global content partner, like OXO Innovation, the potential for long-term success multilingual SEO offers is unlimited.