Search engine optimisation Archives - sa��ʴ�ý

Understanding Google and language recognition to leverage website localisation

Gonzalo Fernandez — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 11:03:13 +0000

Whenever you open your browser to search for something in Google, you most likely expect to see a list of search results in your own language. As a matter of fact, that’s exactly how Google’s algorithm has been designed to work – in a matter of milliseconds, it identifies a user’s preferred language before displaying a list of search results that is ordered by ranking.��

Language prioritisation is unquestionably a key element in any such user experience. If a user searches for something and Google displays results in different languages, they might assume that there is something amiss in the function of the search engine itself. To identify the user’s language, Google relies on several factors such as past search results, browser settings and geolocation, to name just a few.��

For those of us who work in SEO, marketing or localisation, it’s important to consider that before actually deciding where to rank a page, Google first conducts a real-time analysis on the user’s query to determine their preferred language. In other words, if your website is only available in English, it is unlikely to appear in search results in most other countries around the world.��

Now, if you have decided to invest time and money in translating your content into other languages, this blog sets out a series of technical aspects that may improve the localisation of your website.

URL structure��

The way you structure URLs for your multilingual website can help the user to quickly identify which language they’re using. For instance, if they are browsing the Swedish version of your website, your URL might look something like this…��

www.yourwebsite.com/se/products��
se.yourwebsite.com/products��

… and you can simply switch to alternative URLs to let users know they are in the German version instead.��

www.yourwebsite.com/de/products��
de.yourwebsite.com/products��

The first of these examples used to indicate the language of your website is known as a subdirectory, while the second is called a subdomain. Each method has its own pros and cons, and both ways are widely used across the web.��

	Subdomain	Subdirectory
Advantages	– easy to configure – allows webmaster tools for geotargeting – can use different server locations – easy separation of sites	– easy to configure – allows webmaster tools for geotargeting – low maintenance (same hosting service)
Disadvantages	– users might not recognise geotargeting from the URL alone (is “de” the language or country?)	– users might not recognise geotargeting from the URL alone – single server location separation of sites is more difficult

Don’t let Google index automated translations

As you have probably seen, Google Chrome has a translation function that allows users to machine translate a page into almost any language. The question is, can Google index these automated translations?

The short answer is yes. This doesn’t mean that your site is being translated all the time, though, because Google will only run this function under very specific circumstances:

…If there aren’t enough high-quality and relevant results for a query in the user’s language, Google Search results can include results from pages in other languages, with the title and snippet translated to the language of the user…

Ultimately, when a user clicks on that search result, it will send them to a machine-translated version of your page. But do you really want to present this raw content to potential users?

At Sandberg, we believe that good content is vital to creating confidence in a brand, which is why we recommend blocking Google from indexing automated translations.

How can you do so? You can instruct your web master to add a directive called the “notranslate” attribute that looks like this: . Implementing this on your website will mean that Google cannot automatically translate your pages.

hreflang tag

The hreflang tag is an HTML attribute and another key component in technical SEO localisation. You can use this tag to tell Google how a webpage should be geographically and linguistically targeted.

A hreflang tag is built using the following variables:

Language	The supported language code comes from the ISO 639-1 classification list.
Extended language tag	In some cases, the language tag can be extended using subtags. For example: – zh-yue: Cantonese Chinese – ar-afb: Gulf Arabic
Script	In other cases, the language tag can be extended using a script – a subtag introduced in RFC-46464, derived from the ISO 15924 classification list. For example: – uz-Cyrl: Uzbek in Cyrillic script – uz-Latn: Uzbek in Latin script
Region	Region codes are taken from the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 list and along with the language tag.
Variant	The variant subtag can be used to indicate dialects, or script variations that aren’t covered by the language, extended language tag or region tag.
Extension	Extension subtags allow for the language tag to be extended, for example by using the extension tag “u”, which has been registered by the Unicode Consortium to add information about the language or locale behaviour.

The tag should always follow the following format:

{language}-{extlangtag}-{script}-{region}-{variant}-{extension}

The most popular formulation of this attribute contains just two variables:

{language}-{region}

When implemented correctly, it should look something like this:

As it is easy to make mistakes when implementing hreflang tags on your site, we recommend using this trusty

Which homepage for your international users?

