William Yates
Website visibility is critical to any online enterprise. It’s an absolute given, and this applies as much to local language export – e-export – websites as it does to any domiciled web presence you may have.
Because, without that vital visibility any e-export website and associated marketing communications will almost certainly be rendered ineffective, or at best inefficient. This means that local language on-page search engine optimization is critical to your e-export success.
The need for cultural chameleonism
This means there is a critical requirement for local language on-page SEO. But this requirement goes way beyond simple literal translation of your existing, domiciled content as, whatever else happens, you will need to engage culturally – in other words, fully – with your target audience.
It was Stephen Hawking who said: ‘We are all different. There is no such thing as a standard or run-of-the-mill human being, but we share the same human spirit’. This is profoundly true in terms of individual target engagement, and on a multi-cultural level it has equal and critical resonance.
Flag semaphore in the darkness
So how to achieve visibility, cultural resonance and target engagement? Translating a few select key phrases in your domiciled website in an attempt to search optimise your e-export sites is a bit like doing flag semaphore in the dark. It will be slow, no one will see it, no one will engage with it. You need powerful target market engagement, and this means cultural resonance.
Last week I covered the critical need for target market research in e-export website and content development.
If this is undertaken effectively, the research will render the information you need to nail all the cultural touch points you require to optimize market penetration.
Culturally-driven SEO
How? In commissioning research for the development of culturally focused content for use in local language websites, we always specify a key phrase usage review, so that we have instant access to a robust portfolio of local SEO material.
This simply means we ask our researchers to ask target respondents what key search terms they would use in a given situation.
What this allows is for our subject matter expert marketing content developers to introduce on-page SEO as marketing content is developed, making e-export site roll-out fast and efficient. This SEO data is also used in navigation, links and various tag systems.
This may sound complicated and expensive. If managed properly it isn’t, and this level of appropriate preparation optimizes investment returns.
Killer assumptions
Google may be the most popular search engine in the world. But if your e-export target is the Russian market, then Yandex is most popular in this region and if you’re targeting China, Baidu is big in-market. Never make assumptions, they can prove very expensive.
Commissioning a digital agency with transnational expertise can help prevent many of the costly consequences of unguided market entry. In fact, an experienced digital agency can actually save you money. Next week we will cover how to repurpose digital assets for local market use.
This post was originally published on the Novacom blog.
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