Multilingual SEO: Stop Playing Soccer When The Rest of The World is Playing Football

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Eli Schwartz is the Online Marketing Manager for SurveyMonkey, the world's largest online survey company. He oversees all SEO efforts and strategies on SurveyMonkey properties across 16 languages. SurveyMonkey serves over 20 million customers worldwide, including 99% of the Fortune 500, and collects over two million online survey responses daily.

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• Why International SEO

• Size of opportunity• Keyword research• Content creation

What percentage of your time do you focus on search optimization

efforts for

What percentage of your time do you focus on search optimization

efforts for

Google vs Bing

Internet Users Around the World

Source:internetlivestats.com/

So, focusing on the US only could be as shortsighted as…

Languages Spoken Around the WorldEnglish (Primary & Secondary)

Source:ethnologue.com/

Ecommerce Spend Around the World

Source:Emarketer.com

Look at Current Traffic in GA

There are likely international visitors that are not as satisfied

Ecommerce

• Based in China

• Primary customer base is in China

• Has an English language interface

• 24k employees

• $7.5 Billion Revenue in 2013 (WSJ)

• In 2013 did more transaction volume than eBay + Amazon

Social Media

• 250 million accounts

• #22 worldwide on Alexa

• Popular in Russian speaking countries

• Already has English language interface

• Founded in Germany

• Started with European customers

• Expanded into US customers by localizing offering

• Newly opened office in Silicon Valley

International SEO isn’t so Hard (or

Costly)

• ccTLD vs subdomain vs subdirectory

• HREFLANG• Local Hosting• Local Links• Local Trust Symbols• Mobile

Don’t Machine Translate

Google can recognize machine translated content AND you will

offend real users

Optimize (Optimise) for What People

Spelling Correction is Not

as Robust

Google.com

Google.fr (France)

Synonym Matching in

English

Near identical results for both terms

Synonym Matching in

German (Google.de)

Both terms mean “Customer Survey” and user intent is similar

Prepositions in English

In English, prepositions cause only minor differences (except in specific

cases)

Prepositions in Portuguese

(Google.com.br)

Other languages have much larger differences

Basic Special Characters

Matter

Special character usage changes results

• Slashed O• Umlauts• Accents

“Did you mean” but results are

unchanged

Compound (Concatenation)

Phrases can be broken by a space, dash or concatenated as one word

Same Language Different

Meanings: “Char”

Quebec France

It’s Not Just International: Pop vs Soda

Even within one country we have different ways of referring to the same exact thing

Adwords Tool is NOT the Starting

In English, you might just go to Adwords Keyword Tool and call it a day

Internationally, just blindly trusting search volume will give you a weak keyword

foundation

Understand Keyword

Weaknesses

None of these are relevant to

SurveyMonkey’s Business

Square One: Learn Just One

Word…

Start Googling

Search the just discovered keyword in your target language AND country

Search Translation

Alternatives Too

Some of these might be the

better keyword

Two Tabbed Searching:

Translate vs Original

Use Chrome’s automatic translation

Search Translations To Get Right Word

As in English, not all translations will be relevant to your business

Add Keyword Modifiers to

Translate

Adding a modifier gives Google Translate context around the word.

Without modifiers, Translate had suggested the Spanish word “estudio” as the correct

translation.

Some Translations Are Very INCORRECT

Attempted to use a modifier to learn primary keyword

Google’s suggested translation was a xxx term

Look at Number of Results for

Google.fi (Finland)

Low number of results means you are on the wrong track

View All Search Competitors in

Two Tabs

Spanish OriginalEnglish

Translation via Chrome

Use Chrome’s automatic translation• View each competitor site to find

keywords• Look at the English to find important

keywords• Compare words to original and add

translated word to keywords worksheet in a spreadsheet

Don’t Forget About Popular Slang Terms

Google.de (Germany)

Means “Sunday Poll” which is

what Germans call a Political Poll

Use Knowledge Graph to Learn

Intent (US)

Google.com

Search word is Italian word

“piazza”Knowledge graph shows Piazza as a company and an

Italian square

Knowledge Graph Brazil

Google.com

“piazza”Knowledge graph shows Piazza as a soccer player in

Brazil

Knowledge Graph Germany

Google.de (Germany)

Search word isItalian word

“piazza”Knowledge graph shows Piazza as

Piazza Navona – a popular tourist spot

in Rome

Knowledge Graph Italy

Google.it (Italy)

“piazza”Knowledge graph is

Look Up Search Volume of

Keyword List

Once you have a large list of keywords:• Paste in all keywords into Google Keyword Planner• Download results in a CSV• Search translations in Google Translate

Buddy Up With a Native

Native speakers will tell you which keywords are actually correct

Translate Existing Content

Make Sure Your Translations Make Sense

Double Check Translation Work

Keywords Need to Be Culturally

Relevant

Leverage Keyword Data

into New Content

Google Trends

Trends data is available for many years in multiple countries

Trends data is available for many years in multiple

countries

YouTube Worldwide

Look for Popular videos

Twitter Trends

Twitter trends will show popular topics for nearly any country

SurveyMonkey Audience

Learn From the Data and Update

5 Things to Remember

1.Huge growth potential with international search

2.Focus on keywords3.Watch out for cultural

nuances4.Continue to grow

content

5. Don’t be Lazy!!!