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<\/p>\nOn-page optimization is an important piece of any company’s SEO strategy.\u00a0 But, when you operate globally, there are additional considerations, including localization and translation.\u00a0 Optimizing your content for global audiences requires significant research to understand the cultures and customs of your target market.<\/p>\n
You may have a set of targeted keywords that you want to focus your content creation around.\u00a0 But, those keywords may not translate well into another language.\u00a0 Sure, you can translate the words, but the meaning may get lost.<\/p>\n
Or you may have analytics that show the online habits of your current customers, but those numbers don’t mean that everyone in all parts of the world possess the same sets of habits.\u00a0 Treat each locale or language individually and don’t employ a blanket strategy that is expected to work for all markets.<\/p>\n
In this blog, I will cover some of the ways to develop a successful on-page optimization strategy for your localized sites.<\/p>\n
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After getting a clear picture of your site’s infrastructure and capabilities, the first step in any on-page optimization campaign is to formulate a strategy.\u00a0 It’s important to set goals and time frames and have an organized way of prioritizing steps and measuring results.\u00a0 And, when you add localization and translation into that mix, having a plan is even more necessary.<\/p>\n
David Booth<\/a> breaks down the process of creating a strategy into these three parts:<\/p>\n It’s extremely helpful to have a native speaker as you create your keyword list.\u00a0 Keywords that you use for your primary site, will probably not come across the same to your global audiences.<\/p>\n Generating a list of language or region appropriate keywords will also help your rankings in top search engines, especially the top search engines for your target market, and your audiences’ SERP results. Learning about the languages, cultures and customs of your audience will help you decide which keywords will be most successful.<\/p>\n Next, create a map for the pages and their corresponding keywords.\u00a0 This will help your translators know which keywords each page is optimized for. This will also help you create appropriate content for each of your keywords and the associated pages.<\/p>\n Finally, have a realistic time frame.\u00a0 Research your customers and decide which languages or regions to focus on first.\u00a0 You can’t translate all of your website’s content into all of your desired languages and expect a fast turnaround time.\u00a0 Look at your analytics and decide where to start.\u00a0 Optimize those pages first and track your results.\u00a0 Leveraging your current website’s content will be helpful, but don’t expect to get away with not creating original content for your global sites. Create content that speaks to your intended audience.<\/p>\n If you don’t currently have any global sites, you will have to decide which regions or languages you will focus on and what level of effort will be required for those markets.\u00a0 If you want to create a site that targets Spanish speakers in Spain and you have an employee from Barcelona, that will be an easier project than creating a site for Russian without any native speakers on staff for proofreading and consulting.<\/p>\n After you decide which languages or regions you want to target, you will have to gather resources to help assist you in the localization and translation of your content.\u00a0 Whether you contact a translation agency or have access to in-house native speakers or translators, you will need help deciding how to formulate an on-page optimization strategy for that particular market.<\/p>\n Finding help is necessary, and you can’t depend on machine translation to translate your content or keywords.\u00a0 David Booth<\/a> said it best in a recent International SEO video<\/a>, “\u2026but the truth is\u00a0that you don’t really want to translate your website.\u00a0You want to make sure that human expertise, experience,\u00a0and intuition is used to interpret your website.”\u00a0 Don’t translate, interpret.\u00a0 You want to make sure your message is coming across correctly to all audiences in all languages.<\/p>\n\n
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<\/p>\nLocalization and Translation<\/strong><\/h5>\n
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