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English is the dominant language on the Web, but this shouldn't obscure
the fact that three quarters of the world's population speak no English
at all. Furthermore, research has shown that over fifty percent of
e-consumers only purchase from sites in their native tongue. So before
businesses can go global, they really need to think in local terms.
Coupled with the fact that Asia constitutes in excess of forty percent
of the world's internet users, and China has almost a third more
internet users than the entire USA, the wisdom of launching
international marketing campaigns starts to seem rather prudent.
So how does a business broaden its online presence in foreign
lands? Well, you'll need a foreign language website in the target
market for starters. You must identify the best market to target
through researching where there may be gaps for you to exploit. If
there are other similar businesses operating in a specific country,
that's a good sign as it demonstrates a demand for your service.
However, be wary of too much competition, as a saturated marketplace
can be difficult to penetrate.
The next stage is to buy a locally hosted domain name in the target
country, for example '.fr' in France. This lays the foundation for you
to translate your website into the desired language. However, from a
search engine optimisation (SEO) perspective, you shouldn't translate
the keywords. And here's why.
The correct dictionary translation of a keyword or phrase may NOT be
what people use to search for the service locally; they may use
colloquialisms or a different word that means the same thing. So in the
same way as you identify your industry's highest ranking keywords for
the British or US market, such as via Google's target="_blank">free keyword finder, you must research the keywords for each country, to ensure your foreign language website is properly optimised. To help illustrate this, consider the term 'car insurance'. This is a phrase that any car insurance company would want to rank highly for in Google's search engine rankings. Indeed, many businesses will dedicate a considerable amount of resources towards ensuring they rank highly for this term. A correct translation of 'car insurance' into French would be 'l'assurance automobile'. However, a quick search of Google's target="_blank">keyword finder in France reveals that this term hardly receives any hits -- people tend to use 'assurance auto' or 'assurance voiture' far more frequently. Just a little initial research can save a big SEO headache later on. These keywords should then be incorporated these into a professionally translated website and it's important that native speakers are used to translate your website as it must exude professionalism in all your target markets. To help the SEO process along, you can also use pay-per-click (PPC) and Google AdWords, which allows you to test out online marketing techniques for very little money -- you can set your monthly budget at a nominal amount and gauge its efficacy without blowing your entire marketing budget. . And that's the basics of multilingual marketing. Businesses of all sizes can go global with nothing more than a networked computer, foreign language website and just a touch of SEO know-how. About the author Christian Arno is the founder and Managing Director of translation company and localisation specialists Lingo24. Launched in 2001, Lingo24 now has over a hundred employees spanning four continents and clients in over sixty countries. In the past twelve months, they have translated over thirty million words for businesses in every industry sector and their turnover in 2009 is £3.65m GBP.