SEO for non-English website

The use of internet among various non-English speakers has increased rapidly in the last few years and interestingly more than half of the Google search is done in another language. Moreover, an audience feels reluctant to buy something which is not described in their native language. This has pushed to introduce more website with non –English contents. Although online marketers were slow in the initial phase to take advantage of this trend but things are getting changed and instead of using a mere translation for the website, which may seem to be a good and simple idea, now marketers are taking things seriously and researching on appropriate keyword for the right kind of audience, as it is the best way to increase the traffic.     There are various factors that impact the website if it is prepared for a specific country with a specific language other than English keywords. But for any market, be it English or non-English, getting the traffic has the same thumb rule. Choosing the keyword carefully, comparing with the competitors and ensure that the content is not getting lost in translation.

1.    Keyword Research

First thing first, a solid Keyword research to identify the potential market and the level of competition existing in that market. A SEO specialist understands this phase better and can guide a marketer to select the right kind of keyword to enrich the webpage.  Why a mere translation does not work for non –English website? It is simply because someone in Italy will search for “voli low cost” for low cost flight instead for its direct translation. Whereas the French translation for car insurance is “l’assurance automobile” the popular search tends to be “auto assurance”. The work of the SEO specialist is to identify this gap and rank the website rather than just translating the whole content.

A simple Google Adword or Wordtracker helps to understand the popularity and the competition of a keyword by setting the specific language and location of the country. For beginners, one can try to purchase sample keywords and monitor for few days, then eliminate those keywords which are not getting adequate hits and then prepare the website with the relevant keywords that were mostly clicked. This will help to achieve more competitive keyword for that particular language and likely to bring more business. Just like for any other search engine, keyword research is an ongoing process to yield a better result and just like every other search engine’s algorithms are changed to adjust the page ranking for authentic websites, SEO is also done properly and regularly to keep track about this change and gaining more traffic.

2.    Securing a great name for Domain

Getting an in-country domain name always works better rather than using subdomains and subfolders in the main website. Search Engine values those sites having a high level in the country domain name. For example, a Baidu language domain name for a Chinese webpage works better to attract more audience. Till now the better part is unlike an English domain competition, competition for the domain name in other language is still not that high, so one can easily acquire a domain name with top performing keywords to make the brand more successful.

3.    Optimizing by country

Translating a website for users in Latin America will also pick users European users and Spanish speaking individuals in the USA.  Rather than making the website translate to Spanish website which is a cheaper way, but having an optimized site for each of the target countries will yield better result as it will be more engaging to every country-wise audience. Many Global companies take different approaches to hit their audience, like using of unique content for each site that will target a specific set of people speaking a particular language. Although this is an expensive and time-consuming approach, it is sure to have more SEO benefits for the brand. Another cost-effective approach can be to have unique content for only the top-level pages and duplications on the lower level ones. Optimizing by country also adds more benefits like using of top-level domains like .jp or .ru. Even using geo-targeting tools allows various users to find the content relevant. Just like there is the difference between the UK and USA English there is also a difference between Spanish, French, and Arabic, so considering language, dialect and culture for proper optimizing of SEO are different for different languages.

4.    Targeting the right search engine

Undoubtedly Google is the king and the biggest player when it comes to search engine, but it is not wholly true everywhere. Nations like Japan and South Korea prefer more of Yahoo than other search engines. So here comes the point of utilizing proper SEO for every search engine that is used by different countries. As every search engine have their unique algorithm for ranking a page. So, for each search engine a different style of SEO is implemented to get better results, like uses of keywords, domain name etc. Just like Baidu gives more emphasis on Meta tags and unlike Google it has less powerful crawlers so the main keywords are always written in the first paragraph of the content and the title to get more traffic.

5.    In-country links

Link building campaigns are an essential part of SEO to climb the ranking in any Search engine resulting page (SERP). More the number of backlinks created directing to the main page more is the chance of getting high rank in the search engine result page. Creation of backlinks depends on which country the content is getting published. Like for Russia, Yandex counts high-quality links from high Thematic Citation or Quotation Index. So SEO needs to be prepared accordingly. Since Google’s duplicating rules do not apply to other languages, one can reuse the content translated on other websites.

Whatever the language is, SEO is always a constant process and an uphill struggle. It is always a regular struggle to stay in the same position and for SEO in non-English websites, is not an overnight success. It needs time for huge payoffs and acquiring a more global audience for the website.

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