Content Optimization for multi language scenarios has just one big, simple rule: content localization. That's a cheap advice to give, though bit expensive to implement properly.

As with any other discipline involved with SEO, content localization must be faced under a more general marketing plan and, at lower levels, under wide strategic content planning.

We know now how to manage the international SEO Domains, Subdomains and Directories issue so we'll focus on some techniques and tools helping with the localization.

Persona vs. machine

No, content cannot be literally translated. Tools like Google translate are great and getting better day by day but it is still a horrible idea to move content from one language to another.

Anybody can spot these translations, and this damages the perception visitors have of the company (and can often result in tons of jokes due to hilarious coincidence or double meanings).

Localization, more than simple translation, is not a cheap task and it is tempting to outsource translations to cheaper countries, but if you are really serious in your marketing efforts, get native speaker professionals to work on it. It is not just the language but the culture, regional context, social and local factors that you have to understand in order to truly localize text.

Examples of language localization

Localizing domains

For every search for "football" in Italy there are 68 for "calcio", do I need to say more?

Even keeping the work "sports" all along the domains is not a good idea but sometimes you can't get everything due to business rules, domains not available, etc.

Same concept, different words by country

Languages don't know anything about political borders. Spanish is the official language of 21 countries and Portuguese is spoken on five continents. Do not expect uniformity. Examples ahead.

Spanish

English: wholesale

Castillian: venta al por mayor

Argentinian: venta mayorista

Mexican: mayoreo

Portuguese

English: train

Brazilian: trem

Portuguese: comboio

Sometimes it is just a character that makes all the difference.

Brazilian: correção

Portuguese: correcção

How can I check which words are the right ones for the same language in different countries?

Tools to verify localization

Few (or perhaps I'd better say 'just one'), keyword tools are good at handling many languages, or even the most common ones (English aside). The good news is that the best ones are free.

Google Translate

More than a tool to check if a translation is correctly localized we can use the other way round. In this example the translation is fine but not for Spain. What an awkward translation for that keyword…

Google Translated Search

This tool can give some insight into how appropriate a translation is for a certain country.

The example shows that the translation suggested is more popular in Latin American counties (and Miami) with no reference to Spain.

Local Google, country specific

Following the same example we can check at Google Spain "pages in Spain" how popular both translations are. They also point to geographical names associated to each keyword, which helps a bit more.

Google Insights for Search

Some of the previous examples are based on Google Insights for Search. The good thing about this tool is the graphical representation of geographical relevance for different translations of the same concept.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool

Options to select country and language are available; make sure to use them to target the right country.

Local search engines

Don't think that Google, Bing and Yahoo are the only big search engines out there.

Yandex.ru, Yahoo.jp, Baidu.cn will definitely help to understand the particularities of the languages visitors use to query search engines.

Next week last post about International SEO before the webinar. We'll talk about Web Analytics for International SEO.