More than 700 languages exist in the world. However, when it comes to website content and Multilingual SEO, it would appear as though only the English language exists.
Far from reality, only about 17% of the world population speak English; of this number, just 5% are natives. And while the web is awash with English content, many long to interact in their native languages. A 2020 CSA Survey of 8,709 consumers globally revealed that 76% prefer to buy from websites in their languages.
But how do you make your website content available in multiple languages? What best practices should you imbibe to make your multilingual site rank high? These are the questions this article answers. But before moving too far, let’s look at the relevance of multilingual SEO websites first.
Table of Contents
- Is Having Multiple Languages For your Website A Good Idea?
- Multilingual SEO Websites: 5 Best Practices
- Translate Your Website’s URLs
- Be Crafty About Your Landing Page
- Pay Attention To Hreflang Tags
- Metadata Too Need Translation
- Localize Keywords
- Get A Multilingual SEO Website Today!
Is Having Multiple Languages For your Website A Good Idea?
The introductory statistics show that many people wait to read website content in their local languages. The CSA experts even found that 40% of customers say they won’t buy from a foreign website. The feedback is also the same from renowned SEO and marketing gurus like seobrotherslv.com.
Having over 55% of all online content in English when less than 20% understand this language leaves a void. The implication is that we have fewer converted websites globally. Therefore, having website content in multiple languages with SEO tactics means more engagement. And as such websites engage more people, their ranking increases.
There is hardly any business with a global intention that doesn’t require a multilingual approach. For instance, an English-only site may be unuseful to China’s over one billion Mandarin speakers. Even if some understand English, their interaction level with the site will be minimal. Converted web content opens up opportunities for a wider audience and more engagement.
Thankfully, there are many cost-effective ways to get your website converted. If you want some ideas, here are they:
- Contract it to freelance translators
- Assemble a team
- Reach out to reputable translation service providers.
Your choice depends on finance, the complexity of work, and the number of languages required. The translator should know SEO tactics to ensure you aren’t missing out on the benefits.
Multilingual SEO Websites: 5 Best Practices
SEO rules are location dependent to a large extent. Therefore, you must study what is applicable in the translated region to maximize the benefits. When engaging in this adventure, these tips can be highly beneficial.
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Translate Your Website’s URLs
Many focus on the content during translation; they do not consider the page address. By failing to do this, they fail to achieve the localization intention fully. The URL parts that need translations are the slugs. For example, if you have a website like dayowebsite.com/goat, its Yoruba version must be dayowebsite.com/ewure.
Slugs translation ensures that search engines can quickly find your website’s pages for that language. And this is not difficult even with translation sites. With a translation tool that has excellent plugins, you can quickly translate the slugs into the local language.
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Be Crafty About Your Landing Page
Among other things, your landing page determines your multilingual website’s success. The two common strategies for developing landing pages are subdomains and subdirectories. Your choice would depend on how you want Google to rank your page.
Choose subdomains if you want Google to treat your multi-language website as an independent. In this wise, whatever links or traffic your subdomain generates will not influence your main website’s ranking. This pathway is most suitable if your main website is already well-grounded or has become an authority. If not, subdirectories will be the best path.
For subdirectories, each translated website acts like a subset of the main, and the traffic it generates also counts for the primary website.
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Pay Attention to Hreflang Tags
hreflang is the small code that intimate Google of your website’s language. You cannot jettison this if you operate a multilingual website because they tell Google what language the content portrays. English pages often carry the “en” hreflang, while French has “fr” as its code. Each page of your subdomain or subdirectory must take the appropriate hreflang for the language in question.
Manual inclusion of the hreflang for each page can be daunting, especially with multiple sites. But if you choose an excellent translation service or package, the plugins should get that done automatically. Because of this, you may want to check the type of translation service or package to use well before purchasing.
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Metadata Too Need Translation
Besides the visible written words, other things keep a website page functioning. These elements, known as metadata, are what Google uses to rank a webpage. Without translating each page’s metadata, rating in other languages outside English may be difficult for Google. As with the main website, you cannot possibly translate your metadata manually. But with an excellent tool, you can automate the process.
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Localize Keywords
Keywords are essentially the heartbeats of SEO. Multilingual sites must correspond to what Google recognizes for each language because keywords are not transferable. You must perform independent research on what Google considers a keyword for each new language.
Good enough, there is Ahref – a keyword research tool that SEO experts use. It removes the bottleneck of getting localized keywords for a subject. However, your translation quality and the language variant matter even with this tool. If the translation quality is poor, it might affect the keyword outcome.
One way to be sure you get an error-free rendering is to contract your work to experts. Experienced translators can significantly eliminate errors that can impact your keyword search. They can also adapt to the language variants in question for better communication.
Get A Multilingual SEO Website Today!
If expanding and attracting global customers is your vision, you must create a multilingual website. It doesn’t cost a fortune, and its capacity to transform your product is great. Brainlabs, a widely known SEO expert, affirm that multilingual websites win visitors’ trust and increase engagement. Given this, what is your response? Why not get global by having a multilingual site?
About the author
Alex Lysak, the author of this article, is an online marketing guru with over ten years of experience. He is also the CEO of SEOBROTHERS, an agency that helps businesses upscale by outranking their competitors.
