In today’s global marketplace, website translation and localisation are essential, especially when research shows that 65% of people worldwide want content in their native language. But translating your website can also boost your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
To understand how translating your website can boost your SEO, we should first consider how SEO and search engines work…
What is SEO?
SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, is the process of improving the visibility and ranking of a website in search engine results pages (SERPs). The goal of SEO is to increase organic (non-paid) traffic to a website by making it more relevant and trustworthy in the eyes of search engines.
The fundamentals of SEO are as follows:
Keyword Research – identifying the keywords and phrases that users are likely to use when searching for information related to your website’s content is complex and time consuming, even more so if you’re translating your website, so you’ll need to do additional research as these don’t always automatically translate well into different languages or cultures.
On-Page Optimisation – this involves optimizing the website’s individual pages to make them more search engine-friendly. Focus on title tags, meta descriptions, headings, URL structure, keyword usage, content quality, internal linking, and user experience. On-page optimisation ensures that search engines can understand and index your content effectively. When translating your website this will require an expert knowledge of the language to ensure you make the most of your on-page optimisation.
Technical SEO – deals with the technical elements of a website, ensuring that it can be easily crawled and indexed by search engines. Optimising factors such as website speed, mobile-friendliness, website architecture, sitemaps, canonical tags, robots.txt file, and ensuring proper indexing of pages. A professional language services provider can assist with this and should run checks to ensure this functions well for each country or language.
Off-Page Optimisation – this refers to activities done outside the website to improve its visibility and authority. The primary focus is on acquiring high-quality backlinks from reputable websites, which act as votes of confidence for search engines. Other off-page optimisation techniques include social media marketing, influencer outreach, content promotion, and online reputation management. Translating and localising content for local audiences on social media sites, and so on, can really help here.
Content Creation – producing high-quality, relevant, and engaging content is crucial for SEO. Search engines prioritise valuable and user-friendly content. Regularly creating fresh, informative, and optimised content helps attract organic traffic, encourages backlinks, and enhances the overall website authority. Translating and localising this content for each region and language is essential in order for SEO to be optimised.
User Experience – search engines aim to provide the best results to their users, so they prioritise websites that offer a positive user experience. Factors such as website speed, mobile responsiveness, relevant language, intuitive navigation, low bounce rates, and high engagement metrics contribute to better rankings.
Boosting SEO with website translation
While website translation can be costly, it pays dividends in the long run, as it will contribute to your search engine ranking and help drive more traffic to your foreign-language sites.
Similarly, the more visitors on your sites, the quicker your ranking will improve.
And, with a professionally translated and localised multilingual site, you can gain the attention of search engines all around the world.
However, as we have seen above, search engines value good quality content and excellent user-experience so translation comes into its own here by boosting both of these factors.
Professionally localised websites ensure users are able to easily navigate and engage with content, while also ensuring search engines ‘crawlers’ are able to find what they need to highly rank your site.
Your global customers and clients will be encouraged to spend longer on your site, and as content is available in their native language, they are more likely to make a purchase than if it was an English-language only website.
Translating your website will help boost your SEO and can have a positive effect on the success of your global business.
To find out how Creative Word can help you boost your SEO when translating for a global market, contact us now.
You can also find more information on our dedicated translation and localisation pages.
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