Localization and search engine optimization (SEO) are two processes rarely uttered in the same breath, considered as separate entities with little bond to one another. This isn’t, or rather shouldn’t be, the case.

This post will look at how SEO can be incorporated into the localization process to produce linguistically accurate and search engine friendly content. Additionally, it will highlight the features and benefits to organisations adopting the SEO/localization approach.

Why haven’t translation and localization industries simply not “got” SEO? Theodore Levitt in his famous article “Marketing Myopia” published in the Harvard Business Review in 1960 talked about railroads not running airlines because they were in the business of running railroads rather than in the business of transporting people from A to B. SEO firms exist principally to generate additional demand for a businesses products and services.

So what exactly is the purpose of localization if marketing is sidelined? In in the case of websites, it’s like offering the pudding without the cream or cherry on top. Without it, your content is ‘optimized’ for the search engines so native speakers are less likely to find your perfect translation.

Why is it so difficult?

If you study the localization industry’s online literature you are struck by the very clear obsession with certain key topics:

• The use of technology
• Maintaining the quality of translation
• Minimizing cost
• The threat from machine translation

The above is interesting because the following topics appear much less frequently:

• Offering value to the website reader
• Delivering return on investment
• Achieving online visibility
• Using web analytics and split-testing software to determine response rates

What these show is that the objectives of SEO and localization are quite different but in order to combine the two, we should look for common attributes.

THREE steps to effectively combine localisation and SEO!

1) Focus on local search engines

It is important that you focus on local engines since this will automatically help to better localise your website. In order to do this;

Claim your local business listings on sites like Google Maps, Yahoo Local, Bing Maps, etc. Most local search still happens at the big search engines, so those have to be priority one. Make sure those listings are all accurate and consistent — same business name, address, and phone number everywhere. Any confusion between business listings can really hurt your local search visibility.

Do the same on the secondary sites like Yelp, Insider Pages, and industry-specific sites like TripAdvisor (if you’re in the travel industry), Urbanspoon (if you’re a restaurant), etc.

Fix up your main web site. Make sure it’s a great experience for visitors. Make sure you’ve taken care of the SEO basics — correct keyword usage in the title tags, good local content across the site, an excellent and detailed maps/location page to help people find you, and so forth.

2) Localize keywords

Localising keywords will help your SEO in local search engines. Different language = new keyword research. No translating! This, as discussed in previous posts, will ensure a good ranking.

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 campaign.

3) Always use human translation.

Translation software has without doubt revolutionised the process of language translation, however not always for the better, particularly in the case of important documents. Prices have indeed become more competitive and turn around times have been slashed. Yet translation software will never be able to provide quality, fluid and meaningful translations simply because of the lack of human involvement.

As a simple way of highlighting the differences between the translations of humans and software, the following experiment can be done. The following piece of German text that needed to be translated into English will be used as an example:

Wir hoffen sehr, dass Ihnen unsere Website gefällt. Bitte lassen Sie es uns wissen, falls wir hässliche Übersetzungsfehler gemacht haben.

After running it through a piece of translation software the resulting translation was:

We hope very that you our websites felled.  Please you let know us it if we made ugly translation mistakes.

Whereas one of our human translators translated it as:

We sincerely hope that you enjoy our site and please let us know if we have made any ghastly errors.

It is clear that only human translation can provide sensible translation and this will provide your text with that localized readability.

In conclusion it can be said that combining localization and SEO is not an easy thing to do. But with the right people and techniques it can be achieved. This will help to boost your business to greater popularity and search engine rankings.

Geo Location marketing is the latest buzz around local and international new media marketing circles. The crux of geo-location tagging lies in one fact that you get to receive and share data at your current geographical location no matter where on earth you dwell. In real terms, if you have a geographical indicator application installed in your smart hand held then you can share make your Facebook status go somewhat like” having a nice time in Antarctica!” with all thanks to satellites providing you with remote connectivity!

Ok, so much for the social networking and the fun part. Let’s see why we, the search engine marketing junkies, are so much interested in these seemingly just-made-for-fun genres of application and web dominions. Most of these applications are basically made with a purpose to make people navigate to the right place, no matter where they are located. This is the part where we walk in and take our cut! When you are dealing with this kind of a scenario where you can see an unimaginable large number of people using diverse geolocation applications to find restaurants, pubs, offices, points of interests etc then see the power of conveying your marketing message on their screens.

Most of the times people will be using a search engine [I really don’t want to say the G –Word again and again, isn’t it obvious!] to tap and track points of interest in their nearby location. The local business listings can be your next target to actually surgically get netizens hovering to your website, application or place. And it is a not so well kept secret that local business listings [Product Listings] now appear in mobile and hand held browsers too.

Ok so much for generic and routine searching tasks. Now, our take on the geo tagging and location identification is based on targeting the global audience with this marketing technique. Just visualize that you are living in a non English speaking country, say Romania and you prefer running your search queries in Romanian search engines to extract info and when you use a smart phone or a hand held, you prefer the applications to be in your native language. So, think about a Romanian, who doesn’t like English too much for one reason or the other, is trying in vain to get his Iphone yelp app to give him his nearest pub location. So this is where you load your international marketing guns and throw an application that has multilingual characteristics and fits in any language, location and atmosphere.

You won’t need to worry much about the points of interests in locality maps being used in your application as Google maps amply solves the problem for you. You will be able to create a difference with your product when it is translated by someone who is a native Romanian speaker and reader. Again we repeat the same old SEO saying that no matter what genre of search engine or web based gadget marketing you are dealing with, content remains the King! Apart from this, famous social networking websites do have their multilingual UTF -8 enabled sandboxes and API’s that support any language which is identifiable by the computer. All you will ever need will be to get your app translated in your targeted native language by a professional translation services provider.

