In our globalized world, it’d be easy to just say and write everything in English; The “so-called” universal language.
Every day, a great number of people around the world have interactions that use English. Maybe hear a song on the radio, read an article, watch our favorite TV series(which has English audio), see a picture with a “Stop” sign in the background, or use a piece of software or an app. English seems to be everywhere, and it certainly is highly beneficial to learn it. But that doesn’t mean every person in this world is always comfortable with using the English language in different aspects of their lives.
When it comes to your website, your company’s sales potential, and engagement with your potential or existing customers; English is highly surpassed by your audience’s native language.
By translating your website’s content to other languages, you’re maximizing the reach of your articles, infographics, landing pages, and text ads. Reaching a completely different target audience (linguistically speaking), driving more traffic and getting more links, likes, shares, retweets and pins with the same exact content. This is an easy way to work smarter, not harder, and to quickly achieve your marketing and sales goals.
How local businesses benefit from translations?
Even if you offer products or services that are 100% localized, you still have people from other countries walking inside your store and visiting your website and social media sites. These non-native English speakers will appreciate you and your company for keeping them in mind by putting the information, instructions, landing page, ads, etcetera, in their native language.
“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.”-Nelson Mandela.
Having a global presence by translating your website is beneficial, and here’s why:
- It gives your company a wider(Global) brand exposure.
- It creates reputable image of your company around the globe.
- You have higher chances to be positioned as an international authority in your field.
- Your company will be seen as a premium provider of the products or services your audience is looking for.
- Your content gets in front of a lot more people, which transforms into more shares, more likes, more retweets, more mentions and more links. You know how Google loves all that.
Website translation helps Search Engines understand your website
Having your website translated to different languages can improve your search engine optimization metrics. When Google crawls and indexes your content in different languages, it helps the algorithm understand what your website is about. Note: Always use human translation services, search engines might not fully understand machine-translated content because it lacks cultural context, and your visitors might find a hilarious mistranslation.
Website translation helps people find your business online
Translating your website will also increase your CTR by creating those desired semantic associations between your website’s content and the search query. This will help your website rank higher in the SERP´s, and also appear as a more relevant source to the person making the query.
Website translation improves the level of engagement with your brand
Another way translations can improve your SEO is by lowering your bounce rate. Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page. One of the reasons why websites are ranked higher on Google and other search engines is because they have low bounce rates, and that’s because they have interesting and engaging content that keeps their visitors reading one page after another, instead of leaving the minute they land on your page. Low bounce rates speak well of the quality of your content and how authoritative you are within your niche. But if your visitors can’t read it, they won´t stay. Therefore, having a low bounce rate is almost impossible if your website is written in a language different from that of your target market.
Website translation gets you more SALES!
But all of this does nothing for your business if it doesn’t convert. The good news is that leads are a lot more likely to convert into customers when the company they’re looking to buy from speaks their same language. So, this is really the cherry on top of your whole translation-to-improve-your-SEO strategy, and the most important part at the same time. Your ultimate goal with all of this is to make more sales.
To sum it all up, whether your business is global or local, there are quite a few powerful reasons why you should translate your website, and the best way to do that is by doing SEO and localization.
Optimize your keywords, links, and meta by translating your website. You’ll be making the best of your webpage, time, and efforts. Maximizing your content’s reach and putting it in front of a lot more potential customers, will ultimately increase your revenue. It is a strong investment, don’t you think?