In part 1 of our 4-part series, we help you identify if SEO is something you should think about when localizing your web content. Now we’ll turn toward SEO translation itself and break it down to its basic components. As a reminder, if you’re translating lots of content, Wordbee Translator is the translation management system of choice for many people. Sign up for a trial or demo, and let us know if SEO or content marketing is important to you, and our consultants will offer specific translation management advice.

“SEO” is the mysterious three-letter acronym that everybody has heard about, but only few people know how to deal with. This article aims to explain the basics of SEO translation. SEO stands for search engine optimization, which in the simplest of terms, is nothing but a series of techniques that help your website rank higher in organic or non-paid search results. Now, the million-dollar question you must be thinking about is:

What do these techniques have to do with translation?

In terms of web content marketing, SEO and translation are two pieces of a puzzle that should have never been cut apart in the first place. They don’t seem alike, but when put together, they form the perfect international marketing team. On one hand, SEO allows you to get more visits to your page and, therefore, more sales. The more you optimize your website, the more traffic you will have. Translation, on the other hand, allows your content and website to reach a wider audience across the seas. Translation of web content without SEO is like bread without butter.

What makes SEO translation different?

SEO translation is the translation for websites and online content. It deals with translating not only what the human eye can read, but also what search engines like Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and others see. These “invisible” texts need to be carefully treated, making sure to properly adapt and optimize them according to your target market. So, we can say that SEO translation is a combination of translation, localization, and optimization.

What aspects does SEO translation consider?

As you know, every project is unique and it is absolutely necessary to analyze it to determine its specific needs. When translating a website or your content marketing, you need to do your research, focus on your audience, and try to figure them out. This often means pausing your translation project while you determine your keywords. Then, you can set about adapting the texts and the ghostly elements that will make your site appear in the top positions of local search engine results. Some of the most important elements to consider when performing an SEO translation are:

Keywords

Keywords are the basis for successful SEO translation. Keywords need to be carefully researched and picked according to users’ intents (words that are searched frequently) and need to be as relevant as the ones in the source in order to rank well.

Titles

Optimized texts have good titles that include keywords and its variations. Titles tell the search engines what the text and the general content is all about. They are ranked by importance from H1 to H6.

Meta tags

These tags present a short description of the content of a webpage. They also include a great amount of keywords, plus relevant and appealing information. You may not know it, but the meta title and description are what Google shows in their search results, even though these two tags do not appear on the page itself.

Alt images

The images of a webpage also carry information about the page content. They must be considered when applying the search engine optimized translation magic.

URLs

URL addresses are another aspect that needs to be properly adapted and localized in the target language. They include keywords, too. These are just some of the things that go into SEO translation, that being the keywords and research, the vital factor to be able to properly translate any SEO content. So, if you have decided to translate your website into another language to reach new customers, don’t just rush into doing a simple translation. Instead, pull out the secret internationalization weapon, a.k.a. SEO translation, to make sure all the aspects of your content are considered, localized, and correctly optimized to get your message loud and clear in the online world.