One common that is all too familiar to anime fans around the world, is the problem of translation, subtitles and closed captioning in foreign languages. What if I told you that not only was there an easy way around these challenges, but also one that would greatly enhance your SEO, your website visibility, and your potential audience? Learn how to use website translation and localization to skate by your competition and sail on to victory in the race to place first on the SERPs.
In this article we are going to look at some researched statistics and figures regarding languages on the Internet and the benefits of website translation and multilingual marketing campaigns. The reason for this is to understand just how important translation services are to ensure that you completely avoid most of the direct and even indirect competition, no matter what niche you may be involved with online.
Virtually all of the top one hundred languages in the world have more than 10,000,000 speakers according to the Visual Capitalist website. Despite this, 98% of the content on the internet is written in only twelve languages, with more than 50% of all internet content being written only in English. Despite the fact that roughly 1,000,000,000 (or one BILLION with a “B”) people speak English, only about 330,000,000 (Million with an “M”) consider English to be their native language.
Further research into the global expansion of the ecommerce marketplace indicate that some 50% to 60% of people who make purchases online are willing to buy from foreign vendors, but only if they can read information, see videos and even shop in their own languages and purchase items using their own currency according to statistics compiled by Shopify*.
Add these numbers together and you should see by now that a website translation has already bypassed 50% of the content on the internet that will not be indexed in foreign language search engine results pages. There are literally hundreds of millions of people across the world who cannot access information in their own language.
There are also hundreds of millions of potential customers who may already be hungry for your products and services but need a website translation so that they can read, learn and ultimately purchase your products and services in their own language and their own currency.
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In terms of website design, it is easy to believe that those translation plugins and extensions are a perfectly reasonable solution to website translations. Unfortunately, this is not true for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the lack of quality in the website translation.
Even if someone were to develop the perfect WordPress translation plugin today, it would not be enough. Why? Well probably because it would not be perfect even if the translation were flawless. Great, all the visitor has to do is to click on a button and your entire website will be magically transformed with a flawless translation, but how do the visitors find you in the first place?
The answer is that you must use a complete website translation service in order to have the website fully indexed on the foreign language search engine results page. Then at least, you will have the opportunity to get your website out in front of those tens of millions of potential new customers.
Given the expansive lack of any real competition, you should already have a major advantage over virtually all of your competition. However, even this is not enough in terms of website design. While some may think about website translation as a chore, it is also a really great opportunity to use localization services and make your new foreign language audience feel right at home when they get to your website.
The use of a website translation to provide a home for your new foreign language visitors is a great start, and will ensure that you can speak to your extended audience in a language they will understand. But is that enough? Using localization services, you can make a much more personal and direct connection with the new audience, and increase your potential ROI for your online marketing at the same time.
An important part of every successful marketing campaign is building a more personal relationship with the target audience. There is a reason that the advertisements in small towns are different from marketing campaigns in big cities. There is a different mindset, different language, and different visual and emotional cues required to make a personal connection with the target demographic.
Marketing on the internet is no different, and the use of a multilingual website gives you the perfect opportunity to translate more than just the language. You do need to remember that brand consistency is important, and will help to ensure that your brand remains the same, no matter the language. This is one of the tricky parts of website translation and localization for an expanded international audience, though certainly not impossible.
Brand consistency in terms of website design for the website translation and localization, merely means that no matter what languages are used, the brand or website in this case, should remain the same. Things like pictures, advertisements and even the website modules should be the same size and in the same location, even if the contents are different.
Even subconscious triggers can greatly increase the emotional response of the target demographic. Are there pictures of mountain ranges on one site? Can they be replaced with a more famous, more local mountain range in the translated web page?
That picture of all those people sitting around on the ground may look harmless enough, but there are Eastern nations where exposing the sole of the foot is considered to be an insult to the viewer. The picture of the people grilling steaks or hot dogs. Harmless. Right? Except in places where pork products are not consumed or where cattle are considered sacred.
The website translation can speak for you in a language that your foreign language audience will understand, but your localization strategies will be what speaks to their hearts and establishes a more personal connection with them. These added efforts will be especially effective when it comes time to establish your multilingual social media marketing campaign.
Reuters may be best known as a news organization, though they are actually a research and polling firm as well. A report published by Reuters in April of 2019 pointed out many interesting statistics, and some very useful information for website owners.
“Facebook’s 15,000-strong content moderation workforce speaks about 50 tongues, though the company said it hires professional translators when needed. Automated tools for identifying hate speech work in about 30.”
Facebook supports full user access in 111 languages, but Reuters determined that there were 142 languages in common use on the platform. Twitter supports 35 languages and Google supports around 100 languages for users. Yet vast as that may seem, these platforms also have people using additional languages that are not even officially supported.
With around 2,300,000,000 users as far back as April of 2019, and even more today, chances are pretty good that yeah, you should probably not just be advertising, but maintaining active pages on Facebook, not only in your primary language, but also in all of the unique language variations of your website translation.
You may have noted that even Facebook hires professional translators but for many different reasons. It is easy enough to find a translation company that provides localization services as well, and this is generally a much better idea in terms of website translation and multilingual social media marketing.
A professional translation agency that offers localization services will get the translation done properly, on schedule and generally at a very reasonable price. The ability to work with people that also happen to be from the specific geographic areas being targeted by the multilingual website further guarantees that there is a deep and inherent understanding of the local culture. This includes localization of speech and expressions, local cultural views, local sources of provide, and of course, avoiding any cultural taboos that may alienate the foreign speaking visitors to the website.
You should now have much more than just a solid ranking on the foreign language search engine results page. Add the website translation up with the localization services and a multilingual social media marketing campaign, all professionally translated, and you have all the necessary tools to help you create a successful international marketing campaign for your website.
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