Top Tips For Effective Multilingual Online Marketing
The internet has the potential to put a global market at your fingertips, but reaching that market requires a little forethought.
English is the single most widely used language online, yet even so, it’s the native language of only around a quarter of all internet users, according to Internet World Stats, and studies have shown that the majority of multilingual web users would only feel confident buying from a site in their own native language. Clearly, a monolingual approach to online marketing would be an extremely limiting one.
Translation of your content can be achieved by using human translation services (the optimum solution if provided by a native speaker from your target market, but also the priciest) or automatic translation programs. Having your content accurately translated is essential, but is only part of the bigger picture.
Localising your web presence
You might consider a single French version of your website adequate for all French speakers, and this would indeed make your site accessible within France (naturally) as well as providing inroads to French-speaking populations in Canada, Belgium, Switzerland and many former French colonies in Africa.
Many different countries share common languages but vocabulary, colloquialisms and other linguistic elements can vary greatly from one place to the next. In Spain, for example, “coche” means “car” while in Spanish-speaking Latin America, “coche” means “baby-stroller” or “pram”.
If you target a number of markets by language, you should ensure that all your content is universally understandable by users of that language. This may also involve removing any cultural references or jokes that might not cross over. If you target your markets geographically, you can help avoid any embarrassing linguistic faux pas and target your content more dynamically towards specific cultural groups.
In-country domains
If targeting geographically, a country code top-level domain or TLD (such as .fr for France or .ru for Russia) will help boost your rankings on Google’s local search engine results as well as those of local competitors. Ensuring the site is also hosted on a server within that country will also boost rankings.
However, it can be expensive to acquire separate TLDs if you have several different target markets, and this approach will require more effort to maintain. Another solution is to place your multilingual content in separate subdomains or subdirectories. Google has a Geographic Targeting tool that allows you to designate geographical areas for different pages of content and, while not as effective as a fully localised website with an in-country TLD, this will certainly help with your search engine optimisation (SEO).
Researching your keywords
Even if you opt to have your content machine translated, you should never directly translate keywords this way, as synonyms, alternative terms, colloquialisms or even misspellings may yield better results. A bullet train, for example, is commonly referred to by the acronym TGV in France, standing for “Train à Grande Vitesse” or “high speed train”. In French-speaking Belgium meanwhile, bullet trains are often known as “Thalys” after the company that runs them. Local knowledge is essential here, as is a thorough keyword research strategy for each target market using data analytics.
Other search engines
While Google is undoubtedly the biggest and most popular search engine in the world, it doesn't dominate every market in which it operates. In some markets other local competitors are more popular and, while they have very small market shares outside their own spheres of influence, they're massively important within them. Baidu is the most popular search engine in China, for example, while Yandex is the most commonly used in Russia. Google should never be neglected of course but keyword and other SEO research should also be focused on whichever search engines are important within your target market.
About the author
Christian Arno is the founder and Managing Director of global translation agency and localisation specialists Lingo24. Launched in 2001, Lingo24 now has over 120 employees spanning four continents and clients in over sixty countries.
Posted in Internet Marketing
