Last Updated on April 16, 2024 by Umer Malik
There is no doubt that an optimized multilingual website is the most important tool in your toolbox as you expand your business into new territories. More than 80% of consumers worldwide shop online – and many more use the Internet to find information and do research. Having a website that meets the needs of a new audience is very important.
If you ignore multilingual SEO when developing a multilingual website, these new users will not find you. Follow our guide to build your website – match top SEO!
Table of Contents
Choose between domains, subdomains, and folders
Country-specific domains are not always available (eg example.fr in France and example.co.uk in the UK). The advantage of using subdomains or repositories is that they are easy to set up and maintain, and allow you to use existing domains and web infrastructure. That is, it only works if:
Your primary domain name is an international domain name (for example, ending in .net or .com).
Be a foreign brand or theme (hotels work well in many languages, many words lose all their meaning if not translated).
You don’t use slang words like sk8er or product-4-u. These are often difficult to translate because the numbers sound completely different in other languages.
Google tries to treat all options equally, but it is very important that every page on your site has a different URL for each language. If a page has only one URL and it uses cookies to change the language, you will fail. This is because Google will only index one version of the page (instead of indexing the page for every language it appears in). It also means that other translations are invisible to search engines – and luckily-cannot be found.
How the link building works in different systems
Perhaps the biggest advantage of using folders on subdomains or different domains is that the awesome backlinks you build will have an impact on everything on your website.
For example, let’s say you have a backlink from a French website to a French blog about making croissants at example.com/fr/croissants. The presence of this backlink will improve the quality of content in other languages on your site, making SEO easier.
That’s because Google still thinks the site is part of your main domain, and treats subdomains as separate sites. That said, Google does take into account the language and country of incoming links. For example, if your website of apparel and clothing only has links in English, it will be difficult to get ranking in European countries. Having more external links (for example, if your site is available in ten languages) also means that the “link juice” is spread across the entire directory.
Choose your CMS wisely
Your CMS (also known as a Content Management System) is a software program that allows you to create a website without entering into computer code. Just a few years ago, creating a website was a complex process that no novice could complete. Fortunately, things have changed and now even those who are technologically challenged can give it a chance. (But don’t panic – the day has yet to come when computers are so sophisticated that they will develop their own brains…!)
The right CMS allows you to easily manage and edit your website. Uploading content and managing who can see it should be easy. There are various options out there, many of which allow us to maintain and update high-quality websites using a computer.
The popular CMS WordPress started out as a platform for aspiring bloggers, but it has come a long way since then. In fact, it is estimated that more than a quarter of the world’s websites use WordPress. It is easy to use and intuitive, allowing you to create a website quickly.
Joomla is also a popular choice, but it is a little more complex than WordPress and has fewer themes and plugins. Drupal is a good choice for people with some web development knowledge, and ideal if you want to create a complex site that handles a lot of data.
If your first website of beauty and personal care is not in the CMS above, first find out if it is multilingual. If so, it would be better to keep the same CMS you are currently using. If not, it’s also easy to convert your original site to a different CMS and use a shared database for all languages. This means that updates to one site can be easily applied to other sites, while having a separate CMS system results in work twice as long.
Tips for improving SEO
Now you have a website designed for your new audience, but how do you make sure you can find it? Creating SEO for a new and different culture can seem like a minefield when you consider all the factors to consider.
These include:
Find the best words to use in your target language
Tip: You can’t translate words you use in English into the target language! Sometimes English can be used, usually when the subject is scientific or technical. Other times, there may be different traditional words that produce the best results in the language you’re looking for. Use keyword tools like Semrush or Ahrefs to find the best keywords for your target country.
Consider local habits
Different people do different things, and for multilingual SEO, it is important to understand the characteristics of your audience. That means you need to understand how new customers use the Internet. For example, some cultures use social media more than others; others avoid certain sites completely (did you know that, for example, in Germany, Twitter is used more frequently than others?) Finally, spend time Knowing how new your dreams are.
Don’t forget meta tags
In addition to translating your website, make sure you translate all meta tag titles and descriptions. These small words that are often overlooked are important because they can have a big impact on where you appear in search results, and, moreover, they are the first impression of your users on your website. Making sure that you have a high ranking in search results is good and good, if you keep your meta tags in English, your users will click elsewhere.
