Language is no longer a barrier in the global market like it once was. These days, over 50% of Google searches aren’t in English, and that’s not even factoring in other search engines.
If you value cross-border visibility, then implementing a multi-language SEO strategy should definitely be a part of your greater marketing plans.
This will involve restructuring, translating, and localising your existing website, in order to tap into new sources of revenue from language markets that were not previously on your radar.
Over the last decade, I’ve carried out many multilingual SEO and website localisation projects for clients around the world.
My background in technical SEO and web development, along with the fact that businesses in the country where I live, often cater to 4 different languages, allows me to offer a lot of value to my clients.
By delivering technical expertise, optimising site structure, and crafting a multi language SEO strategy, I’ll collaborate with your content team to ensure they have the guidance needed to reach new audiences and drive business in multiple languages.
Search in All Languages
Multilingual SEO involves creating versions of your content in different languages and optimising each one for search engines in those respective languages.
Done right, it’ll allow your audience to find your business when they conduct queries in their native language. For instance, translating an English website into French to reach people in France.
It’s more of a necessity in places like Europe and Asia where languages are extremely diverse. In these regions, by avoiding the translation and localisation of your website, you risk alienating a significant proportion of your audience.
However, it’s not exclusive to local businesses in diverse regions. With increasing immigration around the globe, multi-language websites can benefit businesses in the US alone. More and more Americans are speaking a language other than English at home, which represents a genuine opportunity.
Multi language SEO is often seen as a strategy that can only be deployed by huge multinational corporations, but the inverse is often the case.
While those multinationals often operate in different geographical regions in several languages, their product offerings, regulations, and even branding may vary greatly.
Comparatively, many small businesses can simply sell to new audiences without adapting anything outside of the language used.
Over 41 million native Spanish speakers are U.S. residents, along with more than 11 million who are bilingual, making the USA the second largest Spanish-speaking population in the world.
This growth isn’t projected to stop anytime soon, and it represents a huge audience of people who either need to search in a non-native language, or spend a lot of time using machine translators, which often don’t work at all, let alone well.
Consider an ecommerce website that has established a stronghold for their product range in the U.S. market, in English. They have all the systems and marketing in place to be able to sell in greater volume. They want revenue growth, but they feel they’ve maxed-out their revenue potential from organic search.
The Spanish speaking U.S.-resident market is one that is massively underserved and could represent a substantial increase in revenue.
More Than Translation
Multi language SEO involves more than some quick translations and copy/pasting. Localising your website and telling Google about localised versions of your pages is just as important.
It’s very easy to break your website throughout this process, and correct technical SEO configuration is one of the most common areas where mistakes are made.
Here’s a bird’s-eye view of my strategy.
Language Strategy Development
The first step has to do with identifying target languages and their respective markets. Again, it’s not just about translating content. It’s about creating a tailored experience for each language group.
I begin by assessing your current SEO performance in your primary language and conducting thorough research to identify the primary languages spoken by your ideal new audiences, including any regional dialects and variations.
This research will inform your decisions on which languages to prioritise and how to best approach them.
Once I have a clear understanding of your target language markets, I’ll work with your content team to develop a language strategy that includes localisation and cultural adaptation.
Multi Language SEO Strategy
Creating a multilingual website with proper SEO involves careful consideration. Many businesses will get busy publishing content in a new language, only to realise later that the new Spanish content has been published to the English section of the blog.
Others will be aware that they need to split up the content, so they’ll install it on a new “Spanish only” subdomain, which is unlikely to rank as well as their main site.
Both situations could be avoided by taking a little more time to think about the strategy behind this initiative.
A key element is to avoid duplicate content issues across different language versions of the site.
This can be achieved by using hreflang tag attributes and canonical tags properly, which will signal to your preferred search engines the correct language and regional version of a page.
We’ll also review how you should structure this content on your site, most typically by using folders, or in some cases via different subdomains or domain names entirely.
Doing this will allow search engines to show the most appropriate URL to users based on their location and language settings.
Keyword Research
A successful multilingual SEO strategy hinges on proper keyword research. The catch is, data isn’t always as great in languages outside of English.
So while we want to avoid speculation, some creative licence will need to be used. Using the right tools to find international keyword search volume is an enormous help in keeping guesswork to a minimum.
Regional dialects can significantly affect search behaviour, so it’s important to identify keywords that are commonly used in each target market. This process involves understanding the search habits and preferences of your audience in different regions.
For instance, using accented keyword variations and no accents is another critical aspect of localisation. Many languages use special characters that significantly affect the meaning of words.
I include these variations in my keyword research process to ensure that your content is accessible to a broader audience.
Some keywords may be highly competitive in one language and less so in another. Conducting keyword research for hundreds of websites has allowed me to identify these patterns instinctively.
Content Translation and Localisation
Translating content for bilingual or multilingual SEO involves more than just converting text from one language to another—localisation is just as important.
The latter entails matching the linguistic nuances of your target region, adapting your translated content to the local culture, ensuring the dialect is idiomatic. This will make users feel “at home” when browsing your website, making them far more likely to convert.
This also involves removing jargon, metaphors, or context that may not make sense in the target language, and replacement with culturally appropriate versions.
On-Page SEO for Multilingual Sites
On-page SEO by itself isn’t that complicated, but implementing it on multilingual sites requires careful consideration and attention to detail.
Optimising meta tags, headers, and URLs in multiple languages is essential for enhancing the visibility of your site in different language versions of your preferred search engine, for example:
- Google.com
- Google.co.uk
- Google.de
Technical SEO
When it comes to targeting specific language markets with your website, there are some technical aspects that need to be taken care of.
While the exact implementation will come down to the specific strategy of your company, it’s important to ensure that hreflang tags and similar HTML lang tags are correctly set.
I’ve seen all sorts of disasters over the years, where developers or content managers have chosen to use their own interpretation of language codes, instead of standardised formats like ISO 639-1 codes.
As a technical SEO consultant, I’ve built and managed more than my fair share of multi-regional and multilingual websites for businesses in various niches over the course of my career.
I’ve worked on and experimented with different content management systems, such as Drupal, Joomla, Craft, Magento, Shopify, WordPress and so on.
Combined with my experience in web development, this allows me to take care of vital technical elements of your website and pretty much any SEO related task you can throw at me.
Link Building and Media Outreach
Once your multilingual website is set up, boosting its visibility is the next important step. Earning quality backlinks from relevant sites in each region is crucial for improving your site’s authority and search rankings.
Multilingual link building campaigns can be tricky, depending on the languages you’re working with. Oftentimes, there’s just not a lot of discourse happening in other languages.
Still, there’s no question whether or not brand mentions and backlinks make a difference in your organic search performance. The effort is clearly worth it!
My digital PR strategy involves using platforms such as Connectively (formerly HARO), Profnet, SourceBottle, Qwoted, Featured, and Press Plugs, though opportunities in different languages are usually scarce.
In many cases, I’ll use a more manual approach to win the links, and I’ll also show you how we can use English promotion to boost the performance of content in all languages on your site.
Your Gateway to Global Success
The idea of everyone speaking the same language might seem efficient and utopian, but as someone who is living outside of their birth country, where many languages are spoken, I’m thankful for the rich diversity we have instead.
This variety brings colour to our world and encourages brands to stay agile and culturally aware. It also represents major opportunities in new markets, which you can tap into relatively easily.
But these opportunities won’t last forever. If you want to dominate new markets while your competitors are asleep at the wheel, now is the time.
Ready to push boundaries and reach new demographics? Get in touch with me for a clarity session. Let’s discuss your goals and see if we’re a good fit.