Multilingual search engine optimisation is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to international web sites from search engines via natural search results for targeted keywords. All users search differently and surroundings and culture will often play a big part in determining what people search for and how they search for it.
SEO has partly to do with technical aspects like the way a site is structured and how the pages link and partly about the way the content is written and how often it’s updated. It’s also very heavily influenced by the quality of links coming into your site.[1]
Most web searches are not conducted in English, in fact, 70 percent of worldwide search is not conducted in English.[2]
Companies with a pan-European or global presence can use multilingual SEO to gain a local understanding of search in order to gain optimum results in both SEO or paid-for search.
Process
How search engines determine rankings is most important for multilingual SEO. Search engines look for a number of things when ranking, such as location and frequency of keywords on the page, and links to that page.
It’s crucial to understand that people often prefer to search in their own language, using local search engines.
Optimising a site for international search engines involves improving the quality of the coding, presentation, structure, content, etc., in the local language with cultural modifications and regional spellings of keywords in mind, to gain better rankings in the index.
The idea of multilingual SEO is simple: webpages geared at specific regions are more likely to attract that region’s local traffic.
International Web UsageIn the past five years, countries like Russia, China and Turkey have seen up to 600 percent growth in internet usage which opens up huge opportunities for companies looking to expand new online markets. (iResearch, April 2006; JuxtConsult, June 2004)
Outside the UK, the internet population is relatively untapped and can provide excellent value for money if done correctly.[3]
Businesses are increasingly using this new technology. Companies like Universal Music Group, Johnson & Johnson, and even the Danish government, have all incorporated aspects of multilingual search engine marketing into their marketing campaigns.
International web usage statistics:
- The ING analysts expect the number of Russian Internet users to more than double over the next decade, to 47 million.[4]
-
India has been tipped to lead the growth in online travel sales, with Internet-based travel retail sales expected to increase by 271 percent between 2005 and 2010.[7]
- China has now surpassed the US as world's biggest internet user, having gained nearly 100 million new users in 2007 alone.[8]
Key Factors for Multilingual SEO
In the past, international companies merely translated their existing English SEO or paid search campaigns into the language they were targeting.
The problem with this strategy is that many relevant phrases are not included as part of the translation.
For example, Polish is highly inflected and retains the Old Slavic case system with seven cases for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives, which means that depending on the case of the word, the word ending changes.
A new search technology, Morfeo, allows someone searching the word “zdrowie” (health) to find pages which include inflected versions of the search word, such as “zdrowia”, “zdrowiu” etc., which may be equally relevant for the search, but disregarded by English-based search engines. However, an exact match of the word case is ranked higher in the search results than the inflected versions. Naturally, this is not the only criterion for search relevance.
The technology is being developed by an international team concentrated around the Charles University in Prague and Jagiellonian University in Cracow.[5]
Key-phrases are the foundation of a successful campaign and they can vary considerably in each country. Writing good copy, which is both effective for SEO and customer conversion, is a highly skilled exercise. For optimum results, copy should be written from scratch. If the visitor feels that the text has been specifically written for them, for example, because it includes particular cultural nuances, the conversion rate can be up to seven times higher than directly translated copy.[3]
International Search Engines
In many countries, the vast majority of search is conducted using search engines other than Google. In China, for example, Baidu has a massive portion of the market share, with Google holding only a quarter.[6]
It is therefore crucial to have a local understanding of the search engines in each country and of how best to optimise for those countries. Relying on Google or Yahoo! search in many countries will not deliver the best results for your international search campaign.
Optimising online strategy for search
Consider the following:
- Each country needs a specific campaign
- Ensure that your international sites are optimised for natural search
- Make sure you are focused on the right pay-per-click supplier
- Write good SEO and PPC copy from scratch and don’t just translate directly from the English version
- Don’t think of regions, think of countries
References
- http://www.obanmulti
lingual.com/type/pod cast - http://www.internetw
orldstats.com/stats7 .htm - http://www.iabuk.net
/media/images/IABSea rchHandbook_1158.pdf - http://www.nytimes.c
om/2006/12/18/techno logy/18google.html?_ r=1&ex=1179374400&en =0da5cb873cb45b2e&ei =5070&oref=slogin - http://szukaj.onet.p
l/pomoc/10895,index. html - http://www.bloomberg
.com/apps/news?pid=2 0601204&sid=aQBw4Ghm A8H4&refer=technolog y - http://www.euromonit
or.com/India_leads_g rowth_in_online_trav el_sales_in_Asia - http://www.timesonli
ne.co.uk/tol/news/wo rld/asia/article3809 140.ece
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