This question is particularly pertinent for big companies operating across multiple countries and languages. In this context, most companies have already localised their website into multiple languages, so the decision here relates to what exactly you should present to a potential user.

If a user based in the US opens Google and enters apple.com, does that necessarily mean they want to see the US English version of this webpage? It’s possible that they are local but actually require the Spanish or Chinese version, or perhaps they are a tourist looking for information in a language from further afield.

Ultimately, you’ll need to decide how to handle language selection and recognition for your homepage. There are different ways of formulating this very important page on your website:

Show all users the same content

Let users choose their preferred country/language

Serve the content based on their location/language settings

Showing the same content globally

If you open a private browser and go to you will be redirected to Apple’s international homepage. But as you can see, their site is intelligent enough to detect where you’re from and suggest a more appropriate version for you.

Letting the user choose their preferred language/country

If you go for this option, a country/language selector will be presented on your homepage for the user to choose which content they want to see.

Serving content based on the user’s settings

The third option involves serving content to your users depending on their location and language settings. If you open a browser and go to , you’ll most probably be automatically redirected to the local version of that site.

In this article, we’ve dived into the depths of website localisation, demonstrating how language recognition plays an essential role in the structural framework of an international website.

Just as your tongue can become twisted when you speak multiple languages, the same could happen to your website if you don’t consider this technical side of SEO.

If you’re about to send your web content for translation or have already built a global website but are unsure of how it performs across languages and regions, we recommend double-checking the points we’ve listed with a localisation expert.

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5 reasons to invest in international SEO for the Nordic market

Christina Bjerggaard — Thu, 15 Oct 2020 13:47:58 +0000

As an established company with an online presence, odds are you already know what search engine optimisation (SEO) is. You might also have an existing SEO strategy that is thoroughly implemented on the landing pages of your website. It drives the traffic you need to bring customers and your products together, and you’re delighted with the value that it adds to your business.

But what about your non-English landing pages? Say you’re seeking to expand your business to the Nordic market – would you be just as diligent about applying SEO to your localised content?

If you choose to skip the SEO stage when localising your website, you risk missing out on great business opportunities. Partnering with a specialist company to handle the entire process of translating and search-engine optimising your content, on the other hand, enables you to seize that opportunity, giving your customers the best possible experience at the same time.

But don’t just take our word for it! Here are 5 reasons why you should invest in international SEO for the Nordic market.

? What is SEO, and why is it important?

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the practice of optimising webpage content with the aim of improving the webpage ranking in organic search engine results.

A good ranking in Google’s search results means that your webpage will be spotted before your competitors’, increasing the likelihood that users will visit your site and buy your specific products or services.

There are several roads to SEO of a website, one of them being the implementation of select keywords into the body copy of a landing page. These keywords are chosen based on a number of factors, e.g. how often users search for them in search engines and the competition from other pages using the same keyword.

Want to know more about SEO and how it’s implemented in a multilingual context? Have a read of our Beginner’s guide to multilingual SEO.

1. Customers tend to search for products and services in their own language

You may be wondering if it’s necessary to translate your content into the Nordic languages in the first place. After all, people in the Nordic countries generally have excellent English-language skills. While high English-language proficiency across the Nordic region has been documented by multiple studies, it doesn’t necessarily mean that your Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish customers prefer to do their online searches in English.

In fact, showed that 42% of EU respondents never use other languages when searching for products and services online. It does make sense when you think about it. Shopping for products or services on foreign sites might mean costly shipping and prolonged delivery times – or services not being available in the user’s home country – and who has time for searches with outcomes like those?

When it comes to targeting the Nordic market, communicating with consumers in their own language can give you that edge. If you choose to optimise your localised content for search engines, you’ll be able to effectively connect with your intended audience and engage with them in a way that could result in new business for you.

2. Localising keywords means less competition in search results

The fact that your Nordic audience is more likely to search for products and services in their own language makes it worth publishing SEO-friendly translations of your web content. But did you know that this also means filtering out competition in Google search results?

