Written by Paula Penovi
ATA-Certified Translator and Certified Medical Interpreter (CMI-Spanish)

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

If you are a business owner, you know SEO is meant to help companies attract new customers by increasing their website traffic, making it more visible to the users of a web search engine, such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. In today’s world, showing up on the front page of Google can be a deciding factor for your business. Marketing specialists use all kinds of strategies and techniques to obtain a high-ranking placement in the search results of a page by optimizing their online content and using the right keywords.

Producing quality content for your website

Google always tries to direct the customer to the best results that will serve their needs, so it tends to avoid spammy and mediocre content full of links and keyword stuffing. When producing content for your website, doing your keyword research up-front is crucial so that you can include it throughout all your texts to rank well. However, the use of keywords needs to be strategic and all about semantics, since jamming them into your text as much as you can will do little to improve your rankings.

Multilingual SEO, translation and localization

Considering that SEO optimization is such a fine art based on fresh and rich content and the tactical use of keywords, you would be right to assume that the literal translation of content and keywords will not rank as well in a different language and culture. A poorly executed translation may destroy all the original successful content you worked so hard to achieve. That is why it is important to pick experts in SEO translation who work to boost your website’s position on search engine results in international markets. When localizing your website and doing multilingual SEO (adapting your content to a specific market and culture), a professional translator will pick the most relevant keywords in terms of high-search volume and low complexity, and therefore it is mandatory that they have extensive knowledge on translation, cultural mediation and sociolinguistics.

Culturally competent translators to best serve your needs

In conclusion, there are many factors involved in creating effective multilingual SEO content to reach an international audience, including the norms and rules of each language and culture, the register and target market, humor, icons and symbols, cultural and religious values, special characters, etc. Keyword research and analysis also play a major role in discovering keywords that already bring traffic to your website and your competitors’ in different countries. Finding the right linguist for this task will certainly help your business reach a wider audience and take your business to the next level.

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