Our Blog

Creating a website might be easy. Designing it can just take a particular span of time. But maintaining its top place in the global ranking is a work for eternity. And the work is not just for local audience—it’s for local.

Here the complete list your content marketer must know for raising a top-engine multilingual website this 2015.

Understanding Localization and the Global Arena: The Practical Explanation

The first thing your team must know about multilingual website is the needs of localization. Global arena signifies the out of your mind’s comfort zone. IF you are stuck in the place where expect your customer will come from, then it’s time to move forward. Your website must go beyond the borderline- the global market is waiting for you. With this Localization must take place. Localization

So how will you go there?

Your website is the gateway to the global arena, so localized it. Don’t make it stuck in one place. Localization (shortened as L10n) is a process of adapting a product by a specific language, culture based on the local target. That’s is, localization can change, alter or develop one product’s overall “look and feel.”

Localization has something to do with the following actions:

1. Changing a word or group of words language into another target local.
2. Researching, analyzing , and applying semantics in the target locales’ language, and
3. Making the translated words work in the targeted locale both on functions and linguistics.

With the above processes and terms, businesses will not just stay at one side of the episode of marketing but will also go further in the global arena. Remember that customers’ purchasing power can be directly affected by the culture and language of the purchaser.

For a practical explanation, how will you speak about business to Japanese people who can’t speak English? That moment, you need to have an interpreter. That is your website; so you must have to localize!

Segmenting the market

This is the most basic part yet the most focused part of your job. Research is needed to segment a target. Our latest blog about SEO localization have discussed that targeting the market can be based on different aspects such as demography, geography, life style or behavior among others.

Follow these steps on how to segment a market.

1. Analyze the market you are about to target. The following categories can help you to characterize a segment in a locale:

1. Segmentations – The location of your target market;
2. Demographic or Socio Economic segmentation – Profile or Background information and stage in the family life cycle of the target market;
3. Psychographic segmentation – Attitude and lifestyle of target market;
4. Behavioral segmentation – Degree of loyalty of target market; and
5. Product related segmentation – The relationship of target market to the product.

2. Qualify and quantify the target market. This will lead you to particular a market segment that can help you out for your multilingual website.

1. The quantity of the target. How large is the segmented population as of the moment? Do you need to take some action to handle and suffice these numbers? What are the things you need to do before, during, and after the segmentation?
2. What ways or channels would you use to reach the segments? How easy or hard it is going to be?
3. Who are your possible competitor for this segment? What will be your edge to top them?
4. How does the population of this segment change over a short or long period of time? Does it change or stuck in the same number?
5. Do your business and this segment collide? Does your business provide the needs of this segment? OR do you need to adjust your business to meet this segment’s demands?

3. Analyze. Analyze. And Analyze. This is the most crucial part of audience segmentation. After allowing the flow of information form several researches, most vital analyses must be held. So what are the things to be analyzed for target market segmentation so that it can help your website multilingual functions?

1. Take a deeper look to your sales reports. What segment of the society does your product been purchased all the time? Where are they located and what factors affect their purchasing power?
2. Who’s who? Who purchases your product most of the time?
3. Dig deeper o all factors. These factors can be the culture of the target market, their tradition, weather, behavior, geographical surroundings, etc. With proper researches and analyses, segmenting the target market can be nailed successful.

Then, remember Multilingual SEO.

Your SEO in your multinational website must be first, aligned with the local target. That is, at the first place you must know when, where and whom to target.

Nevertheless, translating in a direct manner wouldn’t be enough. Remember that there are still some other aspects to consider while working in your localization. Culture disparities and cultural behavior may affect their searching method as well as words usage.

Tip 1: make a keyword research primarily on the translated terms based on your local and tailor it to most of your content.

Tip 2: do semantic search on Browsers that is mostly used to targeted locale using certain researched keywords.

Tip 3: Aside from using these translated keywords, put them also in your metadata, website descriptions, keyword Metatag. This will help engines to translate and crawl your website.

Creating Country code top level domain (ccTLD)

Country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is the domain suffix that links a web page with the geographical area. ccTLD is one of the groups under Top Level Domains (TLDs); distinguished  by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) as two-letter domains recognized for specific countries and/or territories. Example of this are .fr for France, .ph for the Philippines, .jp for Japan and so on and so forth.

1. Your company must have a domain specified targeting a specific country. This is the preliminary action before any localization would take place.
2. Creating ccTLD is the most important part of localization and doing a multilingual website. For the user point of view, having the ccTLD is the first move for them to build a credible source that the product or service offered is viable.
3. ccTLD on the other hand, is ranked by Google- more often than general ccTLDs- in a specific country or territory.

Create content for targeted Locales

Aside from localizing keywords and doing a multilingual SEO, practically locals need locals. That would mean that a local readers or buyers won’t buy a product if they cannot understand what is talking about and they can’t even relate to what it’s all about.

1. Create content that is tradition sensible.
2. Make use of cultural environment. If your website is all about food, what are the foods they wanted to eat side from your product or with respect to yours?
3. How can they benefit from your service or product as aligned to what they traditionally do in life?
4. What information you intended them to know without hurting their culture and tradition
5. What are your competitors doing right know? How can you topple them?

No free translation tool

Using free translation tool is a good way to help you out cutting a loaded task. But somehow, it is not always a good thing especially when it comes to crucial part of translating a word. Here’s the tips:

1. Always double check the translated words. Some terms might be right technically but not culturally.
2. Create a glossary of terms both for formal usage of words, slang, urban, and depending on the targeted locale. As what I have said, it might be correct technically but not in their cultural basis.
3. Beware of bilingual terms that may add confusion to readers.
4. Translate meanings more than words.
5. Focus on the meaning of a paragraph or a content itself, not the words that were used. This is somewhat paralleled to what the glossary type translation says. That is, glossary try translation-wherein you need to jot down words and then translate it- is one way of understanding the meaning of a sentence. Therefore, aside from getting the translated words, make it to a point that we were able to translate a meaning of the content.

Monitoring in Google Web Master Tool

We all know that Google Master Tool are being used by business small of big to monitor their website analytics. But in the deeper side, Google Master Tool has something to do with Websites localization action. That is, in the dashboard, a website administrator can select a target location for the said website.

Setting the target location may help Google to crawl your website specifically to a given local or region.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Making a multilingual website and localization itself can be the key to top the global market. So make it better and do the best tactics to make it. By following the above tips, your multilingual website will not end as it is, but it will end working.

The greatest tip we can give you in doing a multilingual website is to translate content, copies, and emails by meaning, not just by words so that it can portray and deliver its meaning directly and correctly to the target market.  But nonetheless, winning in the Global arena is not an overnight task, this is a task that undergoes a scientific process and observations. Thus, doing a multilingual website will come first from studying the market then creating contents related and relevant to the specific locale with proper translation and understanding of all targets’ aspects.

References:

http://www.sajan.com/ready-website-localization-4-multilingual-seo-tips-get-started/
http://www.wikihow.com/Segment-a-Market
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-level_domain

Tags: Multilingual, multilingual web development, multilingual website, SEO Philippines