Multilingual SEO – Optimizing Your Technical Content for Findability

24 April 2013U.S. callers should dial:+1 (909) 259-0012

Matthew JacksonHead of Internet Marketing Lingo24

PG BartlettHead of Product Management Acrolinx

Today’s Discussion

Why & how to optimize techdocs for search “Multilingual SEO” defined Why translate & optimize web content Identify your target markets Researching keywords for foreign languages URLs & hosting

Why Improve Techdoc Findability?

Optimized support articles:

Impact on customer experience?

100%

Hits

30%

Calls

On-Page Optimization

Write quality content Create unique Title Determine your keywords

– Which terms should find your document?

– Look for better alternatives (next slide)

Place keywords appropriately– Title, headings, description– Most important keywords first– Max. # keywords: 1 to 3

Keyword density?– Don’t overdo it – write for

people, not search engines

You think of keywords

Google suggests others…

Google AdWords account/Tools & Analysis/Contextual Targeting Tool

Multilingual SEO

Optimize for each region and language

Whytranslate & optimize

website content

Lower barriers to entry for search engine marketing than in the US & UK.

Why

Lower cost per clicks and less competition in overseas markets than in the UK & US.

Opportunity to sell products and services to new markets

Non-English-speaking online markets are growing rapidly

Strong growth in Internet usage in overseas markets Internetusage

The opportunitywith translation

(Common Sense Advisory Panel’s ‘Can’t Read, Won’t Buy’ report)

People are four times more likely to make a purchase online with information in their own language

• Flight comparison site• Ventured international in 2006• Russian website hits skyrocketed from

30,000 to over 1 million in just 18 months• Now 23 different languages, 60 currencies• 70% of turnover comes from overseas

Different search engines but the same best practice translation & SEO rules apply

Searchengines

Identify your

markets:what countries offer search opportunities

Check out the search

demand globally

Google Global Market finderhttp://translate.google.com/globalmarketfinder

Identify online search demand and competition for your business

Compare advertising costs by country online

Analyze conversion rate data by country for your business

Google Global Market finderhttp://translate.google.com/globalmarketfinder

Selecting a trusted

localization partner

with SEO experience

The following pre-requisites will lead to SEO results:

Examples of clients and references?

Native-speaking professional translation & SEO experts, based in the target country.

In-house Internet Marketing expertise.

Transparency on SEO processes and costs. Evidence of actual SEO and ROI results in multilingual campaigns?

Why use human

translatorsover

machines?

From Google Translate:

“Our goal with Google Translate is to produce an ‘80 per cent solution’. It helps understand foreign text, but is not intended to “produce a polished version suitable for publication.”

Machine Translation cannot select the correct keywords that drive search volume.

Foreign Language Keyword

Research

Owing to linguistic and cultural differences, it’s important to use the local knowledge of native speakers based in the country

Using native language

speakers for keyword research

1. Identify leading search engine in target country & keyword tool to use

2. Translate keywords from English (or other language) to target language and consider alternatives

3. Check search volume in keyword tool and identify alternative variations of keywords.

4. Identify keywords that are accounting for search volume

How to perform

MultilingualKeyword

Research

Useful Keyword Research Tools

Google Keyword Tool for most of the world

Baidu Keyword ToolChina

Yandex Keyword Tool WordstatRussia

KeywordResearchTools for popular search

engines

Google Keyword Research

Use of English Keywords

Use of English terminology is high in certain businesses:Example: ‘cloud computing’ search in Google France

Hybrid Anglicism terms such as ‘voli low cost’ are on the riseExample: ‘low cost airline’ search in Google Italy

Translating& Optimizing

Content

1. Map keywords from research to website pages that are going to be translated

2. Provide clear guidelines to translators for using the keywords in the translation

3. Include keywords (naturally) in the Meta titles, Meta tags and on-page body text.

Geo-targeting website

configuration for languages

& countries

Configuration:

1. Domain selection

2. Hosting

3. Google Webmaster Tools

4. Google language code

5. URL design

3 Available Options :

1. Top level country domain : www.ford.fr - France domain affix

2. Country specific subfolders: www.apple.com/fr - French extension to domain

3. Country specific subdomains: fi.lingo24.com - Finnish

Domain selection:

Options

Best option for SEO purposes is Top Level Country Domains

E.G. www.ford.fr

1. Google favors top level domains in local search engine results

2. Users are more used to seeing country domains than subdomains

3. Best for SEO: local links will point to country-specific website as opposed to an English version

The winnerTop Level Country Domains

Number of Google search results (in first 2 pages / 20 hits) for “buying gold” in Spain, France, Germany & Italy

The results are in: Top Level Country Domains

Country Top Level Domain Sub domains SubfoldersFrance 9 2 0Spain 6 1 0Germany 18 0 0Italy 10 1 1

Locally hosted content can give you an edge in country specific search engine results

Number of search results for “buying gold” for in-country hosting:

Importanceof local hosting

Country

Number of Google search results in first page / top 10 hits when hosted in-country

France 8

India 4

Spain 4

Australia 5

UK 7

Germany 9

China 8

Turkey 7

To set geo-location preference, log into Webmaster Tools and follow these steps:

1. Set up Google Webmaster Tools

2. On the Webmaster Tools homepage, click the site you want

3. Under Site configuration, click Settings

4. In the Geographic target section, select the option you want

Google Webmaster

tools:Tell Google which

country your website is intended for

Specify language and country in the website code:

Example: Coding webpage for English for UK Using the lang & xml:lang attributes of the html tag, e.g.:<html lang=”en-gb” xml:lang=”en-gb”> Using the http-equiv meta tag, e.g.:<meta http-equiv=”Content-Language” content=”en-gb” />

LanguageCode

Localize the URLs for a specific language and country:

Translate them, using the main keywords for the page in question

E.g. http://www.lingo24.fr/logiciels-traduction.html

Other recommendations:

• Keep them short but uniquely descriptive, to give an idea of the page content

• Words used within URLs should be separated using either hyphen (-) or underscore (_); whichever you choose, use consistently

• Use the most relevant keywords for each page

• Do not include spaces, ‘#’, ‘£’, ‘$’ or any other special characters

• Use non-query string-based URLs (where possible)

Translating text in URLs

Translation and multilingual content optimization

Translation services for over 300 languages

Experience in content optimization in over 25 languages

Genuine Native speaking keyword research expertise

Website content management API solutions

About Lingo24

About Acrolinx

Plugs into your authoring tool

Detects:– Branding & style

problems– Terminology

violations– Spelling &

grammar errors– Translatability

problems– SEO issues

Enterprise software for authoring teams

Interactive enforcement of corporate style guide & terminology within authoring tools

Follow-Up

Contact us!– matthew.jackson@lingo24.com– pg.bartlett@acrolinx.com

Recording & slides will be posted soon at http://www.acrolinx.com/webinars_en.html

and

http://lingo24us.com