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The lost opportunity of English-only sites

Sales and Marketing - Features

Tuesday, 18 March 2008

Page 2 of 2

Many people don’t know that in many countries, the vast majority of search is conducted using search engines other than Google.

It is therefore crucial to have a local understanding of the search engines in each country and of how best to optimise for those countries.

Relying on Google or Yahoo search in many countries will not deliver the best results for your international search campaign.

In China, for example, the most popular search engine is Baidu. Leading the pack in Russia is Yandex, a private search engine.

Keywords foundation of a successful campaign

In the past, international companies merely translated their existing English SEO or paid campaigns into the language they were targeting.

The problem with this strategy is that many relevant phrases are not included as part of the translation.

Keywords are the foundation of a successful campaign. A keyword, in internet search, is a term that captures essence of the topic of a document or a search query. These terms can vary considerably in each country.

Looking at the English language provides us with a good example of cultural variations in language.

There are some important differences between optimising for UK and US English.

US searchers will use the word ‘vacation’ in searches, for example, whereas UK searchers tend to use the word ‘holiday’.

In order to optimise a site for both cultures, both keywords must be visible to search engines.

Writing good copy

UK websites targeting American audiences should be careful, he adds, of UK English words that are not used in the US.

Such words include “full-stop” (Americans say ‘period’), “whilst” (which sounds archaic in American English), lorry (truck), queue (line-up), etc.

This shows that businesses should be careful when translating text – language that works for one region may not work for another.

Writing good copy is another essential which is both effective for SEO and customer conversion. This is a highly skilled exercise. For optimum results, copy should be written from scratch.

If the visitor feels that the text has been specifically written for them, for example, because it includes particular cultural nuances, the conversion rate can be up to seven times higher than directly translated copy.