Skip to content

The Importance of Multilingual SEO

When building a multi-language website, it is critical to take into account multilingual search engine optimization (SEO) while developing your site. When properly managed, you will witness a solid online footprint in your target market. Simply put, multilingual SEO is a necessity for every international business. When managed correctly, this “online discovery gateway” will result in increased leads, conversions, and revenue generation accordingly.

What is Multilingual SEO:

Multilingual SEO is the process of optimizing the content on your website for multiple languages to increase online visibility for your new targeted markets.

One of the common misconceptions is to build your translated website first, then implement SEO work. However, this is not a best practice because it requires extensive rework.

The ideal process is integrating SEO into translation workflows. This way, you can guarantee that your translated content is SEO optimized and thus, can be easily seen by search engines.

Importance of Multilingual SEO:

The internet continues to grow at a rate of nearly 1,000,000 new users per day (1). Considering that the US ranks 14th out of 40 for eCommerce adoption in the world, it’s clear that multilingual content is increasingly important (1). Therefore organizations need to cope with these trends to best attract their potential global audiences wherever they are.

Through multilingual SEO, you can achieve the following:

  • Enhance brand awareness and credibility
  • Increase online visibility for product and service pages
  • Improve website traffic & lower bounce rates
  • Generate more leads, conversions, and revenue
  • Improve engagement and customer satisfaction
  • Edge out your competition

Multilingual SEO Tips:

Discover below some best practices and optimization tips for multilingual SEO:

  • Localize keyword lists, webpages, etc… don’t simply translate them
  • Use only native-speaking linguists who understand the process of keyword research
  • Translate all metadata
  • Consider technical SEO optimization
  • Choose the right domain structure that is best for your business and future expansion plans
  • Use Hreflang tags to ensure that search engines understand your language content
  • By having one vendor managing both SEO and translation processes, you can save money in the long run
  • Choose the best CMS for your needs
  • Create a sitemap for the translated/localized website
  • Consider image localization by adding localized Alt Text

Conclusion:

Multilingual SEO is a MUST for any international company that has or wants to have an impactful global web presence. This process must be done correctly to avoid any cultural blunders and thus to allow website translation and multilingual SEO to go hand in hand. Seek out professionals to have this work done right, the first time!

  1. Kemp, Simon. (20, March 23). Digital trends 2020: Every single stat you need to know about the internet.

https://bit.ly/3bwRRfR