You need to combine localization and SEO strategy to expand internationally

Are you ready to reach out to new potential clients abroad? Localizing your content and adapting your SEO strategy to a foreign market are not simple tasks! But here are the reasons you need to know everything you can about localization and SEO translation… now!

By now, you already know SEO is great for getting your website to top the search engine rankings. You try to use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) methods as much as possible and your efforts are paying off in sites like Google, Yahoo and Bing.

But if you want to reach out to new international customers, you need to localize your SEO strategy. That’s the only way foreign customers will find your products or services when they’re searching in their native language.

Sounds confusing? Keep reading…

What’s SEO translation?

SEO translation is the translation of a website paying careful attention to how the target language is optimized for search engines. That’s the best way to achieve a high ranking.

And a higher ranking means higher visibility, which can turn into higher site traffic and leads and ultimately to an increase in sales. Sweet!

But, translating optimized content isn’t the same as a simple translation as it involves a knowledge of SEO techniques.

A good SEO professional will write copy that stands out for web crawlers and appears in the first results of a search engine. But, texts need to be appealing to humans because, well, they are the ones who will read your thoughtfully crafted texts!

First, think about getting clicks (relevance) and, second, keeping visitors interested (engagement).

When planning your SEO translation you’ll need a skilled translator with an excellent knowledge of how SEO works. He or She will also need to have an excellent grasp of the cultural references of the audiences you’re trying to reach out.

Everyone knows SEO matters. But why?

There are 2 main reasons shaping the way we write for the web and they are complementary.

On one hand, we write for online users and to attract their attention, and, on the other, we need to everything we can to please search engines, if we want visitors to find us.

You can have the best website in the world with beautifully written content and with amazing products or services that plenty of consumers would pay for. Lucky you!

But if nobody can’t find you online is the same as you don’t exist. The goal of SEO is to position your website as high as possible in search rankings, mainly Google as the largest search engine (but others should be considered too, for example, Yandex for Russia and Baidu for China).

Your website should aim for the first results page on Google, as few people bother to click to the second page, nevermind the 3rd page.

As digital marketers say “the best place to hide a dead body is page two of Google”.

That’s why your website needs absolutely to be prepared and optimized for those search keywords most used by online users interested in your services or products.

And what about localization?

Localization is the translation of a webpage by adapting the content for a different culture and people living in different countries or societies.

When Starbucks introduced the Gingerbread Latte to the German market, it should have been an easy win. Gingerbread is an extraordinarily popular holiday treat in Germany, so much that it were the Germans who brought the tradition of building gingerbread houses to North America.

But when the latte was introduced in Germany it didn’t sell and the reason was simple: it wasn’t translated into German. So the next winter, Germans could finally enjoy their Lebkuchen Latte.

Even the word “latte” (milk in Italian) is a risky choice for the German market as it’s slang for male erection. But Starbucks continues to sell their lattes without translation, for the amusement of German consumers.

Another example of a failed translation happened when American Airlines translated its slogan for first-class seats “fly in leather” into Spanish: “vuela en cuero”. The literal translation means “fly naked” and it should be plural.

So you can get a clear picture of how important is to be careful when localizing content, as you don’t want to be ridiculed by potential customers, let alone offend anyone.

A good translator will have an excellent knowledge of the local culture and will avoid these types of mistakes. Besides his/her cultural awareness, he/she will have a deep understanding of how to adapt the source content into his/her native language and will spot immediately expressions in the target language that can be authentic traps when freely translated into another language.

A catchy expression can translate into a hilarious idea or even be outright offensive. The better the localization is, the better the translated text will look like it was originally written in the target language. So it’s a job combining local knowledge, plenty of research and a lot of creativity.

The differences between localization and SEO translation

SEO translation is completely different. Here the main target is not human readers but rather search engines and its crawlers.

Every single attribute on a webpage (keywords, expressions, titles, tags, anchor texts, script messages, etc.) should be translated to the target language, to make it appealing to the search engine’s algorithms.

So when a foreign internet user types a search query on Google or other search engines it will retrieve your website as one of the first search results, increasing the chances of clicking through your website. This is a great way to open opportunities in additional markets, reaching out to new potential customers and get additional sales.

If you have the best localization professional adapting your content to the local community but the page doesn’t appear in the search engine results, then it’s a useless effort.

SEO translation or Localization: which one to go for?

So you translated your SEO content and users in foreign countries are finding your website more than ever. That’s great! Well, if your localization is bad, soon you’ll notice that visitors are finding your page quicker but they are even quicker to leave it.

It’s like having a great strategy to attract visitors by promising something you can’t deliver. That causes frustration on your potential customers and higher bounce rates will definitely affect your search engine rankings.

Obviously, it’s not good for business to leave your visitors with a bad impression about you and your company.

So the answer is to combine localization and SEO translation. Your potential clients need to find you in search engines and you need to keep them interested to sell them your products or services.

There aren’t many translators out there capable of handling these two aspects. That’s why many companies translate their web pages with a good localization professional and then hire an SEO specialist in the target language to optimize the translated content.

This is a good tactic, but it comes with a cost that many companies can’t afford it. But it also opens many opportunities for translators with a keen interest in SEO and Digital Marketing!

Curious how quality translations can help your company reach out to new international customers? Get an instant quote at Lingfy.com or drop us a line at hi@lingfy.com