Let’s take an example. Imagine typing the words backlit keyboard into Google’s search bar and hitting enter. If you do, you get 54.5 million hits and a massive variety of pages giving you the option to buy backlit keyboards, watch how-to videos about backlit keyboards or read articles on which backlit keyboard is the best. Picture a company using this term as a keyword in search-optimised text on their landing page. The amount of competition from other web pages would be huge, and it would take a great effort for the landing page to rank near the top of the search results.

By search-engine optimising your translated content, you can drown out the background noise of your competition significantly. Consider the Danish equivalent of our English keyword above: baggrundsbelyst tastatur. When searching for this keyword on Google, you get just 385,000 hits – a mere fraction of the 54.5 million from your first search. Of course, the audience is much smaller as well, but it’s a higher-quality audience tailored to the market you’re targeting. Better to be a big fish in a small pond in this case.

Because of the widespread use of English on the internet, using localised keywords is an effective strategy to segment your target audience and reduce competition from other pages in the search engine results, making your products and services more visible to online customers.

3. SEO and localisation build brand credibility

As a business, having a trusted brand is crucial for generating revenue. Your products or services may be the best, but if your brand is suffering your customers might turn their backs and head to your competitors.

Localising your online content and making sure that it’s thoroughly optimised gives your customers a better user experience, meaning they can easily find what they’re looking for and read about it in their own language. Making your content easily accessible to your customers in this way leaves them feeling good about your brand and more likely to buy your products or services.

The impact of this effort is particularly appreciated in the Nordic countries, where some international companies don’t bother with localisation. Making the investment demonstrates to your Nordic customers that you value their business, and helps you stand out from international competitors that might not be as committed to the region.

4. SEO drives a higher conversion rate than traditional marketing channels

If you thought that SEO was an inadequate tool, that channels an insignificant number of extra leads to your website, you might want to read this. that SEO’ed online content drives a conversion rate of a whopping 14.6%, as opposed to the 1.7% conversion rate from traditional marketing channels such as print ads and direct mail. This means that the number of leads coming to a website from SEO that go on to make a purchase is more than 8 times higher than those from traditional strategies.

The explanation for this is simple. SEO, being a “pull” rather than a “push” strategy, generates leads that are already interested in knowing more and may already wish to buy a certain product or service. So, publishing SEO-friendly translations of your online content is an efficient way of leveraging an existing interest in defined customer segments and boost revenue faster than traditional marketing strategies.

5. International SEO as a service is a convenient end-to-end solution

Using search-engine optimised translations of your online content certainly has its benefits, but maybe you’re convinced that it’s better to keep this task in-house and let your own employees handle it? You might be tempted to believe that this will save you both money and time, but letting a specialised company perform the task will in fact do exactly that – in addition to being a convenient end-to-end solution.

In our recent article 6 reasons why you shouldn’t rely on your own employees for translation, we explained why translation is a specialist skill which, when performed incorrectly, could cause more harm than good. The same applies to international SEO, where picking the wrong keyword could mean your efforts fail to bear fruit. Choosing a specialised company to translate and optimise your online content:

Is highly convenient for you,
Yields a high-quality result, and
Allows for tailoring to your exact needs.

Let’s take a closer look at these three points.

Firstly, performing international SEO can be a struggle for untrained non-specialists. Navigating various advanced online tools and honing in on the right keywords is not easy unless you have the skills and know-how to do it. Handing over the reins to a translation company means that you avoid that hassle whilst trained professionals manage your task.

Secondly, choosing a translation company for the job means choosing professional translators, who not only have the education and training to deliver high-quality translation, but also the cultural expertise to help select the right keywords for your content.

Thirdly, a translation company can tailor your international SEO to your exact needs, whether you need an extensive search-engine optimised transcreation of your content or already have a list of keywords to be implemented in a text.

All things considered, investing in international SEO for the Nordic market yields numerous benefits and could be your leg-up into the Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish markets. Want to know more about what Sandberg can offer? Take a look at our Multilingual marketing and ISEO services page.

