Search engine optimisation (SEO) involves improving the traffic to websites from search engines via natural search results for targeted key words.

Multilingual SEO takes the process to the next level.

The process involves converting websites into other languages, taking cultural differences into account.

The result is an improvement in traffic to the culturally converted websites from international search engines.

Most online transactions nowadays start with someone typing a word or phrase into a search engine like Google or Yahoo.

Half of all online advertising spend now goes into search marketing and in the UK, it is an exploding industry that has grown by over 60 per cent in the last two years.

A well-optimised site can increase the traffic to your site immensely.

Why, however, should you opt for multilingual SEO? The short of it is that if your website is in English only, you will overlook 95 per cent of your potential market.

According to the International Data Corporation, only five percent of the world’s population speaks English.

Everyone searches differently and surroundings and culture will often play a big part in determining what people search for and how they search for it.

Not simply translating sites

Businesses in international markets should not be simply translating their English site into the native language of a particular country, says Greig Holbrook, owner of multilingual SEO firm Oban Multilingual.

What businesses need to look at is key phrases customised to each individual region, he says.

People prefer to search in their own language. And they aren’t often using a dictionary to translate.

For this reason, keywords typed into search engines may be written according to regional spellings, which vary vastly.

They may be misspelled, or they could be words we might never have associated with the topic.

“The secret in this game is that you have to understand what users are looking for,” says Holbrook. 

Over the past two years, a culture of search has developed within countries whereby searchers are developing their own varieties of phrases and are also searching significantly more than in the past.

Anchor links 

Searchers in other languages have three different approaches to key-phrase construction:

• They use the appropriate phrase or phrases in their language
• They mix their language with a version of English: e.g. Kinder Diaper
• They use a variety of English which is either a misspelling or its usage is not common in native forms of English.

Last year’s changes to algorithms on the major search engines have made the destination of the links back to websites a critical factor for multilingual SEO.

With many major search engines, anchor links to websites are highly important.

As relevancy is a key factor, it is crucial now that linked sites are thematically related.

The only way to ensure this is to research the local web environment related to a particular site in the language and culture of that site.

Ten quality phrases or relevant links within the target country can be more valuable than 100 links from directories especially if the directory is not related in language and semantics.

Search engines other than Google 

In 2008, Google introduced geo-targeting for websites, allowing webmasters to specify what country the site is based in, regardless of the top level domain.

This offers more strategic opportunities for multilingual SEO when a site is not able to use country-level domains.