The web provides an obvious opportunity to take your business international, but if you’re serious about breaking into overseas markets, you need to make sure your website is properly localised.
Guest Post – About the author
Christian Arno is the founder and Managing Director of global translations company Lingo24. Launched in 2001, Lingo24 employs some 4,000 professional freelance translators covering a hundred different language combinations. Follow Christian on Twitter: @Lingo24chr.
Translation is key
The biggest barrier in making your website effective in foreign markets is language. 78% of internet users do not speak English as their native language. To communicate with them effectively and, more importantly, to convince them to make buying decisions, your web pages need to be translated into their own language. There are automatic software-driven translation solutions, like Google Translate, which are great if you’re on a budget, but they are nowhere near 100% accurate. To make the best impression with your potential overseas customers, you need to use a professional translation service.
Don’t rely on a dictionary for keywords
Even if you choose automatic translation for the bulk of your content, you can’t rely on translation tools, or even a dictionary, when it comes to your keywords. Direct dictionary translations of keywords are often way off the mark. You need to have a professional translator ensure that your keywords make sense in the target language. You already know the importance of keywords in your English SEO and PPC campaigns, so why risk targeting the wrong keywords when you go international?
IP address recognition
Once your content is translated, you can provide a far better experience for your site visitors by automatically directing them to the section of your website that’s in their own language. This can be done fairly effectively by a process known as geolocation, whereby their location is determined by their IP address. There are various services, like IP2Location and Digital Envoy, that will provide you with the IP data to achieve this.
Avoid flying the flag
Automatic geolocation works well for the majority of internet users, but some people access the internet via a proxy server which may not be located in their own country. In these cases, the redirection will not work. So, you should also provide links to your translated content. Avoid using flag icons for these links because languages are often spoken in more than one country. It’s better to set the anchor text for your translation links as the name of the language.
Internationalised domain names and in-country hosting
You should consider registering domain names for your website using the relevant target country’s extension (for example, .fr for France, .de for Germany, etc.). This is particularly important if your are targeting a country whose language uses a non-Latin script. The recent introduction of internationalised domain names (IDN) means that domain names will now work in a wide variety of language scripts. Hosting your country-specific domain on servers located in the relevant country will help you to achieve better rankings in local search engines.
Be culturally sensitive
When launching your website in other parts of the world, you also need to be aware of cultural differences. Make sure that the images you use do not offend and be sensitive to the cultural significance of certain colour schemes. For example, in Islamic countries, green is often only used for religious purposes and in Korea, a name written in red means the person is dead.
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Very interesting reading indeed – the statistic that 78% of internet users do not speak english is something I would like to comment on.
On this blog’s home page there is a statistic that says there are 1.3 billion users on the internet.
The thought occurs to me that 28% of those users who DO speak english is still a sizeable market anyway, so why would an internet marketer wish to go to all the lengths to translate just to hopefully penetrate the larger market?
It seems to me that most would be busy enough handling the 28% anyway!
Wishing you an inspired day,
Michael
Michael B Wilbraham´s last [type] ..7 Reasons Why You CAN Be Successful With Network Marketing
Michael,
Thanks for taking time for adding to the debate. I would say from a European perspective language difference is important when marketing in Europe, My own business opportunity offers several translated versions of their sales pages based on feedback from their consultants. So it appears there is some demand. I guess in the end it’s where you market and how strongly your customers feel about using their native language that will determine whether translation is worth it for you. Thanks
Andrew
Very interesting thought, I recently started going global with my online ventures and I have found that indeed even when two countries speak the same language like English, it does not mean that you will be successful with you same copy or ads.
I had to re-do a lot of mine.
Very interesting. I definitely agree that a Professional service is the way forward, if you want to come out as being professional, without any spelling, grammar or tense problems. Software like Google Translate looks accurate, but there are a lot of mistakes, which would make your non-English users feel that you are unprofessional, and would just refuse to read your content. I know that they say it gets better and better, but I don’t think it’ll ever be perfect.
Being culturally sensitive is also quite important, as you said. Offending someone could potentially (and probably) stop them from viewing your site / using your services.
Harry
Thanks for stopping by to comment on the article and adding to the guest Bloggers thoughts. I am pleased you found the information useful.
Andrew
Becoming accessible through Internet Marketing is a team effort. It requires active communication and commitment to society, but also affordable and effective SEO strategies.
Thank you for your comment I have edited your comment to remove the sales pitch. Generally I find comments are more likely to be accepted if you remove any links from within the comment. This Blog uses KeyWord Luv which is explained in the Comment. It allows you to get a link to your site with a Keyphrase and of course because my Blog is DoFollow there is no need for links as you get a link if your comment is approved.
Andrew