How to Use SEO for Your Multilingual Audience
It’s no secret that maintaining your company’s website ranking is already a difficult task and can be a constant challenge. You know that maximizing your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is extremely important when it comes to gaining Internet visibility for your company, product, or service. So, what happens when you decide to sell and market your product overseas or to a multilingual audience? Is translating your website content enough?
Ultimately, that answer is no. While translating your website content is critical to ensure you connect with your international audience, you will also need to consider a multilingual SEO plan to ensure you even reach that audience. After all, what good is a translated website if no one in your intended market is able to find it? Here are a couple of things to consider when updating your SEO strategy to go global with your products.
Know your audience
Your new market will have an entirely different set of customs and culture than your U.S.-based audience does. You must choose keywords and phrases that you know they are using in search engines. This is how you will really draw them in. What is important to your U.S. consumer base may not be at all to consumers in another country. If you do not already know this international market inside and out, be sure to find someone who does. Skimping here could mean a particularly negative impact on your search results, and therefore, your sales revenue.
Analyze competitors who have gone before you
Researching competitors’ success when going international with a product is a great step to figuring out what has worked (or not worked) for them. While you obviously aren’t looking to copy what a competitor has done, it doesn’t hurt to find out about best/worst practices in advance for your own industry if the information is already out there and available to you. If you come up short, ask us. We can help!
Don’t overlook location information
When coming up with a new SEO strategy for foreign markets, don’t neglect to include the country, city, or even the region your new target market is in when deciding on keywords to pair with your product. People use “near me” or addresses in their search often when trying to find a product they’d like to purchase/browse for. Having the location information in your SEO set-up will help your site pop up more often and easily in those search engines!
Figuring up a brand new SEO strategy for your international market can be difficult, but you don’t have to do it alone! Did you know we offer website audits? We’d be glad to take a look at yours and help create a strategy for your international growth! Feel free to reach out if you’d like to be in this one together.