Once keyword research in the foreign language being targeted is complete, the next most important task, when it comes to building a successful multilingual website, is on-page optimisation.

Now, just place your search terms in all the right places.  Of course, it is not quite that simple, as each search engine places different weight on search terms being place in certain locations and at certain volumes . In other words, it’s invaluable to know how the target search engine spiders a page and where to place the keywords so your foreign language pages are positioned for ranking high in your target keyword.

Now it’s time to identify some keyword challenges found in SEO campaign creation:

German Conglomerates

For instance, German nouns like to merge into incredible conglomerates.  An example of where I ran into this was at this Netzwerk überwachung site. Two major search terms are Netzwerküberwachung and Netzwerk überwachung.  The first, conglomerate word is actually correct, but people search in unusual ways, and the search engines don’t generally recognize partial words. In English, a reference to “website monitoring service” would count as a reference for the search term “website monitoring”.  But the German equivalent, Überwachungsservice für Webseiten, would read literally in English as “monitoring service for websites”.

In other words, you might have to make the German SEO professional dance some fancy language steps to deliver a readable message that does not interfere with your search terms.

The Use Of Accents

Multilingual SEO also brings to light the question of accents.  Use them only if the keyword research reveals their use.  One well-respected SEO consultant questioned the use of accents when it turned out that more people searched for Montreal than Montréal.  Don’t you believe it for a second.  There simply were more English speaking people searching without the accent, so leave the accents off your English site but keep them on your French, German, Italian or other versions of your sites if your aim is to be truly localised.

There is one exception to the accents rule: There is a certain market in English that refuses to capitalize words or use punctuation.  The equivalent market in Spanish speaking markets exists as well as in Germany where they are unlikely to use an umlaut – you might have to optimise both with and without the accent. Again, if targeting local consumers always include the accents otherwise refer to your keyword research and cross check the level of backlink competition to gauge which is keyword is best to target.

File Names

What about file names.  Many companies keep the same filenames when they create a translated site. So

1) http://www.example.com/en/Products/AudioVisual.asp becomes;

2) http://www.example.com/de/Products/AudioVisual.asp

…a challenge to a non-English speaking German, but more importantly, of no help to German SEO effects.  On the other hand, keeping the same file name helps the webmaster keep track of what all those otherwise “unintelligible” filenames, without resorting to a wall covered in file name translation tables.  This is not a simple decision to make, but in this case, it’s best to localise file extension names into German and if relevant, to include the target keyword(s) in the extension.

Sub-domain or Directory?

One question that often comes up is where to house the translated site on a separate site, in a sub-domain or in a directory on the English site.

The general consensus is that it is preferable to give it its own domain with the appropriate country extension as local search engines will give your locally hosted domain far more preference in competitive search markets. It is relatively simple to purchase a domain in .de (Germany) or .it (Italy), but which domain extension do you choose for Spanish?  Spain?  Mexico? Argentina? The USA?  And have you ever tried to apply for a .fr (France) domain? Not easy.

Second best is a sub-domain, which at least carries a semblance of being a separate site and allows some directories to consider it a home page for listing purposes (and you want those directory links). This strategy is can be considered appropriate when targeting less competitive keywords. International keywords research will quickly reveal which path is best to take.

Now the expansion strategy is laid out and the initial keyword research and competition research has revealed the keywords to target, it’s time to look at the second major step.  On-page optimisation:

An Example In German SEO

The following are details regarding the specific on-page tasks for German search engine optimisation:

>> Title Tag Optimisation – One of the most critical elements of German search engine optimisation is the development of unique and keyword centric title tags. The title tag of a page is HTML code that contains the text that appears in the upper left corner of your browser and the underlined hyper link in search engine descriptions. Title tags act like the title of a book and define the content on a specific web page. Aim at using only one keyword/keyphase in your title tag. There are a number of key concerns when dealing with these tags that can have an immediate and significant impact on the ranking of a web site.

