SEO for Translated Websites
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a term that’s on everybody’s lips at the moment. It refers to the steps you can take to improve a website’s ranking in the organic (non-paid) search results sections produced by popular search engines. If you’re interested in translating your website content, then you’re probably looking to connect with a new audience. This means that SEO is likely very important to you. So, what do you need to think about? Today I’m going to share my tips for optimising your translated website content for search engines.
Use a Human Translator
Now I know what you’re thinking here. Since I’m both a translator and a human (I know, shock!) I’m probably a little biased here. There’s actually really solid reasoning behind this, though. If you use automated machine translators, there’s a risk that your content could be marked as spam by search engines. This means that your web pages won’t show up in search results at all.
You’ll always be rewarded by search engines for producing good quality, relevant content, and the best way to do this is to hire a professional human translator. It may be a little more expensive, but if you’re looking to improve your visibility in your target market then it’s your best option. Quality content is also likely to boost your conversion rate (so the actual sales you’re making) when readers eventually do find your site, so it’s worth the investment in the long run.
Localise
Don’t be afraid to adapt your content to make it more suitable for your target market. Again, professional marketing translators can really help you with this. Maybe people in your target culture celebrate different holidays. Maybe they use different measurements. By making the necessary adjustments so that your content is specific to the particular market it is intended for, you’re ensuring that your website will show up in more searches. It’s as simple as that.
Have Separate Website Pages
If you’re tempted to combine content written in two or more different languages on the same webpage then I’d strongly advise you to reconsider. It needs to be easy for search engines to decipher which language your content is written in. Remember that they’re machines not people! If they can’t easily figure it out, then you’ll be penalised. Once again, there’s a danger that your website might be omitted from search results listings entirely.
What you need is clear, separate pages for each language. Obviously, you may want to link these pages together to make it easy for readers to toggle between different languages, but it’s not a good idea to combine multilingual content. Your readers won’t like it any more than the search engines do. It also becomes incredibly difficult to carry out the subsequent SEO tactics I’m about to describe.
Translate Meta Descriptions, Alt Text, Titles, etc.
If you’re having a website translated, then you need to remember that there’s more to your web pages than the content your visitors will be reading. Your URL titles, meta descriptions and alt text are key components that can boost your SEO, so you need to make sure you’ve had them translated into your target language.
Your meta description is the summary that shows up on search results pages and, as well as attracting customers to your site, it is one of the primary ways search engines determine relevance. A good description containing a few carefully chosen keywords will improve your ranking. Alt text is the (usually hidden) description attached to any images on your website. Adding alt text is great for your SEO and it also makes your site more accessible to the visually impaired. Finally, don’t forget to translate the page titles in your URLs.
Do Country-Specific Keyword Research
If you’ve already done keyword research for the original version of your website, then you might be tempted to just translate these terms into your target language and leave them as they are. Sadly, SEO isn’t always as straight-forward as this.
Keywords are the terms that users search for in relation to a particular good or service. This means that the secret to good SEO is determining your relevant keywords and using them effectively. Since users across different markets have different search habits, your target language keywords might be quite different from the ones you were using in your source language. Once you’ve established which country you’re looking to target with the translated version of your website, you’ll want to carry out separate keyword research to see what users in that country are searching for. This will dramatically improve your ranking on organic search results pages.
So, there you go, follow these tips and you’ll improve the reach and engagement you get from your translated website content. At the end of the day, if you’re going to the trouble of translating your website, you want people to see it.