If
you’re a website owner, then the thought of optimising your website for search
engines isn’t new to you. SEO, when done right can drive lots of traffic to
your website, bring in quality leads, and in the long run, increase sales.

But
how about when you’re trying to adapt or translate your website for another
market? Will the same SEO strategy work?

Well,
the answer is both yes and No. And we will explain. While SEO principles may be
the same across borders, keywords difficulty and search volumes differ per
keyword. Furthermore, some search engines are more prevalent in other
countries. For example,  The most
prominent search engine in Russia is Yandex, China uses Baidu and South Korea mostly utilizes Naver.

Hence,
when trying to break into a foreign market, you must adopt a concrete SEO
strategy in order for your site to boost visibility and organic traffic.

What is multilingual SEO

Multilingual
SEO is the act of optimising the content on your website so that foreign
language users can find your content using search engines. It usually involves
incorporating local keywords and search terms into your translated content.
This is important because the whole idea of having a website, a translated one
especially, is to reach more people. Multilingual SEO ensures that your
translated content is ranked and able to reach more people.  

How to optimise your website for
multilingual SEO

The
process of adopting multilingual SEO for any website involves effective
collaboration across professions (copywriter, web designers, linguists, etc.)
and it transcends working with metrics like keyword density and volume.
Effective multilingual SEO involves a nice blend of the nitty-gritty of SEO,
catering to users’ search intent and taking into cognizance cultural nuances.
That said, here’s a quick guide on how to optimise your website for
multilingual SEO.

1. Do Your Research

The
first step to optimising your website for multilingual SEO is research. There
are certain regions or languages your business might benefit more from.  Effective market research will help you
decide on what regions/languages to focus on

An
excellent way to do this is to review your site’s current analytics. With this,
you can discern the number of foreign visitors you’ve been getting and the
languages they speak. This way, you can determine the region or language you’re
getting the highest traffic from and then optimise your site accordingly.

You
can also explore other possible target markets that are hungry for your
services or products by conducting a localised keyword research. You can do
this by translating your primary keywords into several other languages and
running them through a keyword research tool, i.e., keeping location set to all
locations, entering the keyword, and seeing how much traffic they get. With
this, you can discern if the market is hungry for your content while generating
keyword ideas.

2. Decide What To Translate

When
optimising your multilingual website, you must also decide what content to
translate, which to leave alone, and whether or not you want to create
language-specific content, i.e., content tailor-made for speakers of that
language.

Prioritise
your main pages like your homepage, about pages, navigation tools, pop-ups and
CTAs, i.e., the best pages that drive SEO traffic and conversion. You could
also translate your best performing English pages as well as pages that align
with high volume

keywords
in your target language

3. Choose A Domain Structure

The
three most common domain structures are top-level domains (TLD), sub-folders
and sub-domains.

Top-level
domains involve using a separate domain for each language. For example, say the
original site is “seosite.com”, its french site will then be “seosite.fr”.

Subfolders
require only one domain and one host and are easy to set up with most CMS
systems. Examples of sub-folders are

                        Originalsite.com

                        Fr.originalsite.com

                        De.originalsite.com

With
subdomains, you get to keep the advantages of TLD without having the trouble of
setting up and managing multiple domains. They are also relatively easy to set
up.

4. Use Hreflang Tags

When
appropriately utilised, hreflang tags help search engines determine what
language your site’s pages are written in and which page is for other regions.
You can also use these tags to indicate which of the pages on your site is your
default page.

If
you’re optimising your page for Bing as well, then you’ll need to use meta
language tags instead. Meta language tags use the same language and region
codes as hreflang tags.

5. Boost Your Multilingual Pages Via
Backlinks

Backlinks
are a great way to boost your site’s authority regardless of its language. You
can discover backlinking opportunities by doing a backlink analysis on your
competitor’s page. Furthermore, you could link pages of your site to each
other. Internal linking is also a great SEO strategy.

Importance Of Multilingual SEO

The
most obvious benefit of optimising your website for multilingual SEO is the
ability to reach a larger audience and, by doing so, increase sales. Some other
reasons why you should think of optimising your multilingual website include;

• Giving your business a competitive
  edge.
• Building trust with your customers
• Exploring more search engines
• Establishing your brand globally.
• Achieving long term growth
• Increasing customer satisfaction

Best SEO practices when managing
multilingual sites

Translate URLs (slugs) 

One
often-overlooked element in website localization and multilingual SEO
optimization is translating URLs. You should ensure that each page version has
a unique URL and that this URL is translated into the target language. If, for
example, your current website’s URL is siteseo.com/dance, its french version
would read siteseo.com/danse.

Localise Keywords

Rather
than translate keywords, you should consider localizing them. This is because a
keyword in your original site may not necessarily be a keyword in your
translated site. Also, a word that ranks well in English may not rank so well
in another language. Instead, you may find that another word, probably related
to, but not exactly, ranks better in the target country. Hence, when generating
keywords for your translated site, don’t just translate the former keywords;
instead, research how that keyword performs in the target country. And if you
see the need to modify it so that it ranks better, then please do.

Stick To One Language Per Page

Search
engines match URLs with a single language. 
Translating some parts of your page while leaving the rest in the
original language could negatively impact the customer’s experience. If, for
example, the main content is translated, but the navigation content is not, the
customer will understand the main context but will have trouble navigating to
other pages. On the other hand, if the main content is left as it is but the
navigation content is translated, the consumer will have issues understanding
your content.

Translate Your Metadata

When
optimizing your website for multilingual SEO, you also want to make sure you
translate your metadata. The proper translation of your metadata will improve
your ranking in the new countries you’re targeting.

Make It Easy For Users To Switch
Languages

Providing
links between different language versions of the same page makes it easier for
users to switch between languages. In setting this up, please bear in mind that
using national flags as indicators isn’t always a good idea for several
reasons. It’s often better that you opt for abbreviations like EN, FR or ES.

Hire A Language Service Provider

Engaging
a professional translation service like Translationsinlondon will always beat using AI powered
tools for your website translations. For starters, there are a lot of
nuances and cultural preferences AI might miss that a human translator conversant
with the culture of your target country wouldn’t. Also, google search can
easily detect text produced using google translate engine and other AI tools
and may consider content produced using this tool as spam or low quality.

Conclusion

Multilingual
SEO done right might be that extra nudge your website and brand needs to
discover new ground and launch into the international market. When optimising
your site for multilingual scratch engines or just translating your site, your
best bet remains hiring a language service
provider.
Not only will the LSP help communicate your message to the target language, but
they will also help localise your site and the keywords so that they’re in line
with the cultural preferences of your target audience.

TranslationsInlondon is the one-stop-shop for all your
website translation and localization needs. Our team of SEO specialists are at
hand to deliver best SEO practices that positions your brand at both the local
and international scene. Send us a message to get started today