The creation of a multilingual site makes it possible to promote its activities outside the national territory. This kind of international expansion is, in the majority of cases, vital to develop its turnover & here comes a need to translate keywords.

But before thinking about the numbers, there is one essential aspect to think about: the translation of your website. Far from being a detail, only a good translation of the keywords will allow you to increase your visibility in the target countries.

Table of Contents

• Keywords: an essential basis in digital marketing
• Why do you need to translate keywords?
• How do you find the right keywords for each version of a multilingual site?

Keywords: an essential basis in digital marketing

Regardless of the language in which the site is designed, keywords remain a SEO base essential. It is thanks to them that Internet users and crawler robots will land on your pages provided they are well optimized.

If you have a monolingual site, you have surely studied closely the expressions on which you will rank for each of your pages. This same concept must be kept when the site becomes multilingual, but the key terms used for the parent site must be translated correctly for the other versions. At this stage, it may be necessary to hire a website translation agency in order to avoid word-for-word translations.

Why do you need to translate keywords?

It’s not just the keywords you’ll need to translate, but the entire parent site. If the latter was published in French and you now want to set up in the United Kingdom, it is logical that the site consulted by the English is in their native language. Translation is therefore imperative, but beware, there is translation and SEO translation.

The first is to translate the content globally into another language while the second is to translate keywords & website while thinking SEO. We must not forget that a site is above all a digital marketing platform. It is through it that you will awaken the attention of your targets, communicate, sell, retain and make yourself known.

It is therefore important that the whole be focused on marketing and who says online marketing says SEO.

It is in this context that the SEO translation is installed since it consists in editing a new version of the site according to the language of the target country, but not only. Must also take into account the local culture, the location and the proximity of certain languages.

For example, if your site sells refrigerators and you target two countries with very similar languages ​​like Brazil and Portugal, you will not use the same term to refer to the product, even if both speak Portuguese. On the Brazilian version of the site, the refrigerator will be “geladeira” while on the Portuguese version, it will become “frigorifico”.

The two should not be confused, as the term “frigorifico” is not well known to Brazilians and if you use it to promote the site there, it is unlikely to appear in search results. In Portugal, on the other hand, the term “geladeira” could make you appear in the SERPs, but following requests from people looking for a freezer and not a refrigerator.

In other words, your site will still be useless to them since it offers them a product that does not correspond to the one they are looking for.

How do you find the right keywords for each version of a multilingual site?

For your international expansion campaign to be successful, you must entrust the translation of the site to professionals. They must have a good knowledge of the translation language, but not only that. They must as well know the local culture to avoid misunderstandings and sometimes even the use of inappropriate jargon.

The objective here is to address the inhabitants of the target country using their own words and especially taking into account the requests they make on the web. We must indeed keep in mind that they too, to do research on the web, they will enter keywords and these are obviously in their everyday language. The translator must therefore consult them and use the vouchers depending on the context.

Apart from using the keyword generator tools, the SEO translation professional can also use other applications like the WPML plugin for WordPress integrated with translation service providers for automate the translation flow. Its main mission is to ensure that the content of the site has meaning for the targeted Internet users while improving your positioning in the SERPs of the targeted country.

He must slip into the shoes of a native to find and use the right expressions, because only in this way will your digital marketing strategy will bear fruit. Remember that to a large extent the multilingual site aims to increase your customer portfolio and make more sales and therefore profit.

But to get there, you have to get into the good graces of your buyer personas, seduce them and establish your expertise with them. Efficient translation is the foundation of all of this, because in order to get people to take action, you must first make yourself understood. And to make yourself understood, you must first take an interest in their lifestyle, expectations, behavior and culture in order to offer them products or services that meet their needs.