Implementing an effective multilingual SEO strategy
To effectively harness the power of multilingual SEO, a strategic approach is needed:

Defining your markets: It all starts with identifying the markets you want to target.
Conducting keyword research: Once you’ve identified your chosen countries, it becomes paramount to carry out comprehensive keyword research. Understanding search behavior and popular search terms in each language will allow you to tailor your website content to align with user intent.
Choosing your URL structure: With your target language and keywords in hand, the next step is to decide on your URL structure. Creating a user-friendly and understandable structure ensures a seamless experience for your international visitors.
Localizing your content: Now comes the crucial task of localizing your content. This process goes beyond simply translating word-for-word, and involves adapting your blog posts, landing pages, or videos to culturally and linguistically resonate with diverse audiences.
Using hreflang tags: To signal the target language of each page to search engines, implementing hreflang tags is essential. This helps prevent duplicate content issues and ensures the correct pages appear in relevant search results for each region.
Building backlinks: Finally, building backlinks from reputable sources in each target market will boost your website’s authority and visibility across search engines.
Let’s explore each of these steps in detail along with some real-world examples so you can maximize your efforts.

Step 1: Determine your target markets
Before embarking on a multilingual SEO strategy, it’s crucial to pinpoint the specific markets you want to target. Conduct thorough market research to identify which countries or regions hold the greatest potential for business expansion. Consider factors such as market demand, competition, and cultural fit.

For example, let’s say you run an e-commerce website selling handcrafted jewelry. Through market research and understanding customer demand, you discover that there’s a growing interest in handcrafted jewelry in Germany, France, and Japan. These countries would then be your target markets for a multilingual SEO strategy.

Target audience analysis
Users in different markets have different habits, meaning they expect different things from the websites they visit.

For example, the UAE has a 95% mobile internet penetration rate, while in India, only 32% of people report owning a smartphone. So, the UAE and Indian versions of your website should approach mobile optimization differently.

Other aspects that might vary between countries are the average age of the population, their education level, and even their internet speed. All of these factors can impact how people interact with your website and what they expect from it.

The Pew Research Center offers some interesting data about internet usage worldwide, which might be helpful to understand user habits in different markets.

Competitor research
Your competitors are targeting the same markets as you, so a quick way to understand what works in that market is to see what they are doing. This includes everything from the topics they write about and how they optimize their websites for different user habits to the backlinks they have and where those links come from.

You can research competitors manually by checking their website and social media accounts or using tools like Semrush or Ahrefs to understand their SEO and link-building activities.

However, remember that to beat your competitors on their home turf, you need to stay ahead of them—so don’t just copy what they’re doing. Always try to find ways to improve on it.

For example, if your competitor is targeting a certain keyword and ranking quite high for it, but their content is not comprehensive, you could write a longer and more detailed article on the same topic to rank higher than them.

Of course, you first need to conduct keyword research to ensure the keyword you’re targeting is actually worth pursuing, so let’s look into that in the next section.

Step 2: Conduct comprehensive keyword research
Once you’ve selected your target markets, conduct keyword research in each language to understand the search behavior of your potential customers. The goal is to find keywords with high enough monthly search volume to target, but not so competitive that they would be difficult or expensive to rank for.

Look at your current organic website traffic
If your website is already multilingual, you can use Google Analytics to see which keywords have been driving traffic to your website. This data can give you some ideas on new keywords to target. For example, if you sell shoes and see people have been searching for "buy shoes online" in French, you might want to target that keyword.

Localize your target keywords
In the case of multilingual SEO, keywords used in one country or region might not be relevant in another. Because different markets might use different keywords for the same product, you might need to adjust your keyword research process for each new market.

To continue the example of handcrafted jewelry, you use keyword research tools and find that in Germany, users often search for “handgemachter Schmuck” (handcrafted jewelry), “einzigartiger Schmuck” (unique jewelry), and “handgefertigte Ringe” (handcrafted rings). In France, common search terms include “bijoux faits main” (handcrafted jewelry) and “colliers artisanaux” (artisan necklaces).

An easy way to find out how people are searching in a new market is to check out the Google Ads Keyword Planner, which tells you the monthly search volume for many different keywords and phrases. Another useful tool is Google Trends, which lets you compare the search volume for various keywords over time.

Lean on local SEO experts
When conducting keyword research in a new language, you might be tempted to use machine translation tools to quickly translate your target keywords into the new language.

While modern machine translators can be incredibly useful for certain tasks, a localization professional’s assessment of whether a specific keyword or phrase is actually used in a given market remains incredibly valuable.