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A beginner’s guide to multilingual SEO

Gonzalo Fernandez — Thu, 29 Aug 2019 10:00:00 +0000

We all know that web pages aren’t written for search engines – they’re meant for people. Findability is not an end in itself: it’s simply a means of bringing more readers through to your landing pages and blog posts. Yet we all know from our own experience of searching for things online that if something doesn’t appear on the first page of the search results, then it may as well not exist. (SEO) helps your pages rank highly in search results, giving them the visibility they need for potential readers to find them easily.

Visibility is only one aspect of boosting your online presence, however. Finding the right balance for content that ranks highly on search engines but is also engaging, visually appealing and business-focused is a team effort, involving SEO experts, digital marketers, content specialists and managers.

If your website’s only in one language, then your work is more or less done. But what if your website is in multiple languages for different markets, or if you’re targeting English speakers from different countries? If that’s the case, then you can add a localisation specialist to the list of professionals above.

In this article, we’ll look at how to localise your search engine strategy if you’re planning to expand your business, using examples from the English-speaking world and the Nordic region.

Regional variations within the same language

The amount of SEO effort you need to put into your website depends primarily on the volume of content you create, although it depends on your business strategy too. It’s one thing selling products or services for English-speaking people in the US, but a whole different beast if your target market includes the UK too.

Let’s take the example of fictional online clothing retailer “YourStyle”. It’s important to rank highly for the word pants��in the US and trousers in the UK (the word pants��in the UK typically refers to underwear). Like SEO, localisation is also about understanding the user’s intent – in this case purely from a language perspective.

To check whether you’ve made the right wording choice, it’s always useful to double-check on a search engine. A good way to do this is with a VPN, which allows you to simulate an internet connection in any country. The image below shows a search for pants on the US version of Google:

You can confirm trousers��is indeed the word you need to target the British market just by looking at the results Google offers. In both examples, Google offers images of the right product and links to retailers that searchers can click through to make a purchase.

SEO across multiple languages

Let’s return to YourStyle, our fictional clothing retailer. They’re looking to expand to new markets after a successful launch in the UK. Market research finds that consumers in the Nordic countries have significant spending power and represent the next big opportunity for YourStyle.

A common strategic mistake when entering the Nordic market is to assume that English will do – after all many Nordic people speak excellent English. The reality is that growing your business in this region requires you to build up an online presence in the local languages: Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish. If YourStyle really wants to truly penetrate this market, the old adage of speaking the language of your customers undoubtedly applies.

Here are some tips for properly localising your SEO strategy.

1. Think topics first, keywords second

There’s now broad consensus that individual keywords on your website aren’t what rank you highly: it’s about producing the best content with a dynamic range of terms and contexts on a specific topic. As SEO shifts towards this topic-based model, it’s important to define before defining your keywords.

In essence, the topic-cluster model – popularised by – is a way of organising content on your website so that search engines know you’re an authority on that specific subject. The model is built around a central pillar page (which acts as a “content hub” for a single topic) and multiple content pages on the same topic that link back to the pillar page and to each other.

If you’ve already built your content with the topic-cluster methodology in your source language, then you’re off to a good start. The question then becomes one of which pages to localise. Many companies choose to translate only their pillar pages, which may seem like an obvious move as that’s where most conversions take place. But this doesn’t help your overall multilingual SEO strategy. The right approach is to translate all the pages in the cluster and replicate your SEO efforts in your source language in your target one.

2.��On-page keyword planning

Once you’ve got a clear understanding of which topics you want to become an authority on, you can start planning and analysing on-page keywords. If you’ve done your research properly, you will have chosen your keywords in your source language using the following criteria:

Search volume:��Search volume is a measure of the total number of searches made through a search engine expressed as the average monthly volume over the previous 12-month period. Search volume data is a crucial, fundamental element of your SEO strategy. If you’re localising your website from English into the Nordic languages, you can expect search volume to be lower: the combined population of the Nordic countries is around 24 million. On the contrary, if you’re localising in the other direction (into English), search volume can increase exponentially. But search volume alone says nothing if you don’t use it together with other metrics such as keyword difficulty.

