You’ve found a translation partner (hopefully it’s us!) and you’ve written fabulous content for your English audience that’s been faithfully translated into your second language. That’s enough, isn’t it…? Well, no.

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As marketers, we don’t need to tell you that optimising your website content is essential. We know that.

But we often see pro agencies creating multilingual websites for their clients without thinking about how or even if that site is fully optimised for each language or country it’s targeted at.

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Multilingual SEO is not just about content translation.

Of course, content is king, and getting content that your client's audience want to engage with and appeals to them will always be a key step in your SEO strategy.

But when you’re using multiple languages, there’s lots more to consider.

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1. Keyword research.

Of course, any SEO strategy worth its salt starts with correct keyword research. But this takes on an entirely new dimension when you’re working internationally.

Native speakers who understand that the same words can have multiple meanings and help ensure your content is optimised to take this into account should be your first stop on the keyword research train. There’s always a risk that the words you think you need to use aren’t actually relevant to the audience you want to speak to. So, you could end up building your content pillars around irrelevant terms.

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2. Localisation

We talk about this a lot at ilc because it’s often the difference between OK translation and GREAT translation. SEO localisation enables you to consider the local and regional dialects, cultural differences of your searchers, and what their intent actually is, rather than what you want it to be.

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3. Using Hreflang tags to localise your URLs

Let’s get technical, because getting this part of your technical SEO right ensures search engines are serving the right pages to the right searchers, i.e., the audience in the specific language, country or region you’re trying to talk to.

This becomes even more important when you consider that many countries have multiple official languages you might need to consider!

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4. Structuring your site for international SEO

Country code top-level domain (ccTLD?), sub-directories or subdomains… you can approach this in many ways, and this decision can depend on a range of requirements. The point is, working with a reputable partner will help you make the right decision for your client.

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5. And everything else…

Imagery and alt text, metadata and even currencies, to name just a few, can all get left behind when thinking about multilingual SEO.

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So, with all this to think about, we know that multilingual SEO can appear a bit well, terrifying. We promise it’s not. We can help; as native speaking marketing experts, we can be your first contact for multilingual SEO, international content writing, and loads more.  If your clients have international targets and ambitions, we can help you help them, to get things right first time! Get in touch

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