Creating Content in Languages You Don't Speak

During my last years leading EMEA content at Wise, I encountered several challenges in creating SEO content for markets I don't know, and in languages I don't speak. In this presentation, I highlight 6 lessons I learned during this period and provide examples of successful strategies that worked for me.

I delivered this presentation at SEO Vibes Barcelona conference hosted by WhitePress.

1. Creating Content in Languages You Don't Speak Wise Isaac Díaz Carpio
2. Wise Global tech company, building the best way to move and manage the world’s money. Whether you're sending, receiving or spending money anywhere.
3. We take care of the Wise blog. We create content that reaches millions of monthly visitors.
4. 40 35 58 People Languages Markets
5. I took care of the Spanish content initially Now, I lead the strategy in EMEA countries This is me
6. EMEA is a big Region Wise services may vary by country Every market brings different revenues
7. 1. 2. 3. How to expand to new markets and generate growth? How to create content in languages I don’t speak? What technical difficulties may I encounter? I faced 3 challenges
8. 1. 2. 3. How to expand to new markets and generate growth? How to create content in languages I don’t speak? What technical difficulties may I encounter? I faced 3 challenges
9. 1. 2. 3. How to expand to new markets and generate growth? How to create content in languages I don’t speak? What technical difficulties may I encounter? I faced 3 challenges
10. A FEW LESSONS I LEARNED Let’s look at
11. WORK WITH PEOPLE WHO KNOW THE MARKET & THE LANGUAGE 01
12. Obvious, right?
13. Local people can spot issues that others can’t.
14. What is this date? 22/02/16
15. We experienced indexing issues with articles from the Hungarian blog We were offering British date format DD/MM/YY But in Hungarian dates are expressed like YY/MM/DD
16. Similar issue with Right-to-Left (RTL) languages
17. Hebrew & Arabic are written from RTL, but they express numbers from LTR.
18. Correct format to write 8th December 2023 08/12/2023 3202/21/80 2023/12/08
19. Locals can notice linguistic, visual, and cultural nuances others miss.
20. They can notice things like ◦ Wrong use of formal/ informal tone ◦ Wrong or literal translations ◦ Wrong use of numbering rules ◦ Use of old-fashioned words or styles ◦ Wrong use of images
21. How much do you like the old version of The New York Times?
23. Old-fashioned font In Wise blog Modern font In Aljazeera
24. SEEK LOCAL FEEDBACK
25. OUTSOURCING CAN BE A GREAT HELP 02
26. Outsourcing helps us scale content & reach small markets
27. Brainstorming Keyword researching Briefing Copywriting Proofreading Compliance checks Publishing Stages of content production
28. Outsourcing some stages of the production can help ◦ Scale the content production. ◦ Get time back to find more content ideas Before outsourcing After outsourcing
29. And outsourcing can help you reach markets where you don’t have language capabilities.
30. We wanted to expand our content in Switzerland. It’s a small market, and other specialist were busy creating content for France and Germany We saw potential, so we decided to outsource content writing and proofreading. In 6 months we had increased our conversions there by 2 times.
31. OUTSOURCE TO REACH WHERE YOU CAN’T
32. UNDERSTAND WHAT WORKS TO INVEST BETTER 03
33. You should organise your content in a way that facilitates its analysis. That can help you: ◦ See what ranks better ◦ Understand what brings the most impact
34. How do you measure success?
35. If you’re starting in a new market, prioritise first what works the best. ◦ You can even do a simple forecast to understand the potential
36. When trying a new market ◦ Find a similar market & compare ◦ Find what topics were most successful ◦ Get the Success Rate (SR) ◦ Generate a big keyword research ◦ Estimate the traffic & apply the SR
37. Topic 1 Forecast example Topic 3 Topic 2 Traffic Expected Success Rate Success Expected 2000 4000 3500 2 % 1.25 % 1.5 % 40 50 52.5 TOTAL 142.5
38. FORECASTING WHAT WORKS CAN PREVENT FROM INVESTING TOO MUCH OR TOO LITTLE
39. REMOVE YOUR BIASES TOWARDS MARKETS 04
40. We all have expectations on markets. We tend to expect more from those we know better.
41. This small European market wasn’t showing any strong development
42. But it was bringing 2 & 3 times more revenue per customer than other European markets Market A Market B Market E Market D Market C Market F Market G
43. Why weren’t we more successful?
44. OUR BIAS WE TREATED IT LIKE A SMALL MARKET
45. We decided to prioritise this market for a few quarters. By increasing our content production investment by 100%.
46. In one year, we increased conversions by 3 times
47. And our total revenue had grown by 2 times 2022 2023
48. DON’T LET YOUR BIASES DECIDE YOUR STRATEGY
49. HELP YOUR CUSTOMER TO CONVERT 05
50. In new markets, and small ones, it’s common that many resources will take time to be available. You need to put in extra effort to help your users to convert.
51. Your potential customers may find it difficult to: ◦ Use your product ◦ Find resources ◦ Understand the value you offer
52. You can figure out your customers problems by ◦ Talking to Support & Sales teams ◦ Checking local forums or network communities like Reddit ◦ Looking at your social media comments ◦ Finding where’s the bigger bounce rate
53. TRY SOLVING YOUR CUSTOMER’S ISSUES EVEN BEFORE THEY FACE THEM
54. Wise offers its products in Czech Republic. But we haven’t localised our app and site in Czech yet. We started producing content in Czech to attract new users. But our ratio of conversions was low.
55. We improved our CTAs. We wrote an article on using Wise in Czechia, and we sent readers there. We clarified some processes to avoid the pain points they usually faced.
56. We increased our Conversion Rate by 25%
57. STRUCTURE URLS IN A WAY THAT MAKES SENSE TO YOU 06
58. It’s recommended to use keywords in URL paths
59. The Domain Name Systems (DNS) only accept Latin script. When we create content in other scripts like Cyrillic, Japanese or Hebrew, URL paths can be an issue.
60. Some website and browsers can convert and display certain scripts https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/ﺔﯾﺑرﻋ_ﺔﺑﺎﺗﻛ
61. But this is how it would look in other tools. Not useful for reporting. https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%83 %D8%AA%D8%A7%D8%A8%D8%A9_ %D8%B9%D8%B1%D8%A8%D9%8A% D8%A9
62. It’s possible to transcribe your URL path. Common in Cyrillic content.
63. In other languages, it’s common to give a number to your content.
64. And it’s also very common to translate the URL path into English.
65. URL PATHS SHOULD BE USEFUL TO YOU. SO YOU CAN ANALYSE YOUR CONTENT BETTER
66. A RECAP
67. Work with local people to get feedback Outsource to reach where you can’t Understand what works to invest better Remove your biases towards markets Help your customer to convert Make your URL paths useful to you 1 2 3 4 5 6
68. KÖSZÖNÖM GRACIAS THANK YOU OBRIGADO TEŞEKKÜRLER 감사합니다
69. www.whitepress.com Isaac Díaz Carpio Regional SEO Content Lead Wise in/isaac-diaz-carpio/ isaacdiaz.ld@gmail.com Presentation delivered within the SEO Vibes on Tour by WhitePress®, 2024