Today’s businesses can no longer think solely of their national markets. Global eCommerce exceeds $12.8 trillion, and the global online population is approximately 1.8 billion as of 2010.

When doing business internationally, remember that just seven countries have English as their official language. These countries have just a bit more than five percent of the world’s population. Thirty percent of Internet users worldwide have English as their first language. All of these facts are important for the business considering reaching an international audience. Research has shown that buyers are 10 times more likely to buy on the internet when a website is in their own language. So, there is tremendous potential for an international online marketing plan – if managed successfully.

Challenges

Understanding your specific target international market is critical for success. It will interest you to know that consumers in both Germany and Spain do speak English, but they don’t shop in this language. The research firm, Common Sense Advisory, published the study, Can’t Read, Won’t Buy, where 2,400 shoppers outside of the United States were asked about their shopping habits. Over half stated they only make purchases on websites in their native language.

Online multilingual marketing is important for any business that wants to expand into the international market. The most difficult factor in obtaining online credibility is actually promoting a company’s website through search engines so that customers can find it. Multilingual SEO is a detailed and exacting process that needs to be handled by an expert. Without a skilled professional, your business simply won’t be found.

A Multilingual SEO Strategy

A multilingual SEO strategy is an elaborate and detailed process, because targeting the best keywords outside the English language requires SEO research and linguistic skills. Just translating keywords doesn't cut it, since how would a translator know if cheap, affordable or low cost is the best term when it comes to search traffic and competition? There are also technical challenges, like multilingual keywords in URLs, global top level domains, regional directories and plenty of other aspects to consider for each geography.

Search engines themselves face challenges providing the best information on keyword searches in foreign languages, primarily those with special characters including Hebrew, Japanese and Chinese.

These difficulties result from their inability to manage dual languages successfully and a lack of tracking technologies.

Developing multilingual SEO requires a thorough linguistic analysis of a company’s industry, but also a solid understanding about keyword popularity in a specific geography. A full understanding of any technical language and popular key phrases used in the industry is critical.

Multilingual SEO keyword research is more complex than traditional keyword research.

Multilingual SEO for Your Site Includes:

• Understanding key industry terms (construct a glossary when possible)
• Performing linguistic research of popular industry terms
• Performing search engine research on competition and popularity (as much as possible)
• Executing a full analysis of competitors in the target language
• Consulting regularly with the product team to determine new keywords and industry terms

Other considerations for a successful international SEO strategy:

Discover which main search engines are used by the target locale. Google may dominate in the U.S. and U.K. --  but other search engines such as MSN may prove more popular in other European countries. Some countries like Russia or China have their own local search engines that are not used in the U.S. Additionally, there are always interesting arbitrage opportunities using less well known search marketing platforms, especially outside the U.S. market.

Which regional directories should be targeted? Business.com could work in the U.K., but France may have its own directory.

Different countries have different link building strategies - Highly page-ranked websites that impress Google may not be relevant to a local market. Local sites are required to provide links as well as Google PageRank.

Global Opportunities

The benefits of multilingual search engine optimization are immense. While most internet users are not native English speakers, the majority of search engine competition is still done in English. When your website is optimized with a global SEO strategy, you’ll enjoy more visitors, increased growth and a better position internationally for your website.

Multilingual SEO will also improve your international branding and give you the opportunity to create online and other business opportunities that may have never been within reach otherwise.

In fact, multilingual SEO can actually provide a market advantage. Let’s examine the keyword “Harley Davidson Parts" in English and German ("Harley Davidson Ersatzteile"), using Google.com and Google.de. The competition for this keyword phrase in English is pretty intense, with about 23 million websites. In German, however, only 144,000 websites are competing for this keyword combination. Remember that Germans love motorcycles too! So this is a perfect opportunity to achieve top search engine rankings more quickly in local markets.

Today, companies that optimize their global websites for multilingual SEO enjoy increased traffic, international branding and higher conversions from their website.

MarkTheGlobe helps you build a solid multilingual SEO strategy that delivers global results.