Five Ways To Fail In Your Multilingual Search Engine Marketing
The views of contributors are their own, and not necessarily those of SEJ.
Multilingual search marketing
is a service offered by many agencies, but done correctly by few with
most practising outdated methods and taking a wholly flawed approach.
Throughout my career, firstly as Chief Technical Officer at
a major web localisation company and now as CEO and founder of the UK’s
leading multilingual search marketing company, Search Laboratory, I’ve encountered numerous international campaigns that are doomed from the off-set due to fundamental flaws.
So that those businesses selling online to foreign markets
are aware of just what causes their global search marketing to be
unsuccessful I’ve listed five sure-fire ways to ensure your multilingual
search campaigns will fail:
-
Don’t use mother-tongue linguists
A large number of businesses employ translation companies
to generate their multilingual search terms – some even use Google
Translate. By doing this you’re already on the path to failure.
Search term authenticity is crucial – your entire campaign
hinges on it. Modern-day automated tools are simply not up to the task
of identifying accurate search terms, likewise non-native speaking
translators will not be aware of critical local phrases.
Mother-tongue linguists should be your only option for
multilingual search term generation. Native speakers, who have grown up
within the country that you are attempting to attract custom from, will
be able to employ local phrases alongside a variety of alternative terms
that a non-native speaker will not be aware of.
Still not convinced that mother-tongue linguists should be
used ahead of non-native speaking translators? Imagine a
race-to-the-finish crossword competition in the language you are
targeting, where a non-mother-tongue translator competed against a
native speaker – now consider who you would rather have your money
backing…
-
Translate your keywords
Another certain way to ensure your multilingual search
falls flat on its face is to translate your keywords. For example, a UK
car rental company is investigating potential keywords ahead of an
expansion into France and has identified the following search terms that
its existing British customers use:
-
‘Car hire’
-
‘Vehicle rental’
-
‘Automobile lease’
-
‘Charter motor’
The company has also identified that these search terms
could make 16 possible combinations to retrieve similar SERPs results;
‘vehicle lease’, ‘car rental’ etc.
However, when handed to a non-native speaking translator or
inputted to an automated translation tool for the French campaign it’s
almost certain these 16 combinations would be reduced to leave just one
or two phrases: ‘location de voiture’, for example.
This would drastically reduce the number of relevant
searches the car hire company would show for in France and therefore
minimise the sales potential – or to put it another way, cause the
campaign to fail.
Mother-tongue linguists alone have the capability to
creatively explore phrases in order to identify foreign search terms and
ensure that your website reaches its maximum visibility on the search
engine results page.
-
Ignore cultural nuances
One of the more subtle ways to hamstring a multilingual search campaign is to ignore the targeted country’s cultural nuances.
Did you know, for example, you should never ask a Frenchman
‘did you know?’ At Search Laboratory our mother-tongue French linguists
have rejected perfectly translated copy due to it containing the
phrase, ‘did you know?’ This is because it’s not culturally appropriate
and is deemed patronising to suggest a Frenchman is not in possession of
all the facts.
To sell to someone online you must first gain their trust,
and you’re far less likely to achieve this if you are inadvertently
alienating or even insulting the consumer through basic cultural
misdemeanours. It’s not just text where you can cost your company
business, images also need to be localised. For example photos that are
obviously US-centric are likely to put off customers in more reserved
European markets, so have your mother tongue linguists help out with the
on-site design as well.
-
Direct foreign search results to English landing pages
We are often asked by companies to test an international
market by directing foreign language PPC ads at an English language
landing page. This simply does not work.
Companies competing for cold inbound leads on foreign soil
via PPC ads that direct to a landing page not of that country’s language
are going to experience extremely low conversion rates, regardless of
how attractive a company’s proposition is. The initial process of a
customer investigating a new website is highly linguistically sensitive.
Imagine you are searching for running shoes and one of the
results returned to you from the search engine is a PPC ad that catches
your eye. However after clicking through you are directed to a landing
page with German text – would you continue with the shopping process or
would you return to the SERPs?
It’s critical to localise your business’ landing page to
the target market. If your company is already running PPC campaigns in
foreign languages make sure to ask your agency or in-house team if they
are doing this. At Search Laboratory we manage dozens of campaigns in
international markets and the process of localising landing pages is
relatively straight forward, providing you use mother tongue linguists.
Data gathered on the online behaviour of foreign traffic to
a company’s site during these campaigns can also be used to evaluate
whether or not an entire site translation is required.
-
Neglect your URLS
Even if you’ve managed to avoid the above pitfalls your
multilingual campaign can still be compromised should you not translate
your URLs. This is a problem that usually occurs when businesses are
using separate partners for translation and web development.
We often see companies whose web development team have
created English SEO friendly URLs, which include strategic keywords in
the directory, structure or filename. However, when placed in the hands
of the translation agency they are often overlooked causing two
problems: the customer in the targeted country notices the language
discrepancy, while because the keyword friendly URLs remain in English
they are not optimised to that market’s search engine, thus harming the
site’s SEO.
SEO friendly URLs will not necessarily translate clearly between
English and the targeted language. In cases such as these we advise our
clients to stick with non-friendly URLs because the detrimental effect
of a customer noticing an English URL is likely to be greater than the
benefit SEO friendly URLs will bring to the site’s search ranking.Reference :- http://www.searchenginejournal.com
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