>> Meta Tag Optimisation – While meta tags have lost much of their influence on rankings, the meta description is still important with smaller engines and in cases where there are heavy graphics on the site. Use your major keyword here and try to avoid repeating the same word twice. The search engines will spider list keyword list and identify a multitude of combinations for those keywords. Use single keywords separated by commas.

>> Meta Description - Review the English descriptions, translate if possible or develop more appropriate versions for the German (or other language market). Include the primary keyword for the page only once.

>> Content Optimisation – Currently the German search engines develop their own descriptions for the site in the results page by taking the sentence or sentences that surround the specific search phrase. Therefore it is very important to ensure the copy surrounding these key phrases on the site is written properly to provide the best description of your offer to searchers. Typically a keyword density of over 1% is considered excessive (including keywords allocated to meta data fields).

Once you have placed your keyword within the German page text and code, the third step is to embark on a off-page optimisation campaign:

Once keyword research has been performed, you have identified the best fit keyword to target. You have performed on-page optimisation and your multilingual website is now live. At this stage it would be recommended to start a PPC (pay-per-click) campaign to identify which keywords generate the most traffic/leads to your site. Once the results are in, re-optimising the website with those keywords that have generated the most traffic. As a PPC campaign can be quite costly and time consuming, it is recommended, however, some companies do perform to skip this and move straight into chasing organic listings.

Link Building

Internal linking using appropriate page keywords should already be in place but equally important are the backlinks pointing to the new multilingual pages. Focus link building efforts on the home page and preferential pages that either traditionally convert leads or those you intend to be high converting pages. Always target entities that will generate relevant links from high profile sites related to your industry, both in terms of topic discussed on the site backlinking to you and in terms of the related keywords (and of course – language) used on the site.  Be creative and look to have content published on some industry leading sites, blogs, news sites etc. But be aware that their are fewer avenues to build links in German, French, Dutch etc than in English.  Fortunately so, as link building is ongoing and costly. So most cases, you will  not need an aggressive link building campaign to get good French or Dutch search engine rankings.

Essentially, multilingual search engine optimization is about understanding how your site is perceived by the foreign search engine spiders and making the appropriate adjustments to the site and specific pages while you are translating your site. Once the above is completed, you will be well ahead of most local and international sites being ranked for keywords you’re targeting.

International keyword research and competition analysis reveals a detailed set of guidelines to follow in order to make your site a contender capable of competing with local search competition. If followed, as detailed above, to solidify top rankings, initiate an ongoing link building campaign in that language. Remember foreign language search engines are still somewhat uncharted compared to English search engines. Many opportunity awaits.

Thinking about expanding your business into Europe, Latin America, Asia or the rest of the world?  Get your site translated and optimised for the multilingual search engine listings with us today!

The importance of proper keyword research goes beyond simple guessing and testing. It can be a complex task that encompasses a methodical process, that once completed, can set the foundation for ongoing International Search Engine Optimization.

ONE-Find the right words and the correct scope!

If you are to optimise your website for French SEO, the first step is to identify equivalent French search terms. This might not give you the same number of search terms. For instance, if you start with the 10 search terms around the word “socks” (buy socks, buy socks online, glow-in-the-dark socks, etc.), you will most likely end up with twice as many search terms in French, as there are two common words for socks in French (”bas” and “chaussettes”). This might mean that you need to create additional landing pages for French search engine surfers.

Note: be wary of using official translations for keyword research. Your translator probably used the very best vocabulary and grammar possible, including words and conjugations that your target market might never even have heard of, let alone be searching for.

Know the search keywords and phrases used in search engines. Get found for keywords related to your website. Analyze your competition, check your website position in search engines, grow your keyword lists and optimize pages for keyword density and prominence. Research keywords to have your websites rank better in organic and paid search results. Without this first step, your website and keyword marketing campaigns are disadvantaged from the start. Keyword research can help you find keywords with high traffic and weak competition.

