You may have noticed that the majority of websites are in English – often targeting the US, with regional tips about Australia and the United Kingdom.
There is a little advice on how to promote and organize your multilingual website.
Because of the Internet, the world is more and more internationalized, but that still does not mean that all people are speaking English, and feel comfortable reading and buying in English.
More and more companies want to work in different regions in different languages.
The question stays how to properly use SEO for your multilingual website and not harm Google guidelines?
Identify the market for growth
If you are doing business in Canada for example, it is logical to assume your next language should be French. While, if you are in the southern part of the US where a lot of people know Spanish, then Spanish is your logical second language.
If you want to promote in Europe, you must think about several big European languages, like German, French, and Italian.
Maybe your product is technical and you can get a vast majority of your traffic from many Asian countries.
You need to choose regions where you want to develop your project, based on the specifics of your business.
What is multilingual SEO?
Multilingual SEO is the optimization of website content in different languages, in a way that people from those targeted regions can find you through organic search.
40% of people declare they would not buy something if it is not in their native language.
Check your website analytics to see whether a large enough percentage of your traffic is coming from a particular country, then decide on the pros and cons of doing a translation.
If you decide that it’s worth investing in it, you’ll need a proper translation management system like Localizely to assist. Expanding into a new market can give you tons of benefits such as:
- Access to a larger pool of people
- Becoming recognizable to them through their native language
- Enabling them to find you through organic search
- More sales and better positioning
Multilingual SEO: How to translate a whole website?
There are several options on how to structure your website for translation into different languages:
- Using different domain names
- Different subdomains
- Categories and folders
Different domain names
This is one of the most effective ways to promote and at the same time the most expensive option. The bottom line is that you need to create a number of independent resources, depending on the number of languages you need to translate your website, and then fill it with content and promote each one.
Different domains will also need to be administered separately. Links also need to be built separately for each domain.
As a result, the domain for which the website was developed will be registered in the address bar of the resource for each country, for example:
yourcompany.de
yourcompany.rs
yourcompany.com
The name of the website can remain the same or it can also be translated to be better perceived. There is one more disadvantage to this method – due to the independence of websites, their total reference weight and age (like domain authority, etc) are not transferred, which would have been if they had functioned as one resource.
Because of the expense of the process and having to build the authority for the new domain from zero this option is usually abandoned, at least smaller companies usually do not go with this method.
Different subdomains
In this case, the address bar before the domain name indicates the language into which the site was translated. For example:
de.yourcompany.com
The language of the site is in the subdomain.
To simplify the work for users, a special script is additionally configured that determines their IP address and automatically leads them to the desired page (in their language).
In this case, the website authority is partially transferred between subdomains, since the search engine understands the relationship.
Categories and folders
A multilingual module is installed on the site to implement this method in practice. Then you need to create categories and folders where the content will be copied. In this case, the authority of the website is preserved, since the structure is implemented within a single domain.
www.yourcompany.com/de/product/
Since this is one of the most optimal ways, even some website builders use it — they have the ability to copy and translate individual pages. The main thing, in agreeing to such an option, is to take into account all the mistakes that can cost you a good position in rankings.
Some of the mistakes you should be careful not to make in this phase are:
- The title, meta descriptions, and all meta tags need to be properly translated
- Pages without hreflang attribute. You need to have both lang and hreflang attributes
Use the attribute hreflang to help Google know which pages it should use based on the location of the user. Conflicts of the hreflang attributes can lead to a series of problems and confusion for search engines, like broken links, and redirections, so pay special attention to them.
Developers can offer other options, depending on the size of the budget. For example, to make the entire site in one language, and one or more of its pages in another. They will collect and redirect users to the main resource.
Most common mistakes
In order to fasten your multilingual SEO organization, there are some tools you need to give up on, and some you will need to implement in your work.
Not developing specific buyer personas
Your already developed buyer persona does not need to be suitable for the new market you are entering.
You need to do buyer persona modeling all over again for your targeted market having in mind the cultural differences and generally having a holistic approach to the specifics of a given country.
Not doing the local keyword research
It is important to target the right keywords so you can rank for them.
Some keyword translations if done literally will have no volume in the new market. You need to adapt the keywords and in the full meaning talk the language of your customers.
So, Google Keyword Planner should be one of your first stops for doing this properly.
Automatic translation
In the desire to cut expenses, some can use tools like Depl, Google Translate, and other automatic translation tools.
In our experience, this is not a sustainable solution. Automatic translation tools still have harsh mistakes in getting the full meaning. They are a good solution for some minor work, to navigate a bit the thinking process in another language, but not good as a final solution for your product to be perceived properly.
Instead, use human translators either in-house or by outsourcing.
This leads us to another claim.
Not having the right tool
It is not enough to pick the new market, you also need to select the structure of your website as well as the translator.
You need a translation management system that will help you to manage and organize the whole process.
