A website is one of the most effective tools to bring customers to a business. It helps users explore products and services, learn about a company, and make purchases. A multilingual resource attracts more potential customers both inside and outside a multilingual country. To drive traffic and profit with a multilingual website, there are two steps to undergo when creating alternate language versions:
1) Website localization into a target language
2) Search engine optimization (SEO)
What are the Benefits of Website Localization?
Localization involves more than just translation. It includes the complete adaptation of all resource elements, such as interfaces, page content, images, customer email notifications, etc., as well as selecting suitable date, time, and currency formats. Professional translators, editors, proofreaders, and designers are involved in this process. The finished language version is tested on the screen so that all page components fit in the same context. Eventually, the company gets a perfectly adapted website that looks natural to foreign users.
What are the Benefits of SEO for a Language Version?
Most users seek information online using search queries. Search engines provide organic results for each query based on relevance, i.e., matching queries to keywords on web pages, and other resource quality criteria. Websites with higher ranks get more visitors. Unlike contextual and media advertising, organic traffic is free and stable and an optimized website can maintain a high rank through solid performance and established credibility.
SEO is the process of adapting a website to the needs of the target audience according to the recommendations of search engines. To make your website visible in search queries in different languages and drive organic traffic, you must use SEO techniques during website localization.
SEO Steps for a Multilingual Website
Here are the basic optimization steps to follow before launching a website in a different language.
Selection of Keywords (semantic core)
To get a website version in a particular language in search results, you must first create a semantic core. Keywords composing the core are obtained by analyzing the search queries in a target region and their frequency. Each language pair requires its own semantic core. Search methods and best-selling products and services vary from country to country. Translating your keywords or the content of the source version is insufficient. You need to explore user queries related to the subject in the target language and choose those you consider targeted and promising.
Competitor Analysis
To develop an effective promotion strategy, you need to know the strong actors in the market and understand how they drive their traffic. When the main competitors in a particular country are well-known, special tools are used to find and analyze similar companies in foreign markets. Thus, you can discover the keywords that competitors use to improve their clicks and impressions and add those keywords to your semantic core.
Keyword Distribution Throughout Pages
To cover semantics as much as possible and make page optimization more efficient, the semantic core is clustered, i.e., keywords are divided into topic groups and distributed across pages. Next, the key groups are used in texts for translation or for copywriters to generate new, keyword-rich content.
Text Translations and SEO Copywriting
Keyword-based localization is a way to give translated content high visibility in search engine results. When text is adapted by a professional translator, the keywords will look natural and organic to a reader.
Choosing Titles and Descriptions for Each Page
Each web page displayed in search results contains an annotation below the website link (also called the snippet). This annotation consists of the title and description. To manipulate the snippet text, increase its click-through rate (CTR), and incorporate additional keywords, the title and description page tags are filled in. When translating and optimizing the website for each page, title and description text will be generated according to the recommended number of characters for search engines.
Website Localization and SEO by a Translation Agency
A perfectly translated and search-engine-optimized website is the backbone of any successful promotion in a foreign region and is also useful when creating language versions for residents of one country, such as when translating a website into German, French, and Italian for Switzerland.
When the content is translated with keywords from the beginning, it doesn’t need any refinement after the website launch and the visibility of pages requested by the target audience will be higher initially. At Kenaz, you can get professional translations as well as a semantic core, SEO copywriting in other languages, and analysis of competitors’ websites.
What Other Promotion Channels Can be Used?
In addition to search optimization, there are different ways to drive traffic. For instance, you can use contextual and media advertising, social media, YouTube, and PR articles. When your company has ads, articles, publications, and banner texts in the original language, they can be adapted to a multilingual audience through translation and by creating subtitles for commercials.
For more information about our services, refer to Localization, Translation, and Helpful Articles.