Multilingual SEO

The fundamental problem with a straight translation of an English web site is that it will probably not contain keyphrases which are used to find the goods and services you sell.

For example, in German a search for a “Hotel with Swimming Pool” could be translated as “Hotel mit Schwimmbad” which would be perfectly accurate. But a much more popular search term is “Hotel mit Hallenbad” meaning “indoor swimming pool”.

Multilingual search engine optimisation (SEO) is all about attracting volumes of relevant traffic from your target countries to your web site. Keyphrase research has to be done in each language to identify popular search phrases. The keyphrases then have to be integrated carefully in the content on your site  and in anchor text in links from web sites in the same language. The results have to be monitored too to make sure that you are getting results and conversions with those keyphrases.

Open Globe provides expert multilingual search engine marketing services in 36 languages using native speakers trained in SEO.

The process involves :

• Key phrase research in the language concerned to find a list of viable key phrases which are popularly used and do not have too much competition.

• Keyword mapping. From here we need to map several key phrases to each page in the site.

• Page optimisation – writing the text so that the keyphrases are correctly integrated in page titles, descriptions, headers, body text, links and alt text.

• Link building (sometimes known as off-page SEO)  is the important work of obtaining relevant links to the new content on your web site from sites in the same language.

• Domain names and hosting Local hosting and domain names can improve your rankings in search engines. They can for example contain a local keyphrase – if you are prepared to change your domain name for the local market. It also looks better in the search results, and is more trusted, if the site appears to be a local one with a local domain extension, for example .fr , .de.  It isn’t absolutely essential though, and depends to some extent how competitive your market is.

Optimising and maintaining an entire web site in several languages may not be a practical consideration within your budget, so we can suggest alternative strategies which are aligned with your goals for each country. Web sites can be partly optimised with the rest just translated. More on web site translation.