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Optimizing the In-Language ExperienceOn-site optimizations boost customer awareness, website traffic and conversions in global markets.
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Introduction
As you consider translating your website to serve customers in new global markets, it’s often challenging to look past the immediate needs of getting in-market quickly and successfully, and consider the websites’ success in the years to come.
But that’s precisely what you need to be doing. Just as you focus on the long-term performance of your flagship primary-market website, you should leverage performance-boosting best practices to ensure the success of your multilingual sites, too.
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This e-book provides answers to two key questions that can improve the business performance of your translated websites:
Can your global customers find your localized websites? Translating your website will certainly improve your ranking in local organic search results, but there are ways to boost them further, to better compete with well-known regional brands.
Will your global customers be greeted in their preferred languages? It won’t be enough for your new customers to simply discover your website; they must have a pleasant and effortless experience there, too.
You’ll also get some quick tips for choosing a website translation agency that specializes in implementing engagement-boosting optimizations.
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Table of Contents
Will Customers Find Your Multilingual Site? ...................... 5
Translate Your Metadata ................................................... 6
‘Hreflang’ Implementation ............................................... 7
Global Sitemaps .................................................................. 8
Will Visitors Be Greeted In Their Preferred Languages? . 9
Conclusion .................................................................................11
About MotionPoint .................................................................12
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Will Customers Find Your Multilingual Site?
During the earliest days in a new global market, your company won’t have the brand recognition or customer trust it has in its primary market.
Ranking highly in regional search engines fast-tracks that customer awareness. Studies reveal that when a company ranks highly in organic search results, customers can more easily recall its name and products—and are more likely to have a positive perception of them. Translation: The effort you invest in increasing your page rank in global markets can directly influence your success there.
Photo credit: tongcom/Shutterstock
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These optimizations can be applied to your multilingual sites, to help them rise
in search results:
Translate Your MetadataYour multilingual websites should contain SEO-rich metadata that global search engines can use to determine website quality, customer relevance and page rank. Make sure to translate this keyword-friendly content. It will help your multilingual site rank high in local search engines.
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‘Hreflang’ Implementation‘Hrflang’ is a website management protocol implemented by Google that incorporates site metadata including link data, HTTP headers and XML sitemaps. One function of this protocol is to make website users—and the browsers being used—aware that a website exists in alternate languages.
More importantly, it makes sure properly-translated websites appear in local organic search languages, assigning them the same relevance—and corresponding ranking—as the primary-market site. That means your brand-new translated site inherits the same in-market relevance as your primary-market website. Implementing “hreflang” can make a big difference.
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Global SitemapsSitemaps serve as important guides for search engine crawlers. They provide search engines with a list of a website’s available pages, and information about the relationships between those pages. They also provide other important information such as when a page was last updated—an important factor when determining relevance and page rank.
Few companies consider the value of creating a “global sitemap” for their translated websites, but the results—measured in higher page rank, and ultimately higher organic traffic—should not be ignored. Deploying a localized sitemap for your multilingual website can prove to be catnip for regional search engines, and global customers.
Your Website Translation
Vendor Should…
Surprisingly, few website translation solutions are built to optimize multilingual websites. As you consider potential website translation vendors, determine if they can:
Easily translate your site’s metadata, and do so without creating any effort for your marketing or IT teams.
Handle comprehensive “hrflang” implementation across the sitemaps for all global markets, allowing you to remain focused on other tasks.
Create global sitemaps that optimize the customer experience, automatically apply changes made to the original site across all global sitemaps, and assign the ranking of primary-market website pages to those translated pages.
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Will Visitors Be Greeted In Their Preferred Languages?
Global customers can find your localized website in ways other than in-language search. Perhaps your brand has some global recognition; customers might find your site using English-language keywords. Or perhaps they simply input your English-language website address into their browsers. In these cases, your global customers will land on your English website, instead of the localized site you’ve created for them.
That’s bad news. Those customers will leave the English site. Websites that don’t provide content in a customer’s preferred language have higher bounce rates and lower reputations than those that do.
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This is where intelligent language-detection technology comes in. This technology analyzes inbound visitors to your primary-market site, and algorithmically determines if they prefer reading in a different language. If so, it asks the user to opt into the proper localized website experience. This opt-in appears only for users who might prefer another language. It doesn’t impact the experience for customers who speak the language of your primary market.
The best language-detection technologies:
Seamlessly welcome first-time visitors in the language they’re most likely to speak
Anticipate visitors’ other preferences, including appropriate country of residence and currency
Remember these preferences for return visits
This technology reduces bounce rates, increases engagement and conversion rates, and provides other reputational benefits.
Your Translation Vendor Should:
It’s uncommon to find a website translation vendor that provides great intelligent language-detection technology. As you court potential vendors, make sure their technology can:
Deploy language-detection technology that not only determines visitor preferences but remembers them to create an even better experience upon return visits.
Understand the benefits of a localized site, including increased engagement, reduced bounce rates, heightened trust and more.
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Conclusion
Launching a translated website is the first step in serving customers in global markets. But the key to smartly serving them—and ensuring the business success of your multilingual sites—is to find a website translation vendor that can easily implement these and other performance-boosting optimizations.
Beyond optimizations, consider these other important factors as you search for an ideal vendor. Can they:
Leverage your current website’s code and content to easily launch and operate multilingual versions?
Combine efficient translation technology with human editors to deliver accurate, brand-perfect translations?
Deploy translated websites in as few as 30 days, and translate new or updated content within one business day?
Allow you to reuse translated content across other media and campaigns at no cost?
Focus not just on the translation itself, but on all aspects of the user experience?
Consider those questions, and the value of on-site optimizations, as you explore your options. Remember, you’ll want a solution that’s built to support your short-term needs—and your long-term success.
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About MotionPoint
MotionPoint solves the operational complexity and cost of website localization. Unlike all other approaches, our technology and turn-key solution are built specifically for this purpose.
We translate, deploy, and operate multilingual websites, optimizing the customer experience across all channels.
MotionPoint Corporation
United StatesLyons Technology Center4661 Johnson RoadCoconut Creek, FL 33073
+1.954.421.0890
EuropeRegus CibelesCalle de Alcalá 61, Room 32328014 Madrid
+34.917.944.707
