Top Tips for Successful Multilingual SEO

You built a very attractive website for your services, now what? Is that enough?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is neither an option nor a "luxury" for websites. SEO is an absolutely essential step which every website needs before going "live." SEO optimization is even more critical when you have websites in multiple languages. Multilingual websites can thrive or fail based on how well they are optimized for SEO in their global, target-language markets. 

Although your translation company may have mastered best practices for multilingual SEO, you will need a sound strategy for SEO in your source as well as target languages. SEO is a key component in your overall Global Search Engine Marketing strategy.

The Internet now is stuffed with billions of web pages and millions of great websites that provide useful information and interesting experiences for online users to navigate. In the fairly recent past, many web-marketers spent a lot of money on "User Experience" and copywriting to drive users to their web pages but neglected to spend very much effort on Search Engine Optimization.  Successful multilingual SEO starts with good content in your source language.

Don't search for the perfect SEO recipe

There is no perfect recipe for SEO analysis. It will always be a unique experience, based on the website, the market, the brand, the competitors and the problems being worked on, as well as the technology in question. Therefore, instead of thinking of every possible component that could be a factor for SEO, think of the top factors that will have the greatest impact SEO for your website in all target as well as source languages.

Top factors to achieve success with SEO

• URL structure: Let's think of your website structure and URLs as the basic map plan for search engines to find every single piece of content you host on your website. The URLs represent the primary value for SEO. Look carefully here and represent your URLs in the most direct and accessible way possible. Every URL should be visible and search engine-friendly.
• Website Crawl: How efficiently can your website be crawled? This includes ensuring that URLs are structured cleanly. It is even more important to ensure that your website is accessible for website crawl without overuse of JavaScript, AJAX, Flash, and other barriers.
• Loading Speed: How fast is your website? Website performance is especially important, because search engines like fast websites; they "value time."
• Website Navigation: Crawl paths are the important pathways given to search engines.  Do you have smart navigation placed on your websites? Do you have Google sitemap? Bing sitemap? This is a very important consideration.
• Content: Always focus on refreshing and updating your website content. Search engines place high value on fresh content. Display your blog and news feeds on your home page to keep it auto-updated. Also make sure that your unique content gets sorted above all the other content.
• Meta data: Meta data is now an important part of technical SEO, with the rise of rel=canonical.
• Robots.txt: It's important to consider what robots exclusion is taking place on a site with Meta robots and robots.txt best practices.
• HTML is still the King: Your website content needs to always be indexed. The best route to success with that is providing accessible content in ways that search engines demand. If you use flash and interactive content, (which will not be indexed), you can always limit it to just embedded components working side-by-side with indexed text content.  You may try HTML5 as well.
• Title: <Title> tags are one of the strongest factors when it comes to on-page optimization. Title tags will show as the header for your indexed page on the result page. So it is not only about the keywords you index in that title, it is also the first thing the user sees to help him make a decision about visiting your link or not.  Use a combination of copywriting and search engine optimization for each title you have on your website. Naturally, this combination will be critical for multilingual SEO on your target-language websites, where you translation company can provide assistance.
• Backlinks: Although a great deal of time and effort are required, we believe that companies should invest time and money in building backlinks for their websites. After a great deal of investigation with a lot of auto submission software and tools, GPI still believes that organic search and "white hat" techniques are the most effective way to build backlinks.
• Google Analytics: Analyze your website traffic resources and top content. Monitor your statistics and visitors. By charting successful campaigns and trends, you can carry your success into more portions of your website. SEO cannot succeed without constant monitoring and analysis.

SEO rewards are worth the effort

Focusing on these top factors in SEO, over time you will achieve measureable success. Although you will probably not reach your goals "over night," effective SEO will have a demonstrable effect on your website visits and revenues. This is multiplied by the number of target language websites you may have, with which your translation company can provide assistance. With the world as your market, you want to ensure that your website content is attracting all potential customers in the language they can best understand.

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Source: Globalization Partners International