Locale	Keyword	Search volume	Competition
English (US & UK)	e-commerce platform	1,300	High
Swedish (Sweden)	e-handelsplattformen	390	High
Norwegian (Norway)	netthandelsplattformen	10	Medium
Finnish (Finland)	verkkokauppa-alusta	260	High
Danish (Denmark)	e-handelsplatform	10	Medium
Icelandic (Iceland)	netverslunarkerfi	10	Low

Source: Google Keyword Planner

Keyword difficulty: Determining the difficulty of a specific keyword requires understanding the level of competition. What pages are currently at the top of the rankings? What kind of content are they offering? Can you offer something better? SEO experts usually take a look at SERP (search engine result pages) history to know if competition at the top is too tight or if there a window of opportunity.

It might seem logical that if you can’t offer better content than those top pages, then that keyword is probably too difficult for you. That might be the case for English – but not for your other locales. The top results in your different locales are unlikely to feature the same sites as they do in English. It’s worth bearing in mind that , so naturally there’s a great deal more competition for English keywords. Analysing the SERP history for translations of your keywords can open up opportunities to shoot to the top of the rankings more quickly.

Search intent: Your webpage might be perfectly optimised and still not rank as highly as you want it to. Sometimes it’s not just about getting the core parts of SEO right, but also about understanding users’ search intent, i.e. what exactly it is they’re trying to achieve with their search.

What does this mean in practice? Google is now capable of evaluating your website’s user experience and uses this data to tweak its rankings. Let’s imagine you have two pages – both perfectly optimised – but one offers a free trial while the other doesn’t. It’s highly likely that the page with a free trial will rank more highly over time. , SEMrush addresses this topic in detail.

It’s vital to remember that search intent and user experience can be as culturally relative as language. In some countries, it’s not realistic to expect every customer to enter their credit card details to start a free trial. In the Nordic countries, a good strategy is to not overburden your pages with triggers and banners: a minimalistic approach that embraces negative space is likely to be more effective.

3.��Text expansion and contraction

There are some technical aspects to search engine optimisation. One example is the character limit for SEO attributes like title tags or meta descriptions – Google typically displays the first 50–60 characters of a title tag and 155–160 for the meta description.

Even if you’ve done an excellent job with your keywords in English, one of the issues you need to consider when translating the text from English into other languages is text expansion and contraction. These are two common concepts in translation and refer to the phenomenon of text getting longer or shorter when translated into a different language. When text is translated from English into Nordic languages, it usually becomes a bit longer and could potentially exceed the recommended limits for these SEO attributes.

Below, we show how a and can expand and contract. These are our examples in English:

Title tag: The best e-commerce platform for small businesses (49 characters)

Meta description: We’re not just an e-commerce app – we’re the best e-commerce platform that has everything you need to sell online, on social media or face-to-face. (147 characters)

And here is the example translated into Swedish and Finnish:

	Translation	Character difference
Swedish	Den bästa e-handelsplattformen för småföretag	-4
Swedish	Vi är inte bara en app för e-handel – vi är den bästa e-handelsplattformen med allt du behöver för försäljning online, på sociala medier eller direkt till kunden.	+15
Finnish	Paras verkkokauppa-alusta pienimuotoiseen liiketoimintaan	+8
Finnish	Enemmän kuin verkkokauppasovellus – paras verkkokauppa-alusta, joka tarjoaa kaiken, mitä tarvitset myyntiisi verkossa, sosiaalisessa mediassa tai kasvotusten.	+11

Here the Swedish actually used slightly fewer characters than the English, whereas Finnish needed more.

Key points

Generally speaking, the key to a successful multilingual SEO strategy boils down to two things: content volume and language diversity.

Ensure your SEO architecture in your source language is well structured before starting to localise it. Review Hubspot’s topic cluster theory to check whether you’re on the right track.
When picking content for translation, try to choose pillar pages and pillar content from the same clusters to increase your chances of ranking highly in your target languages.
Remember keyword difficulty varies by language, and thus the chances of you ranking at the very top of the search results.
Optimise traditional SEO elements and localise your keywords with search volume and character length in mind.
Partner with localisation specialists to make sure your keywords are translated with an understanding of how search intent works in the target culture.

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Search engine optimisation Archives - sa���ʴ�ý