The success of your business depends on the ability to reach customers. You need to make sure that your website ranks high in organic search results if you want to be found by new leads and generate more sales. Local SEO can help make this happen, but it’s not easy without a proper localization strategy in place.
What is localization?
Localization is the process of adapting a product or service to a specific market.
This includes everything from language, currency, and time zone. You may have heard the term before in terms of marketing your website or app in different countries and languages. However, localization is also important for SEO because it helps you reach more people with your content.
Starting a localization project
Before you start your localization project, it’s important to define the problem. If a solution doesn’t address the underlying issue, then it may not be successful.
Let’s say that your product is used by many English speakers in North America. A good goal would be to increase their awareness of the product so that they buy more of it or recommend it to others.
That’s an ambitious goal; but if you can achieve it within 3 months and keep up the momentum through 6 months, then you will have created a sustainable business model for your organization and expanded into new markets.
If you want to reach a wider audience, you’ll need to consider localizing your website. Localization is the process of making content relevant to users in a specific country or region. It involves translating content into different languages and adapting it for cultural differences.
The ability to use global websites that function well on mobile devices is becoming more important for consumers who live outside of major cities or do not speak English as a first language.
If your company sells products or services online, localization will help localize your website so that people can find what they’re looking for wherever they are located: at home or on the go.
Here are five things you should know about creating a localization strategy.
5 SEO Localization Strategies
1. Focused Approach
When you are developing a localized SEO strategy, it is important to focus on specific geographic areas, products or services, keywords or keyword phrases, and verticals.
This can be accomplished by leveraging your existing content assets; for example, if you have a comprehensive product guide for all of the cities in which your business operates, then this would be an ideal way to start.
If not, the best option may be creating new content that includes information relevant to each location (such as local events) and making sure that site navigation reflects those differences.
2. Local Language Optimization
Localization is the process of adapting a product or service to a specific country or culture. Localization is an important part of SEO because it makes your content more relevant and useful to your audience in their language, which increases their likelihood of buying from you.
It’s also important that you take localization into account when creating new content, rather than simply translating existing content into various languages.
If there are any differences in meaning between languages (for example, “green” might mean “go” in English but not in Spanish), then using translated versions of your articles may confuse readers who don’t speak both languages.
3. Local Content Optimization
Local content optimization is one of the most important aspects of a localization strategy. For starters, local content is extremely valuable for your users. Users who can read and understand your site will have a better user experience, which in turn raises your conversion rate and lowers costs.
Localized content can also help you rank higher in Google or other search engines when people search for relevant keywords related to your business.
4. Local Links Optimization
Local links are a great indicator of local relevance, popularity, and authority. You can use the Moz Local link data to get an idea of how many businesses are linking to your site or competitor sites. You can also see where they’re located geographically:
- A website with many local links is more likely to be relevant to nearby searchers. Those searchers are more likely to click on it over other competitors’ sites because they think it will satisfy their needs better than those competitors’ sites do.
- A website with lots of local links from authoritative sources stands out more than others in search results. The higher you rank in Google’s organic listings (SERPs), the more traffic you’ll receive from organic search traffic, and thus the greater your business success will be!
5. Cultural Considerations, Metrics, and Conversion Rate
As you plan your localization strategy for international markets, it’s important to keep in mind that localization is not just about translation. Localization is about understanding the target audience, the local market, and especially the local culture.
Knowing that there are differences across cultures and languages when it comes to how people search for products and services online (and how they react to certain types of content), you need to test your assumptions with user research.
You should conduct usability tests with users from different countries so that you can see if they understand what you are trying to show them on your website or app.
In addition, pay attention to which keywords get picked up by search engines—this will give an indication of which languages visitors prefer and help guide decisions regarding content creation.
Conclusion
There’s no doubt that localization is an important part of SEO. Localization helps you reach more customers, increase sales, and grow your business. If you’re not yet making use of this strategy, now is the time.