• Track and position check website ranking for search keywords in search engines.
  Analyze keyword competition. Website backlinks, keyword density, pagerank etc.
• Use multiple online keyword suggestion tools to provide new keywords to research. Combine lists of keywords to generate new keyword lists.
• Analyze keyword density of pages. Adjust keyword importance for titles, headers, text etc.

TWO-Know your targeting purpose!

It’s important to define the language in which the keyword research will be conducted and its targeting purpose. By targeting purpose I mean whether the language to be used will be universal or localized.

1. Universal version, also known as international version, is more suitable for internationalization purposes. A good example will be to target the entire Spanish speaking world – 22 different countries and islands- with a common language that will be understood and accepted by the majority rather than using Mexican Spanish, Spanish from Spain, or Peruvian Spanish.Use of colloquialisms, idiomatic expressions or any connotation that will imply adaptation to a local, regional or a specific ethnic sub-group should be avoided.

An example of a good universal keyword in Spanish is the term “Buscadores,” which means Search Engines. Instead, if chosen “Motores de Busqueda,”, which also means Search Engines, it will more likely be understood only by Latin American folks.

1. Localized version is important if what you want is to deliver a targeted message to customers of a specific country such as Spain. For this purpose, you should include idioms, cultural aspects and idiosyncrasies of that particular group. A Regionalized version will also apply to geographical areas such as Latin America. Even though there are differences in terminology and applicability among Latino countries, they are more homogeneous when compared to European Spanish.A good example of a localized version for the Spanish term “shopping cart” for visitors from Spain is “Cesta de compras”. The regionalized version for Latin American visitors is “Carrito de compras”.

THREE-Find the right people!

Once you are clear about the coverage of your target language, then you need to find the right human talent to help you with the research. A company such as New Frontier Digital will ensure you get the best optimisation.

No machine can replace humans. So, if you are thinking about using online dictionaries, encyclopedias and keyword research tools such as Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery, Compete, Quantcast, Hitwise, Google Keyword Tools and others; with no human intervention, then you are risking your entire project. Human intervention is needed in multilingual keyword research because of sociological, contextual and intrinsic aspects of the language.

While a machine can give you a list of useful keywords for a seed list; the knowledge, meaning and understanding of the context in which each keyword applies is what really matters. For example, the Spanish keyword “Posicionamiento” (Positioning in English) can be understood in Marketing as the process by which marketers try to create an image or identity in the minds of their target market for its product, brand, or organization. Contrarily, this same Spanish keyword can be understood in Internet Marketing as Search Engine Optimization.

I would like to emphasize the fact that it is important to work with native speakers that preferably have experience in the field of research and are familiar with the geographical area for which you are localizing your website. For instance, if you ask me to do keyword research in Spanish, English and perhaps French, I am sure I can deliver results. But if you ask me to conduct research in Russian for terms related to Search Engine Optimization (Поисковая оптимизация сайта), I will be completely lost simply because I don’t speak the language and don’t understand Cyrillic.

Likewise, there are many translators that are familiar with basic legal terminology, but lack deep understanding of the context in which the terms apply. Some even confuse the term “bonds trader” with “bondsman”. The former refers to terminology used in the financial industry to describe someone that trades bonds in the cash market, while the later is strictly used in the U.S. criminal justice to refer to the person that pays the bond on your behave for a fee.

FOUR-Use the right tools for your keyword research

This is a challenging issue in the current state of the keyword research industry. There aren’t many keyword research tools that will allow you to conduct research in multiple languages. In fact, most of them are not even UTF-8 ready, which is the system that represents any character in the Unicode standard. And if you are not familiar with Unicode, you can learn more by visiting the Unicode Consortium page.

Now, image for a second you are conducting keyword research in Simplified Chinese to position your site in Baidu, the Chinese based Search Engine. If the tool you are using is not UTF-8, that means that all you may see is gibberish instead of a proper Simplified Chinese term.

This gets more complicated if you are using generic tools to try to find search volume estimates for a specific keyword in a specific country. And it gets even harder if you are dealing with low search volume keywords.