International Geolocation marketing through different methods like Iphone and android map based apps is the new and quickly developing niche and soon you will see a flood of such applications that will “seemingly” cater to navigation and location searching needs of nearly the whole world. So, it’s advisable to jump in and capitalize on it now before there are too many fish in the sea.

Search Engine Optimization is very crucial to web site localization and any business that fails to localize its web site appropriately has problems regarding its competitors.

Is ‘International’ easy?

A multilingual advertising approach should be the basis of any international enterprise. Industry of all sizes can go comprehensive with nothing more than a networked computer a web site, and a bundle of entrepreneurial clients. It is very important to think local. Using badly chosen style, tone, grammar, and language can obstruct progress in fresh markets; localization is a key foundation feature of any global strategy.
English may be the universal of the World Wide Web, but think about this: 3/4 of the world’s population speaks no English whatsoever. Although we know that English is used by over 460 million internet users online. But there is over 1.5 billion internet savvy across the globe, and this means that over a billion web users speaks a language other than English as their native tongue. The Web is a linguistic maze and the need for businesses to talk to customers in their own language can’t be ignored.

Other internet languages are on the rise

Although English is the principal language of the Web from a satisfied viewpoint, over half of all Google searches are in other dialect. This number looks set to rise, with the Internet population of booming markets such as China and Russia increasing faster than in Western businesses. There’s a disharmony of cultural density that must be considered before localizing a web site’s agenda for the international markets. Businesses should think local first before going international.

Across the world there are over 6,000 languages spoken. But, many of these are spoken only in little pockets in localized areas. Although, 96% of the world’s languages are spoken by only 4% of the world’s population, while 90% are short of any authentic representation on the Internet. From an online marketer’s point of view, there’s no need to have a web site anyplace near 6,000 languages. But if we browse through the European Union (EU) on your own, there are 23 official languages spoken in the 27 member states. English is vastly spoken, with over half the EU population speaking it correctly. From a native-speaking point of view, approximately 1/5 of Europeans assert German as their mother tongue. Italian, French and English have approximately the same amount of native speakers as each other, followed closely by Spanish. By aiming international markets online, it is very significant to be aware of the distinction within languages too, that is, dialects. The difference between, say, English and Chinese is quite clear, even to those who speak neither language. But the difference between the French lingo spoken in France, and the French in Canada, or crossways Belgium and Switzerland is less obvious. There are, however, some key differences

Today, Online Marketing is one of the most effective tools accessible to modern business. It bonds companies to customers and they help build equally beneficial business relationships between the consumers and entrepreneurs of the world.

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.

Current statistics indicate that more than 1.5 billion individuals worldwide use the internet, of that figure no more than 440 million internet users speak or read English. Not surprisingly, this number is dropping as more international users log on. Is it any wonder that international SEO has become a key strategy in the search engine master plan? After all, by not reaching out to the non-English speaking populace, you simply aren’t selling your products or offering your services to a world of people who would most certainly be willing to engage your offer.

Of the global internet user population, more than 500 million are located in Asia – that’s more than any other continent in the world. In China itself, the online community has soared to a rate of 755% growth since 2000. It has already changed the playing field in the financial and manufacturing markets, the internet is certainly following. But how does this affect online business as we know it? The truth is you will never know if you only operate in an English only environment. You have literally cut out 3 quarters of the global population if you choice to continue operate as a one language online market player.

Leveling the Playing Field

One has to consider the Internet in its entirety – a vast, almost endless network of computers, of people and of information. It has had a globalizing effect in which the borders of the real world have ceased to exist; well, most of them, except perhaps the constraint on language.

In fact it would be prudent to consider the state of our current English internet marketplace, where evolving Internet technologies have been radically developed and freely available to everybody who understands English. This fragmentation in itself has leveled the playing field by providing smaller companies with limited advertising budgets the same market opportunities as well-funded conglomerates. In addition, it wouldn’t be wrong to suspect that our online English cyber-sphere that has become saturated with marketing ploys and tactics, is the only place big business exists, to send the point how, the opposite is true, the rest of the world is catching up rapidly and English is becoming only a fraction of the online marketplace.

International SEO – International Search Engine Optimization

So what can we hope to gleam from all of this? Well, for one thing international SEO will be the new ’sliced bread’. It will mean an expansion of the playing field, new ‘low hanging fruit’ and an evolution of the economic possibilities on the Internet. New markets will open up with exciting and refreshing marketing possibilities to those businesses that identify these markets. It will even change our current target audiences as localized positioning will yield new approaches to marketing only to expose new and exciting avenues for ideas, technologies and ultimately products and services to satisfy local consumers. Those companies taking on a new language vertical are on the verge of making these discoveries  happen. In a couple of years, it will be in full swing.

Of course, many will wonder about the associated cost with regard to international SEO. Will it be an expensive affair? Many seem to think so. Research, implentation and maintaining that vertical does take time and resources. But consider this: although the English-speaking online community only represents about 30% of the global online population, English is in fact a second language to many and a lingua franca, even if only on a basic level, to many more.

In the end international SEO may perhaps only be needed to catch those Mandarin and Spanish native speakers as they perform their searches on the internet. The real issue however, will be to identify the keywords from the perspective of the Chinese, Indian or Spanish internet user, to name a few. Will their geography play a role? What about politics and culture? Looking at all these questions, the real issue is not whether to implement international search engine optimization as it is most certainly a given; the real issue is to be able to find the English SEO service provider with an intimate knowledge of the minds and language of the international audience your business is targeting.