5 Effective Marketing Strategies for Multilingual Websites
For companies with a global presence, a multilingual website is a must. Your international site visitors will be able to understand your website and you will rank in each of the languages’ search engines.
Having a multilingual website requires an effective planning and strategy. Here are five effective marketing strategies for multilingual websites.
1. Hire native content writers for your website
You may have a brilliant SEO optimized site and quality content written by English writers for your British or American audience, but the same content needs to be re-written for readers in the rest of Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Africa.
A manual translation will generate far better content than an automatic one. While individual words might be translated well using automated software, the core thought process, the coherence of thoughts and various examples and idioms might not make sense for readers. A good native content writer will be able to keep the charm of the original text, in a flawless fashion. This will create a positive experience when visitors read it, meaning they will spend longer on your site. The longer visitors spend on your site, the higher you will appear in the search rankings.
2. Translate currency, postage options, etc.
Visitors like to see prices in their own currency and it reassures them if postage options are the same for them as they would be for someone in a different country. If you have international offices, put your local address in the footer of the relevant page (a German address on the German language version, etc.). However, if your office is only located in one country, you may be best keeping your address on only the essential pages – Contact and Terms and Conditions, for example.
3. Make use of analytics tools and re-strategize if needed
With the help of an analytics tool, it has become so much easier to understand where your website is doing well and where it needs improvement. If your website promoting a chocolate brand is doing well in the same region for adults, but not for kids, the demographics report will let you know! You can then promote your content in a way that will appeal more to kids. You can understand if the same content does well for the same age group in different countries.
Click through rate is an important piece of information to track in Google Analytics. If a page has a similar position in one language, but a lower click through rate, it indicates that fewer people are interested in it. If that’s the case, look at your meta title and description and see if you can rewrite them in a way that will appeal more to the local audience. A recent SEMRush study showed that having well-written meta tags is more important than including the exact keyword in your meta tags.
4. Build links in each language
Without having high-quality links going to your site in each language, you won’t rank well in that language. These multilingual link building tips give more guidance on what constitutes a high-quality link and the different kinds of the link that are beneficial for your website.
5. Build presence over social media platforms
Marketers all dream of creating a campaign that goes viral, receiving millions of clicks internationally. While it’s impossible to guarantee that any strategy will have this unique quality, using social media helps to get your posts trending and is an essential part of your marketing strategy.
Having a strong presence on social media platforms keep a lot of people engaged with your content. People should be able to understand the core ideology of your business. The best way to make it happen is using word of mouth and informal discussions on Facebook or LinkedIn Groups, or in Tweets using popular hashtags. Once people start appreciating your presence they will spread the word themselves. If you can get some local ambassadors to endorse you, it will always be a plus factor.
6. Interactive elements on your website
Sometimes people realize that your brand is an international one, but they would like to hear user stories from their own area and in their own language. If you have a short streaming video telling local visitors stories on your website, alongside the remaining content, visitors will be more interested in listening. Many multilingual websites also integrate chat support with native customer experience agents who serve people better by understanding their concerns and needs.
Using these strategies can boost the performance of the website, however, it may take some time for all these strategies to start working, as creating content, building international links and creating a social media presence don’t happen overnight.
As your website becomes more successful, using analytics becomes more important when you have a multilingual website. This lets you discover why the website is more popular in a specific region. Analyzing your competitors to see what they’re doing that you might not be is another way of identifying opportunities to improve your SEO.
In the end, it’s all about having high quality, rich content that is seen by as many people as possible.