Google Trends is a clear reflection of this situation. You can find results for high volume searches, even for specific countries, but not so easily for low search volume keywords. Try the following keywords and keyphrases in Google Trends and see what happens:

• Поисковая оптимизация сайта
• Motores de Busqueda
• Buscadores
• Palabras Claves
• Bonds Trader

There are some tools like Keyword Discovery that offer information from specific countries for localization purposes. This tool seems to provide relevant estimates for high search volume, but can be off for low search volume keywords. In my personal experience I even found inaccurate results when conducting research for niche terms in Spanish. And the localized Spanish Database Center was a bit off when compared to other localized data.

In conclusion, start your multilingual keyword research by defining your language goals, and decide whether you will be using universal, regional or localized versions. Don’t forget to hire translators that preferably have experience in your niche or products and know the market for which you are localizing. Find the best tools for your needs and make sure they all work by literally seeing the results in your target language. And if you are using Google Keyword Tool or Traffic Estimator install the target language packs for your operating system.

International keyword research has been quite a popular topic lately, due to the fact that keyword research is the first phase any website should go through and considering more non-English speakers are logging online daily. The demand for non-English keyword research resources will continue to rise. Approaching a new language requires exactly the same keyword research process, however, this time there are quite a few more variables in order to pull it off successfully and then to move on to create a successful international SEO campaign.

Fundamentally, it’s all about finding the search terms in a foreign language that your target market use and yes, purely translating them is certainly not the way to go. You need to start from the scratch and translating your existing keywords will help define the seed list and by creating synonyms but the real gems will come with the indepth research itself. Yet, once you have what looks like a solid list of statistically proven keywords that takes heed of all the cultural variations, you will need to continue collecting, pruning, developing and tracking these keywords over time and this requires dedicated periodic review efforts which could be quite difficult if you do not speak the language being targeted.

Keywords capture the essence of your web site, but building a relationship is another thing all together – increasing visitor numbers, engaging them, building a relationship, earning their trust as you move them through your sales funnel to ultimately shift these visitors into inquiries, sign-up’s or purchasers. The whole process instantly highlights a labyrinth of accompanying tasks that must be addressed with the same level of dedication as the research itself, and of course, in the preferred language spoken by that initial website visitor. If you’re not a native-speaker nor an SEO pro, you should definitely get one.

Keyword research takes in a few hours with the help of user-friendly research tools like Wordtracker, Wordze, Nichebot, Keyword Discovery etc. tremendously increasing traffic to your website throughout the time. But these tools aren’t much help to the foreign language researcher. While FIGS (French, Italian, German and Spanish) are beginning to emerge in various research platforms, it will be sometime before they are completely integrated and further said have the capacity of the English counterparts.

So let’s dig into the process you must go through if you do speak the language. Unfortunately, it cannot be guaranteed that you won’t encounter keyword accuracy challenges with the considerable limitation on tools available. Every single keyword research tool can assist you in approximation of potential market size, and provide insights into how to modify both your tactics and communications to obtain a realistic response rate, but it’s difficult to stomach the language limitation on current keyword tools.

To help you improve your website’s international position here are some tips to run through with each language:

Step 1: Get help and hire a native-speaking SEO pro.

You need a native-speaking SEO pro to assist you with page-by-page analysis to determine the seed list of keywords to be using. Decide on who needs the services that you offer. You need to be agreed on the theme and category keywords you aim to target. You need to be sure your SEO consultant is clear on your product/service objectives and then allow them to deliver the researched report, highlighting the keywords you need to introduce to your international pages. For example, ‘anti aging cream’ in Italian should be translated ‘Crema anti invecchiamento’ or ‘Crema anti età’ but that’s not going to mean anything to you, if you do not understand Italian, finding an SEO pro to prune this seed list is essential.

Step 2: Gather related terms.

