If you are looking for ways to grow your business, expanding your brand globally might be one of your best options.

Aside from extending your reach to more customers, it will also allow you to diversify your market for increased revenues.

But, to make your globalization strategy successful, building relationships with your customers through website Localization and international SEO.

Things to Consider in Website Localization

In simple terms, website localization is the process of translating and adapting your website to the culture, Language, and preferences of your target market.

Although it is directly related to translation, it is actually more complicated than that. It requires the right images, colors, contents, designs, and flow of a webpage.

Here are the factors that you must consider when localizing your website:

• Language – Make sure that you know the languages that are commonly used in your target locations and apply them to your website.
• Culture – Understanding the behavior, trends, and norms of people in a location is important when deciding on the images, styles, and contents to localize.
• Means of communication – The preferred means of communication differ from one place to another. It is essential to provide your customers with local numbers, emails, and addresses for when they need to reach out to you.
• Currency – Changing the currency and payment options on your localized pages will help in the accuracy of transactions and conversions.
• Navigation – Make your localized pages easier to navigate by your users and make choosing their desired languages more convenient.

These are just a few of the things that you must understand when localizing. But, if you want to succeed, you’ll need a deeper understanding of website localization and how it works for businesses.

It will also be better to get help from professional linguists with expertise in localization and international SEO.

What is the Connection of Localization to International SEO?

Now that you know what website localization is, you might be wondering how it can directly affect your Search Engine optimization (SEO).

By translating and adapting your web content to other languages and cultures, it can increase your SERP ranking and boost your traffic in different locations.

Here are some of the ways website localization can help your international SEO strategy:

Helps in optimization on more search engine locations.

Localizing your webpages means that you will assign specific pages for different locations and languages.

You will translate its contents to your target languages and use keywords ranking in the location.

Moreover, tweaking your hreflang tags and dedicated URLs for an indication in the languages you are targeting.

Adding hreflang tags is more complicated and requires technical expertise but using a dedicated URL is a lot easier.

You just have to edit your original URL and add the location or language to let the search engine identify where it should rank.

For example, instead of using “www.localizedpage.com,” you can use “www.localizedpage.fr.com.”

By doing these things when localizing your website, the search engine will know the target location, language, and audience of your webpage.

Thus, it will let you rank to other search engine locations that will help you in reaching more audiences.

Local keyword research allows your website to increase traffic.

Localization is not simply translating your content but will also require localizing your keyword research.

Note that aside from the languages, the difference in the culture affects the way people are searching on the internet.

For example, if you search for the keyword “food truck” in the US server, it will get great results unlike in the UK server.

Moreover, it is important to note that direct translations of keywords will not help you in improving your SEO rank in specific locations.

As an example, the literal translation of food truck in French is “camion de nourriture” and it doesn’t even show results in keyword research tools. Instead, French searches the term “camion-restaurant.”

By localizing your keyword research and applying it to your content, local audiences will be able to search for your content.

It increases the chance of getting more traffic and earning a higher page ranking for your pages.

Enhances the user experience.

According to Harvard Business Review, 72.1% of the consumers they interviewed in 8 countries prefer staying longer on websites using their languages.

This is because they feel more comfortable staying on websites that they can relate to. Moreover, it will be easier to understand the descriptions and benefits of the items and services in their native languages.

Translating and localizing your content also allows voice searches in different languages which is beneficial for people with disabilities.

This results in more time spent on pages. When Google sees that users are staying on your page for a longer period, it automatically thinks that your content is useful and deserves a higher ranking in search engines.

Generates more return on investment and conversions.

The longer a person stays on your page, the higher the probability of conversion. Harvard Business Review says that 72.4% of customers choose to buy products and services on pages in their native language.

By adapting to their culture and trends, a localized page can pique the interests of its buyers which results in generating more return on investment.

Is localizing your SEO strategy worth it?

A lot of business owners are not localizing their SEO strategy thinking that it will cost them a lot of investment.

However, what they don’t understand is the numerous benefits and return of investments that they can gain from it.

Professional translators with localization skills will not simply translate your content. They are also experts in the international market.

Instead of paying for ads that do not convert well, why not invest in website localization now?

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