This article is updated regularly. It was last updated in January 2022!
In this article, we are going to show you all of the steps that you can take to ensure that more than 99 percent of all of the content on the internet no longer competes with you in any fashion. Does that sound like an outrageous claim? It will not after you get done reading.
In fact, we are going to show you how to use translation to build an ecommerce empire with very little competition and literally hundreds of millions of hungry, largely unrepresented people, many of whom are probably looking specifically for products or services like those that you have to offer.
Statistics from VisualCapitalist show that about 60% of websites on the internet are in English. However, English speakers comprise only 16.2% of internet users! Meanwhile, 14.3% of users primarily speak Chinese, but only 1.4% of websites are in this language.
In fact, only the top 12 languages even take up at least 1% of the share of languages in use online! In short, less than one percent of the content on the internet is common for many languages and part of the reason you need a multilingual digital marketing campaign in place.
Moving away from any of these 12 languages ensures that less than one percent of the content on the entire internet will be directly competing with your content. However, it is still very important to ensure that the search engines will index all of your content. In this case, the first step is the creation of a multilingual website.
There are approximately 85 languages that have more than ten million native speakers and 23 languages with more than fifty million native speakers. Many of these languages comprise less than one percent of the content on the internet. The end result is literally hundreds of millions of potential new followers with very little, if any direct competition online.
Would it be easier to rank on the front page of the search engine results page if 99 percent of your competition was gone completely?
Translation Services for Multilingual Marketing
There are many free translation apps, plugins, and extensions that will “instantly” (but not usually accurately) translate a website. While this may seem like a very tempting and viable solution, it is sadly lacking in two very important areas. The translation of the website will not be indexed by the search engines and it will not directly target a foreign-language audience.
It is important to remember that the extended audience is a foreign-language audience. “The entire point of a complete translation of a website using professional translation services is to ensure a complete and accurate translation of the website,” says William Mamane, the Chief Marketing Officer of Tomedes, a translation services company with expertise in translating for websites and marketing projects “In this way, the translated pages are fully indexed by the search engine and the foreign language audience can find the website so they can become customers.”
While it may sound obvious once heard, many people do not realize that foreign language speakers are not always going to be searching Google in English. In fact, if their search is conducted in a foreign language, Google will generally limit the search results to the same language as far as it is possible.
Even if there were to be a translation app or plugin that were able to make a perfect translation for a site, it would not result in foreign-language web pages that can be indexed by the search engines. While there are certainly other means to gather visitors to a website, what benefit does it serve if there is nothing there to keep them on the website once they arrive?
It is extremely important to be able to speak to people in their own language, but there is much more to a successful digital marketing campaign than language translation services. Ask any professional marketer and they will likely explain to you that marketing is all about talking to people from the heart and establishing a personal connection with them.
Working With Professional Translation Services for a Wider Online Reach
Professional translation services are preferable as they will ensure that there is an accurate and complete translation that serves both the search engines and the audience equally well.
This is extremely important in terms of marketing as it will help to determine how effective your online marketing campaign will be for attracting a new, more international audience. In terms of rural environments and urban centers, the marketing campaign will be different based on the particulars of the audience being marketed. This same effect is magnified when focusing across different countries, even in cases where the same parent language is common between the two nations.
For example; the Portuguese translation can serve as a general store front, focusing on Brazilian variations of Portuguese. With more than two hundred million native speakers, Brazil is the largest native Portuguese speaking nation. Thus, the website with a Portuguese translation focuses primarily on the largest audience, though it should remain accessible to anyone with a working knowledge of Portuguese.
In the case of email campaigns, geographically targeted Google ads and other more highly focused and precise marketing campaigns, the language and associated content can be tweaked to be more specific to the target markets. This same concept also plays a role in making changes to the website design.
Brand consistency is equally important and should be considered when making design changes on multilingual websites. It is important to include photographs and illustrations the same size on the different pages, advertisements in the same locations and sizes, all adjusted for the translation of text to remain the same size.
The pictures or illustrations for the website may also be changed accordingly based on any specific cultural or historical beliefs or restrictions of the target audience or even more limited segments within population groups.
All of these aspects should come together to form a solid foundation for the audience when you bring them to your website. However, there are more virtually untapped markets for your multilingual ecommerce campaign above and beyond the search engines where competition has essentially been removed from the path.
Translation Services and Multilingual Social Media Marketing Campaigns
The third figure shows that Facebook supports about 111 languages, but the article the infographic was found in discloses that more than 140 languages are commonly used on the social media website. These audiences are prevalent even on English-native social media platform but many have their own social media websites as well. So prevalent are some of these sites that HootSuite has put out an excellent list of very popular, non-English social media platforms.
YouTube is the second most popular website on the internet, though only the second or third largest search engine on the internet today. Both YouTube and Amazon have internal search engines and are in a constant battle for second place behind the Google search engine. Video marketing has also been shown to be an important part of successful digital marketing campaigns online.
Starting at the top, it is important to look at YouTube and how to get noticed on YouTube. The idea of making separate videos for every targeted language may be overwhelming, and with good reason. As you will see here, the solution is quite simple and the use of video translation services can provide you with the necessary tools to get your video marketing campaign out in front of a much larger audience.
The transcription of a video can be used to create the basis for a video translation into virtually any language. The video transcription can be used to create srt files that the search engines will index, meaning that the videos will rank well for more keywords in all of the relevant languages.
This is just as true for the YouTube search engine as it is for Google. The end result is a better chance of having your video marketing campaign readily visible to a much wider audience, and an increased visibility for your website, your products and services.
Combine all of these processes together, and maybe get a little creative with your multi-purposed content in more than one or two languages and yes, you can create a very successful international marketing campaign online. There are literally hundreds of millions of viewers, hungry for content in their own languages, and many who are probably looking for whatever it is you may be selling online.
As with all good things though, you really do need to actively engage in business marketing translation now as English will not always remain so prevalent on the internet as it is today. If you are interested in building a long-term, successful international business online, you should actively engage translation services for marketing so that you can rank well on the foreign language search engine results page today.
As an increasing number of translation tools become available for internet marketers, and increasing number of translation projects for websites will increase the levels of competition. Using translation services to ensure your place on the foreign language search engine results page now will also help you to retain those top spots on the SERP even as the languages do gain an increasing presence online.