You or your SEO consultant can discuss critical terms and product/service description to build your list. Use excel spreadsheets and collect major business terms associated with your sites page, product/service descriptions and popular industry terms in one column. Also, consider singular and plural versions of keywords and keyword phrases, abbreviations, misspellings (i.e. proffesionals) and hyphenations when cross checking the keywords against, and cultural adaptions when creating the list of probable keywords.

Step 3: Expand the collection of terms.

We’re now bound to add entire two, three and four term combinations with those definite terms related to your site. You need to utilize web applications to speed up the entire procedure. Start typing your first general term and the tool will list more than a few related terms. Pick each new pertinent term to your sheet. You are supposed to perform this to other general terms.

Tip 3: Look for principal and minor keywords.

Key-in each of your terms when you go to the internet-based keyword creation tool. Make sure you are familiar with it’s functionality or better yet, have your SEO pro run walk you through it. Become familiar with the various metrices provided by the tool. You must plug these on a second and third column beside the column of corresponding terms. After this step, go through your list and find the terms with the higher volume count and lower amount of competing page. This ratio is basically termed the KEI ratio and one of the first metrics you should be familiar with. Consider the top 5-10 terms as your principal keywords and the remaining lists as your minor or long tail keywords.

This is a rinse and cycle process, where by tracking the performance of these keywords and placing under performers in your negative keyword list and creating back-links to those bringing in the traffic.

Tip 4: Decide the topic of your content.

You may try blog and forum postings targeting theme keywords, the debate over keyword allocation (if any) is best damped by the fact that using the keyword somewhere on the page is a wise choice and certainly to not use the keywords is ill advised. Regardless of language, content must be well targeted and addressing target market issues. On top of that you must remain tactical by at the very least including the keyword within your content.

Keywords provide the road map for your content. Systematically change your website pages content, writing press releases and articles for your readers and media essential to build links and a domestic search engine presence. Also, develop a routine for posting content and being consistent. Each language has varied quantities of outlets available for article and press release publication, directory submissions etc. Some language markets are more developed then others so understand how top pages are acquiring links is quite important.

Tip 5: Develop density within your theme keyword content.

Density of your keyword content will be expressed as you add more pages of language content to your site. It signifies that you should place as much pertinent keyword content as possible to your site, consistently over time. More specifically, this means adding language content that contain and elaborate on your theme and category keywords.  Regular consistent publication is the safest approach.

Tip 6: Adjust the existing content.

Keyword architecture involves evaluate your page titles, content of the website body, meta tags and descriptions, first sentence, etc. Make adjustments if necessary to improve your content using the keywords sparingly. It is recommended to be used in the page titles, headings and descriptions to contain those top language keywords.

Tip 7: Develop new international keyword research lists.

Continue to create quality content relevant to your site and publish regularly. Regardless of langauge, keywords are really the cornerstone of any website campaign..but make sure you check with you friendly local search engine’s on the specifics optimization process.  For example, Baidu (Chinese search engine) puts no value on robots.txt file and puts alot of value on meta data, similiar with Yandex (Russian search engine) that puts value on the title, it ignores the revisit-after and content meta tags and randomly selects the meta description from within the page text.

This is to get international search engine traffic you must select the right keywords, optimize the pages according to optimization guidelines.

Trends, market popularity, globalization, etc, if you can point to it, then you can be sure the search engine engineers will be factoring it into their algorithms. At this point international search engines will continue the shift towards favouring local providers and with ICANN’s opening up of IDNs ‘Internationalized’ Domain Names it will now be possible to write an entire website address in any of the world’s language scripts. This is certain to be refined the local search preferences even further. Ultimately this change tests the ‘how local can you go’ with the new ability to use non-Latin characters in domain names. SERP’s will continue to reflect the search engines emphases towards being local.

As these localization trends continue it becomes increasingly important that international keyword selection is done with care and close examination and tracking of your keywords is taken to build certainty around the longetivity of your campaign, at the same time  it’s equally important you keep revaluing and categorizing your terms and understanding the local search engine your working with.

Feel free to contact us about your international SEO campaign, we would be more than happy to answer any questions and assist you further.