The Benefits of SEO Localization over SEO Translation

Learn why, when working in international SEO, having a localization approach is more effective than having a translation approach.

Slides presented at SeoCon 2021:

Transcript

1. SeoCon 2021 Don’t Translate: LOCALIZE Veruska Anconitano
2. A bit about me Freelance Multilingual SEO and (Localization) Project Manager with 20+ years of experience. • Amazon • Canva • Skyscanner • eBay • Groupon 🇮🇹‍ 🇬🇧🇺🇸🇪🇸🇫🇷🇵🇹🇯🇵‍‍‍‍‍‍ 🇰🇷‍
3. STATS ARE ALWAYS A PERFECT ICE-BREAKER of World Population Searches on Internet 41% of users speak English 26% billion people are active Internet users 4.66 worldwide Internet users speak Chinese 19.4% worldwide Internet users speak Spanish 7.9% worldwide Internet users speak English 25%
4. English is spoken in 36 countries The problem with stats and data 1 2 3 4 Spanish is spoken in 21 countries French is spoken in 29 countries German is spoken in 6 countries
5. 1 3 None of these countries speak the same type of English, German, French, Spanish. 4
6. COMPROBAR Convey a great number of information in an effective manner CHEQUEAR OFFERTA SPECIALE AZIONE SPECIAL OFFER VERIFY CAR CHAR VOITURE CAMPSITE CAMPGROUND THE FUNNY PART...
7. It's all about...
8. Culture
9. Culturability
10. Linguistically and culturally congruent web contents activate shared schemas for people who share the same culture, and, thus, help them to better process contents
11. SEO Localization Matters
12. UX + Localization = SEO Win
13. New and Qualified Organic Traffic GAIN User experience Conversion Rates Your Domain Authority Your Brand Awareness 1 IMPROVE 2 INCREASE 3 ENHANCE 4 BOOST 5 The Importance of SEO Localization
14. Define Your Website Structure & Your Technical Implementation Design for Multiple Languages Optimize by country, not language Research your keywords Target the right Search Engines The Steps of Multilingual SEO Do Market Research
15. Do Market Research Check existing data Define your persona(s) and their interests Research your audience navigation habits Research how your audience find and search online Research competitors and define your USP Understand the context you want to break in
16. Define Your Website Structure & Tech Implementation Subdirectories with gTLD (mysite.es) Country-specific domain (mysite.com/es) Subdirectories with gTLD (es.mysite.com) Hreflang attributes Canonical tags Specific markups
17. Design for Multiple Languages Use global templates BUT plan regional variations Account for text expansion Always use UTF-8 encoding Account for right-to-left languages Use culturally appropriate images, icons, colors Use the appropriate formats
18. COMPROBAR CHEQUEAR VERIFY CAR CHAR VOITURE Optimize by country, not language
19. Research your keywords Brainstorm keywords starting from what you have in the source language Forget direct translations of keywords Take foreignization into account Account for seasonality and cultural specifities
20. Don’t trust the tools!
21. Avoid Machine Translation
22. Yandex is used in Russia Target the right search engines 1 2 3 4 Baidu is used in China Naver is used in South Korea Szenam is used in Czech Republic 5 Yahoo! is still widely used in Japan Where Google is predominant, Keywords & SERPs vary widely on a local level
23. Do you know that 83% of people declare to leave a website if they don't find a localised version or if they find mistakes? Humans are soaked up in the culture and are able to pick slang, idioms and nuances using them to perfectly target the right people in the right country with the right content Know how to simplify By addressing your new potential customers in their own language, organically, the messages you convey will be more understandable. Your audience will be more touched by your brand and will be able to relate to it. Makes your brand unique Can fill the gap between a company and its potential customers Know nuances, slangs, idioms The Human Touch Easing up the complexity of the language for SEO purposes allows to create content that appeal to a specific segment and that can rank better.
24. THE 6 STEPS OF INTERNATIONAL SEO 01 06 02 05 03 04 Understand your International SEO needs and goals Step 1 Research & Establish your Strategy Step 2 Implement your Strategy Step 3 Keep analyzing your effort, results, and advancement over time. Refine as needed Step 6 Adjust Step 5 Measure your effort and results Step 4
25. International SEO is everything but just translating content
26. It's qualified traffic SEO is about driving organic traffic that’s likely to convert. International SEO is about driving organic traffic from a specific country to get them to spend money. SEO LOCALIZATION 101 It's not magic International SEO is a combination of doing SEO as you’re used to, while reflecting cultural differences. It's all about experience International SEO is all about offering your target audience a pleasant experience on your site. It's empathy International SEO requires you really have to know your target audience.
27. Make your target feel at home, and they will convert.
28. Veruska Anconitano Get in touch with me if you have questions or suggestions. Email Address veruska@anconitano.com Website www.anconitano.com Linkedin www.linkedin.com/in/veruska- anconitano/ Twitter https://twitter.com/LaCuochina