Any brand that wants to sell outside its local borders needs to localize its offerings to suit the new target audience. But did you know that aside from overcoming cultural differences and bridging the language barrier, you can also use website localization strategies to boost your SEO?
Website localization, in essence, is the act of revamping your website to suit the target market. It goes above and beyond the literal translation of your existing content and calls for rethinking every element on your website – visuals and currencies included – so it meets the expectations of your new customers.
From boosting brand awareness to increasing revenues, website localization has a good ROI. Here’s how you can use website localization to promote your SEO too!
Localize Your Content by Targeting the Right Keywords
As you adapt your content to local markets, you must deploy a specific search engine optimization strategy for each new native language you target. You’ve already invested time and money to make your site attractive to Google search algorithms for the English language. But when you launch in a new market, you need to do the same for the local language and its highest-ranking keywords to rank higher in local search results.
Americans search for pants. Brits search for trousers instead. If you promote pants to a British audience, you risk losing out on a massive market share. And this is just a simple example indicating the importance of website localization. It’s also advisable to work with local SEO experts to find the correct terms the local audience searches for. Gaining valuable insights like these is one of the benefits of outsourcing BPO services, as you can then include these keywords in your metadata to rank better on the result pages of search engines.
Focus on More Search Engines
Google might be the most used search engine and reign supreme in the Western world, but if you’re targeting audiences in China, for example, you need to adapt to their local habits. And that includes optimizing your content for their local search engines like Baidu.
Website localization services also include optimizing your content for more than just Google’s algorithms. Optimizing your website for various search engines is essential because it’ll drive more traffic and boost your search engine rankings to help you rank higher in search results.
Don’t Forget Local Keywords for Local Search Engine Optimization
Did you know that 46% of internet users make use of local search? These days, the algorithms focus on finding localized versions of websites because consumers are looking for amenities in their area. Google also has a range of vertical-specific ranking factors that provides even more helpful and accurate results for searches these days. This means that local and localized websites now rank higher on the result pages of search engines if they provide information in the local language.
To make the most of these features, you need to let Google know that you have a localized version of your English website through Hreflang tags, subdomains, and subfolders. Your translated content and localized site needs to stand out as a multilingual website. You also need to upload your localized site version using local servers to ensure optimal site speed. Your localization team will know all about these technical details, but these are starting points to optimizing for local search.
Focus on Countries Instead of Languages
You’ll need to take culture and tradition into consideration whenever you approach a new market. When it comes to website localization, focusing on just a specific language isn’t enough. You need to optimize for regional differences and local keywords as well. Spain and Argentina, for example, are both Spanish-speaking countries. Yet, their traditions and culture vary greatly. And therefore, local dialects and versions of the language are crucial to consider in the localization process.
Produce Fresh, Local Content on a Regular Basis
If you know how to engage with your audience (through local, high-quality content), you can build even more rapport with them. When you localize your website content and produce relevant local information for your audience to read, it can benefit your SEO score with various search engines tremendously. You can do this by including content written by local contributors, which increases the user experience and enables you to better ‘speak the language’ of the local audience. You’ll also need to build links from local sources so you can identify as a local in your niche and drive more organic traffic.
Wrapping Up
Your language-specific SEO strategy needs to consider website localization and vice versa. You won’t get the kind of results you’re aiming for with localization if you don’t focus on your rankings on the search result pages. To ensure your website localization project effectively drives traffic and boosts SEO, you need to be visible on local servers, produce high-quality content in the target language, and offer your target markets localized pages of your website to establish and maintain a local presence.
If you’ve got any technical issues blocking your SEO potential, it’s advisable to get professional help so you can improve your presence within local markets. When it’s done professionally, website localization can boost your SEO rankings and drive more organic traffic, which leads to increased revenues.
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