SEO: Top 10 Tips about Multilingual SEO

To reach the most consumers worldwide, a website should be multilingual. Google themselves translate 42 different languages for use on the internet and this number continues to increase each year. This is not to imply that your SEO web design expert should set up 42 different pages each with a different language. It is dependent on what your target audience is, but this number of translated pages would reach 98% of all the people in the world with a language they would be comfortable reading. 90% of the world can be reached with 20 languages.

Languages are one advantage the SEO Europe experts have over the Americans. The reason is that Americans for the most part are monolingual while their counterparts in Europe are at least bilingual. It is not uncommon for one, like a popular SEO Norway expert from Golden Way Media to be an expert in 7 different languages. This SEO Trondheim expert has the native tongue in Norwegian, Russian, and German. This is because these are the languages she was brought up speaking. This is a very important factor when it comes to languages. Knowing a language and being able to communicate in it is one thing but being fluent is a whole different ball game.

The extent of knowledge on a language is the limiting factor when it comes to proper translation of keywords and content. A SEO web design expert must have the knowledge and appreciation for the language to interpret the keywords correctly. Direct translation does not always work best. Knowing the language well enough to properly set up keywords in different languages so they mean the same thing is difficult, but possible if you know what you are doing.

The content of each posting can take on a different approach depending on the language and culture of the target audience. The series of books titled XXX 4 dummies is a big seller in America, but the use of inappropriate words in the title, such as “dummies”, will not sell and could be banned in some conservative countries in the Far East. A good SEO web design expert would know this. Some exposure to this type of insight is possible through reading, but the best is firsthand experience. Living or having lived in a culture gives the linguists emersion in the culture and language that will directly translate into knowing how to reach the target audience better.

Many of the large corporations make vast claims on the languages they can use, along with their experience in them. Some are making claims of up to 40 different languages. This sounds impressive, but may be stretching the truth. Doing the math is the best way to see through this. If there are 4 people in the team, then each one would have to speak and be fluent in 10 different languages. There would be little time to practice all of them and work. These companies generally subcontract the translating work out and are only middle men. In that case, it would be more cost effective to take out the middle man and deal with the translator personally. This would also give you more control over the content and the final product.

After your target audience is located and the language is taken care of, look into local links and hosting for the site. This should be done with consideration to the language. Do not set up a site in America and another one for the United Kingdom. This would be duplicate of content in the same language. Pick your target audience carefully and avoid the pitfall of duplicate content.

These are just a few helpful hints to assist any multilingual SEO web design expert reach their target audience better.

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