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WEBINAR OVERVIEW Translation Laboratory on boosting ROI and online visibility in new markets

Image: Fotolia

Image: Fotolia

In a recent InternetRetailing webinar, we heard from Nicola Carmyllie of Translation Laboratory and Sebastian Dziubek of Search Laboratory, on how retailers can prosper when they move into new international markets. Here’s a bulletpoint overview of the event.

Deciding which market to enter

• Google Market Finder: suggests potential markets based on factors from monthly search volumes to household disposable income. Advice on payments, logistics etc. With examples.

Approaching localisation

• People may speak English but prefer to buy in their native language

• Human translation or machine translation. “Google itself will penalise your site if you use Google Translate because you then have poor quality content.”

• Rather than translating, different content for different markets.

• Cultural and legal issues that differ across markets.”

Weaving in SEO 

• Not a new idea, but question is around who to use.

• Separate companies may not understand the full process.

• Having the two experiences under one roof means SEO goes through localisation process.

• Best practice: with examples.

• “You want to make sure you’re not missing out on any traffic to your site.”

How to structure your website for international expansion

• Country-level domains: eg Coca-Cola. Strongest location signals, trust factor. But requires increased linking.

• Sub-folders: eg Apple. Shares link authority, low purchase and maintenance costs. Possibly lower trust and weaker location signals.

• Sub-domains: eg Wikipedia. Location signal through servers, low costs, some sharing of authority. Requires more promotional effort, weaker location signals.

Serving the right content to the right markets

• English language content for different markets, US, Ireland and more.

• Other language content. Either approach gives potential SEO issues: ways to give SEO engines more information about content so ranks correctly every time. eg HREF language tags. Example: how Google can deal with common words, eg widget, in different languages.

• Implementation for enterprise-level websites. With diagram: XML sitemap implementation.

• Google Search Console: set up profile to target users in specific regions.

Common SEO mistakes – and how to avoid them

• Not implementing HREFLANG at page level.

• Not using recognised ISO country/region. eg Europe

• Missing return links: local market websites not referencing home website, language. 

• Redirecting users based on IP address.

The webinar ended with a Q&A session. To find out more, and to watch the webinar, including the Q&A session, visit the webinar page here.

Image: Fotolia

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