Many companies have multilingual websites that no one can find. These companies are clueless about what it takes to get their foreign sites ranked by search engines. As a result they are missing out on potentially huge opportunities.
Here are ten common mistakes these companies make when creating multilingual websites:
1. They don’t realize the enormous power of search engines. Did you know that close to 90 percent of website traffic is generated by search engines? But it’s not enough to simply have your multilingual website included in search engine indices. You need to get ranked in the first three pages. Why? More than 80 percent of searchers do not look beyond the third page.
2. They don’t spend the money to hire a good translator. Maybe you know someone who can speak the language you want to translate your website into, or perhaps you’ve thought about hiring a student at the university who knows the language. Think again. You need to hire a professional. Your web copy needs to be well written in English and the language in which you are translating it. If not, you could turn people off. Also, make sure your translator is familiar with search engine marketing. Translators not only need to know the language, they need to know how to get eyes on your page.
3. They don’t use the right keywords. Using the correct keywords is essential for your website. (In case you didn’t know, keywords are what people use to search on the Internet.) It is important to know the keywords people use when searching for your type of product & services. You should be familiar with the terms that your customers use when searching and incorporate those phrases into your keywords. Stay away from organizational jargon that companies sometimes favor. Research your competitors to find out which keywords they are targeting. Meta keyword tags, found in the HTML headers, are a good place to start. Your own web traffic logs (your web hosting company can provide you with these) will help you find out which search terms are currently bringing people to your website. Traffic logs help you refine the keywords and Meta tags that you use. Another way to find out which keywords are being used is to sign up for some pay-per-click ads.
4. They fail to translate their keywords properly. Oftentimes, companies hire translators that use the most technically accurate phrases instead of the phrases used most often by searchers. This can spell disaster for your company. Make sure your translator is aware of the most popular keywords in the language they are translating. For example, Spanish "computador portátil” refers to a portable computer. A translator can translate it into English as a notebook computer or a portable computer. Both are correct but there is a big difference between the numbers of searches for each term. In May 2006, 952,839 searches were conducted for the term “notebook computer,” while only 50,198 for the term “portable computer.” In just a few keystrokes, a translator can reduce your chances of being found by almost a million times!
5. They do not understand the importance of proper language encoding. It’s essential to hire a translator who uses the correct language encoding to ensure that text displays properly. This is a major concern for languages such as Chinese, Japanese or Arabic. If the language encoding is wrong, not only will your searchers have difficulty viewing your page, search engines may also have problems categorizing your site. If your site is in Arabic, for instance, you would normally be deemed as more relevant to a searcher who performed a search in Arabic than a similar site encoded in English. However, if your language encoding is wrong (say, instead of "Arabic" it was declared as "English") you have lost this advantage.
6. They do not communicate effectively with their translators. It is essential to have a workflow that allows close collaboration between search engine marketers and translators. You should let your translators know what the basic search engine marketing best practices are - such as including your keywords in title tags, Meta tags etc. Make sure you give the translator a glossary of keywords to use on your website. It is also important that once the preliminary translation is completed, there is a quality assurance process that involves translators checking title tags, alt tags, and Meta tags to make sure they are properly translated.
7. They underestimate the power of getting linked. Many companies fail to realize that having many websites link to your website gets you higher rankings on search engines. For multilingual websites, it’s good to have links from websites that originate in the country you are targeting. This will increase your site' relevance for searches conducted in that country. The best way to generate links is to have a quality website (see below). Offering a useful tool for free on your website can also generate links.
8. Their websites don’t have ‘killer content’ – If you want people to come to your website, you’ve got to make it worth their while. Although having great content on your multilingual website is, in itself, not enough to attract customers, pairing a quality site with search engine marketing know-how will greatly improve your chances of having a high traffic website.
9. They don’t understand why machine translation doesn’t work for most companies. In an October 2000 article in the New York Times, readers are advised not to use machine translation for anything that “remotely requires accuracy.” Another drawback is that oftentimes machine translated text resides on the server of the machine translation provider (you can see that from the URL of the site), instead of your company’s corporate website. When your multilingual websites receive links, the beneficiary of the links is the machine translation provider, not you. (Read this real life story of how this happens:
http://www.webpronews.com/insidesearch/insidesearch/wpn-56-20050825DontLimitHispanicOptimizationToSiteTranslation.html).
10. They don’t host the website in the country they are targeting. Many companies don’t realize that hosting the website in the country they are trying to reach can greatly improve their rankings. Why? Search engines can detect where a website is hosted. If your website is hosted in Spain, for instance, the search engine will find your website more relevant to a searcher in Spain than a similar website hosted in China for example.
Want more information on how to get your multilingual website ranked? Huiping Iler, owner of wintranslation.com, a professional translation company in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, has just released a 16-page whitepaper on search engine marketing for multilingual websites. It can be downloaded free of charge at
http://www.wintranslation.com/services/websitetranslation.html. wintranslation.com has been serving clients across North America in over 100 languages since it was established in 1998. Its services include document translation, glossary development, foreign language keyword research, translator/copywriter selection and recruitment, multilingual desktop publishing and website quality assurance testing.
