You’ve gone through all the steps – hired a designer, a programmer and a copywriter to write your website and articles, and together they’ve produced the perfect website, one that shares your message and looks good. It ticks all your boxes. Great!
Keyword research
Now comes the next step – translating your website so that it works in another country or region. But backtrack for a second. Before your copywriter started writing, they did some research, didn’t they? They used tools to determine which words or phrases people type into their browsers when searching for businesses like yours. Then they SEO optimised your content by working those same keywords into their texts to let search engines know what you’re all about, and get them to rank you when potential clients type in those words next time. These tools allow you to see how many people are searching for each word in a particular region, how tough the competition is between websites when it comes to the word, and suggests similar words or phrases you could work in.
Keywords are just that – key
However, when keyword research came about, companies went overboard. When the whole craze began, companies would present spammy pages that didn’t mean anything but were filled with keywords because that’s what search engines were looking for. But we’ve come a long, long way from that. Search engines have progressed, and they’ve realised that to provide value to the people that use them, what they’re presenting needs to have value too.
Introducing User Experience
Nowadays, search engines are honed more and more to cater for user experience, which means that more than keywords, they focus on the quality of your content, how long people spend on your webpage and a whole host of other factors – each of these factors contribute to how optimised your website is. From how fast your website loads to a clean design and mobile optimisation, the more factors that contribute to people browsing your website on a regular basis, the higher it will rank. And the only way to get people browsing is to catch and hold their interest with content they actually want to read about.
It’s all a balancing act.
Doing it all again in a new language – multilingual SEO services
So you’ve got this far in one language, and are ready to have your website translated. Don’t fall into the trap of translating your keywords directly, or worse, a straightforward translation of your content. Why? Because all that research into keywords, design and topics was done for a specific country or region, to appeal to those specific people. How do you know people somewhere else are using the same words to find companies like yours? Or will respond to the same kind of design or message?
You don’t. Until you do the research, that is.
So to make your website as appealing as possible to your new market – to make sure you’re visible when they search for you – ideally, you need to start from scratch. Head back to the drawing board to come up with a brand-new set of keywords.
That’s where the Multilingual SEO content specialists come in!
Couldn’t your copywriter give you some words in another language? They know how to use the tools after all… In short, no. We wouldn’t recommend it because the person who did your initial copywriting and research is a specialist on one language, and one area. Now you need a specialist in another – an SEO content agency. Why? Because of how much everything changes as soon as you cross a border or switch into a new language. Those keyword tools are going to become useful again, and are going to produce a new list of words, but only someone familiar with your target language, culture and market will be able to tell you which ones are right for you. Are all the words on your list things people would actually be searching for? And which ones are most likely to lead to conversions?
But this goes much further than just the keywords. Are you aware of what different colours mean in various cultures? Do you know how aggressive (or not!) you need to be for a potential customer to click that “buy” button? Are you scaring them away? How about website formality? Sobriety? Are you going to be taken seriously enough with that tone and that look, or does a new culture call for a formality upgrade?
These are all answers only a SEO company with a team of multilingual SEO experts can give you, because for each market you want to target, you need a dedicated specialist.
Now, we’ll leave you with one final question. What’s the point of getting your website translated/ localised/ transcreated if no one’s going to find it?
Let us shine a spotlight on what you do with our multilingual SEO services. Get in touch.
