Why is Multilingual SEO Beneficial For Businesses
Extending your website or online business to overseas markets takes time, effort, and money. Multilingual SEO is one of the most critical aspects of these efforts. When you employ a multilingual SEO strategy for your website, international and vernacular search engines help to find your site quickly and enable your business to succeed in other countries. This blog takes a closer look at what multilingual SEO is and how it can be helpful to companies.
What is Multilingual SEO
Multilingual SEO means what it sounds like – SEO in multiple languages.
In contrast to SEO, which optimizes your content in one language, Multilingual SEO involves using optimized content in multiple languages or one local language. It makes it easier for search engines such as Google to index you for local search results. The strategy requires adding localized keywords and search terms to ensure users find the website or page or content in their native language.
Hiring the right set of translators is important as they can assist you with the content technicalities. But, make sure they work in tandem with the multilingual SEO experts. Accurate translation and localization of the content and metadata is as essential as ensuring the right SEO strategy. Your content should connect with the local audience, but it should also get indexed by Google or other search engines.
Additional Read: What is SEO
Why Multilingual SEO is Required for Businesses
Multilingual SEO makes your service more global, allowing you to access foreign markets successfully. Let us understand this with an example: A business wants to target a Spanish audience in Spain and Mexico, Multilingual SEO will capture the phrases and local flavour to reach out to the target audiences in each country. It is similar to optimizing the website for a domestic audience.
A great opportunity for businesses
As per a survey, English is the most popular language online, representing 25.9 per cent of worldwide internet users. As a result, most of the information online is written in English. So it excludes a large portion of the population from accessing most online content. Multilingual SEO represents a great opportunity for businesses looking to grow into new markets.
Connect with a wider audience
An online survey by Casa Research noted that 76% of online shoppers are more comfortable shopping on sites that provide information in their local language. The survey was conducted across 29 countries from Asia to Europe and North & South America. Forty per cent of the 8709 global consumers have never shopped online from websites in other languages. Brands need to connect with a wider audience, and what better way to do so than by talking and responding to them in a language they understand.
The best thing that brands looking to gain a foothold in the international market can do is optimize their website in the language of their target audience. It’s the key to unlocking new markets and driving sales. Reaching new customers means a brand has ventured to become a multinational company instead of staying a local player.
How Multilingual SEO works
Using Multilingual SEO, you can offer optimized online content in different languages for different or even states. But, there are approximately 7,000 languages spoken around the world. So, which one should a brand choose and use? This is where the role of Multilingual SEO comes into play and it is, therefore, essential to know how it works.
1. Do Market Research to Identify Target Audience, Location & Keywords
Identify the audiences’ needs
Any SEO strategy has to start with an understanding of your audience and their search habits. First, identify the search trends of your audience. What are they searching for? When are they searching for products and services similar to yours? What is their profile? Knowing who the audience is will help you plan the type of content to create, and the platforms where you can interact with your audience.
Simultaneously, identify the target languages that your audience speaks, and make sure you have country-specific solutions.
Check the user behaviour to analyze what they expect when they visit a particular webpage and ensure the information you provide meets their requirement.
Do Keyword research
Keyword research will help you identify the best multilingual SEO keywords and phrases. The higher the search volume of a keyword, the more important it is for you to incorporate those in your multilingual SEO strategy. In short, the goal is to find keywords with a high monthly search volume; however, be realistic. If you are new to the market, start with long-tail keywords. Go ahead and use the keywords on which your competition is ranking to increase your chances of a higher SERP rank.
Here are the details of what you should do:
i) Localize your SEO strategy:
While conducting keyword research for a new market it is important to check which keywords terms users type in the search.
For the same product, various markets may use different terms. In the United Kingdom, a farmer looking for a pest management solution would type in “pesticide for mice,” however a direct translation of this term might not work in markets where mice aren’t a common concern.
Use Google Ads Keyword Planner to figure out how people in a new market perform searches.
It provides a monthly search volume for various keywords and phrases. Google Trends is another useful tool that allows you to compare search volume for different terms over time.
ii) Check current traffic on your website
You may use Google Analytics to help you figure out which keywords are already driving traffic to your site. The information can help you come up with fresh keywords to target. If you sell bags, for example, and you notice that people are looking for “purchase bags online” in French, you could wish to target that keyword.
iii) Target local search engines
While Google is the most popular search engine in many countries, it is not the only one. In some markets, you should also target locally popular search engines, such as Baidu in China or Yahoo! Japan in Japan. A smart local SEO strategy would incorporate the algo trends of the local search engines to bring traffic and leads to your site.
2. Technical considerations:
Create dedicated URLs:
Create unique urls with language indicators to avoid content duplication penalties. Language indicators help search engines identify the language from the url itself.
For instance, the original url might be www.yourwebsite.com, spanish version could be www.yourwebsite.com/es or a french version could be www.yourwebsite.com/fr.
Use hreflang tags:
It tells search engines which language you are using on a specific page so that it can serve that result to users searching in that language. It helps them understand that the web pages are localized variations of the same content.
Hreflang tags can be inserted in the header section of the original page or submitted via a sitemap. For example, an hreflang tag referencing a Spanish page intended for readers in Canada could look like this:
If a page is intended for multiple regions, multiple hreflang attributes can be added.
Create meta-data in the target language: Along with translating and localizing your website, it is also important to localize your website’s title tags, meta description, and meta keywords. Search engines will crawl this data and show it to your users. It is required for your website to rank on the location that you are targeting. Use keywords with high searches and less competition in a particular location.
3. Hiring SEO experts
Consult an SEO expert who is familiar with the target market to help you figure out the user intent behind certain search queries. If the target market is the UK, brands should not hesitate to trust multilingual SEO experts from India. This will allow help in avoiding targeting phrases that may receive a lot of traffic but do not convert.
Why Multilingual SEO Is Beneficial For Business
Benefits:
Recognition and Branding on International Scale:
Multilingual SEO has tremendous advantages for establishing your company’s rapport with local and international customers. Because they understand the language better, you can efficiently market your products or services to foreign clients.
Competitive Market Advantage
A multilingual website helps show your company a more corporate and professional aura. Future clients will be more confident in evaluating your services and products because your company provides them with a secure feeling due to its multilingual availability.
Better Access for Prospects
If you’re seeking an international market, having a multilingual website allows your online business to take advantage of the local resources. It’s crucial to examine the search engines used in specific nations, which may only be available in their native language. As a result, having a multilingual SEO helps you provide better access to potential clients.
Improves Online Traffic
A larger market helps increase your website’s online traffic, allowing for better search results. This assists search engines in recognizing your website as a trustworthy source. Aside from that, increased online traffic can lead to increased sales of your services or products.
Cost-effective marketing
Finally, offering multilingual SEO is a cost-effective way to market your business. Setting up a unilingual SEO is nearly as expensive as setting up a multilingual SEO. Even if your current target market is local, having the website available in multiple languages will help you decide to expand your target market.
Bottomline
An investment in multilingual SEO and website translation will be worthwhile. Optimizing your multilingual website for some popular global search engines will dramatically boost your company’s success. With more traffic to your website, you can expect a significant improvement in business activities, especially in the foreign market.
Did you Know: Techmagnate also offers complete expertise in Multilingual SEO Services