Every business owner’s dream is to penetrate the global market and expand their footprint. The best way to make this happen is by building a multilingual website, which isn’t a piece of cake. From advertising to website translations and localising your content, you have a lot of work to do.
When creating your multilingual website, there are several SEO strategies you need to take into consideration. Let’s explore what multilingual SEO is and why you need it; then, we’ll top it off with some tips on performing a successful SEO marketing strategy on multilingual websites.
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What is Multilingual SEO?
Multilingual SEO optimises your website content for different languages so that people in other countries can find your business through organic search. This includes translating your website content, meta titles, descriptions, and targeted keywords.
While you can depend on Google Translate to do the translation for you, it won’t make sense and can be viewed as spam. Businesses will get better results in terms of SEO and quality when they use a dedicated multilingual SEO strategy.
The more languages you want your website in, the more complicated multilingual SEO becomes, so it’s recommended that you employ a good marketing agency with quality SEO services to help you out and make your life easier.
Tips for a Successful Multilingual SEO Strategy
If you want your business story to reach a wider audience, you need to make your website available in multiple languages. Here are some tips for a successful multilingual SEO strategy.
Know Your Audience
The first step to a successful multilingual SEO strategy is to know your audience inside and out. Ensure that each targeted keyword is customised for different locations. The popularity of the keyword will depend on the market you’re trying to penetrate. It means that what’s popular in Spain might not be widespread in China, and vice versa.
The better you know your audience, the more likely you will gather lots of traffic. Understanding your local customers’ search habits will help you create a better keyword relevant to them.
Apply Hreflang Tags Attribute
It’s essential that you use the hreflang tag attribute when designing a website for your local audience. This will help Google to determine the language of the page and the region you’re targeting. You can either add the attribute to the header of your website coding department or submit it via a sitemap.
If your website is for multiple regions, add multiple hreflang tags to tell Google that the content is canonical to prevent the issue of duplicate content and avoid search engines penalising your website.
Use Dedicated URLs
When implementing your multilingual SEO, try to avoid issues related to duplicated content. Instead of using multiple URLs that may lead to a lower ranking, business marketers should use a dedicated URL that tells Google and users the language of the page. For instance, you can have mywebsite.com/fr for the French version of your website.
Use one Language Per Page
While it might be tempting to use multiple languages on a website page, it’s vital that you try and avoid it at all costs. Most website owners will translate the page’s content but leave the navigation in its original language or where the forums or comment sections are in various languages.
Though the language and the region can be clarified using the hreflang tag, it’ll reduce the overall user experience. While users might understand the translated content, they’ll find it challenging to comprehend content that is still in its original form, leading to frustration.
Translate Your Metadata
When creating your multilingual website, ensure you’re not only translating the website content. You must also translate your metadata so your site can rank better in the new market you’re targeting.
While translating your metadata, you should take note of your keyword. The reason is that what might be a keyword in the original language may not necessarily be in the translated language. So you need to conduct a new keyword search that caters to the new targeted markets.
Make Sure Your Website Loads Fast
All your multilingual SEO strategies will go to waste if your website is very slow. This can frustrate visitors, and later, they’ll leave your site and never come back. For that reason, you need to put enough effort into ensuring that your website loads faster, as it can influence the amount of traffic you get.
You can implement a few things to improve your website load time, such as:
- Set up browser cache.
- Optimise the size of the images on your site. While doing this, it’s essential you take note of the quality.
- You should install website plugins that allow page caching.
- You should add a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to your website.
Conclusion
Improving SEO for your brand can be difficult, but it’s more challenging if you want to implement it in multiple languages. In this article, we’ve provided you with effective tips that you can use for a successful SEO strategy on multilingual websites. However, this can be a difficult task to do.
But since multilingual SEO plays a key role in appealing to a wider audience, it’s worth employing a professional multilingual SEO expert to help you translate your website and give it global visibility.