You can also use tools like Sensor Tower or data.ai to get more data on popular keywords in different countries.

Step 3: Decide on your URL structure
Your website’s URL structure plays an important role in multilingual SEO. It should be logical, user-friendly, and indicate the language and region of each page. There are various URL structure options you can choose from. Here are the most common ones:

Country-code top-level domain (ccTLD)
If you need websites specifically designated for particular countries, having a country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) could be the best solution. Domains like example.es and example.fr send signals to search engines that these websites should be served to users in Spain and France.

However, since ccTLDs are separate domains, this strategy is usually the most expensive and time-consuming. Each ccTLD domain will need its own digital PR, content marketing, and link building strategy. You will also be unable to transfer any link acquisition efforts or domain authority earned from off-site activities across different websites.

Global top-level domain (gTLD) combined with subdomains
Global top-level domain (gTLD) combined with subdomains like de.example.com allow for improved geographic targeting and enhanced brand recognition in each target market. However, challenges arise from the complexity in technical setup and maintenance, as well as potential SEO linking issues with subdomains.

gTLD combined with subdirectories
If the location of your target audience doesn’t affect your products and services, you can use a single domain and leverage subdirectories (subfolders) to house pages according to your designated language or country: example.com/es/.

These strategies are commonly used by businesses looking to target users in a single market with multiple languages used. They also apply to geographic areas that encompass 2 or more countries speaking the same language, for instance, Spanish-speaking Latin America.

gTLD with a combination of subdomains and subdirectories
gTLD combined with subdomains and subdirectories (es.example.com/es-mx/) allows for flexible website organization: While subdomains allow for more detailed regional targeting, subdirectories organize the content within the main domain.

Benefits include enhanced targeted marketing and streamlined navigation, making websites more relevant to specific audiences. However, they are quite complex to handle and have disadvantages to keep in mind: cookie sharing, significant server resources, long URLs, and potentially diluted SEO.

With the benefits and limitations of each URL structure type, you’ll want to carefully consider your business needs and projected growth into new markets when making your decision.

Step 4: Localize your content
One of the best ways to make your content relevant to a specific market is to write about topics that are specific to that market. It could be anything from local news and events to cultural differences or common issues that people in that market face. Of course, not all business types and products have locally relevant topics to write about.

However, if you add a local twist to familiar content, you’ll have a chance to capture the attention of local audiences.

For instance, if you are offering software-as-a-service (SaaS) for managing social media accounts, you’ll want to have content focused on the different social media platforms in different markets, for example, Facebook and X in the United States, WeChat in China, etc.

Nevertheless, creating content in the target language from scratch could be considerably expensive. An alternative strategy is to localize your existing content. Localization is not simply translation. It requires adapting your website content to suit the cultural nuances and preferences of each target audience. This includes language, currency, images, product descriptions, and any other element that resonates better with the target audience.

It’s not just about the words, but the feeling. Make your website speak the language of your target audience, literally and culturally.

When localizing multilingual content, it’s important to make sure your original content is “internationalized” from the outset. In other words, you should write content that is easy to localize. This means using plain language, avoiding idioms and slang, and making sure even non-native speakers of your language can understand what you are saying.

Translating every single word in your content doesn’t always bring desired results, as it might not achieve the goal when it comes to cultural relevance and resonance. For example, a marketing slogan or a catchy phrase that works well in one language may not have the same impact when translated directly into another language.

In practice, this means that in Germany, you replace English product descriptions with German ones, highlighting the eco-friendly aspects of your jewelry (as Germans tend to value sustainability) and adjusting prices to display in euros. In France, you emphasize the elegance and fashionable aspects of your jewelry, and prices are also displayed in euros.

Use machine translation for low-visibility content
Machine translation tools come in handy when you need to translate a document quickly for informational purposes or when specific website content has low visibility:

-Content that receives little attention or traffic, such as internal documents, website footers, social media posts for sentiment analysis, etc.
-Repetitive technical content that doesn’t need to be 100% accurate, just workable, such as user manuals
-User-generated content like product reviews, which consumers often expect
-Content that is time-sensitive, such as chat or email support messages, customer requests, etc.
-High volumes of content with short completion time, such as hundreds of product descriptions that need to go live quickly
-Content that gets modified frequently, such as feature updates and information

Apply light or comprehensive post-editing to sensitive content
To create high-quality content that ranks highly on search engines and converts visitors into customers, machine translation is best combined with post-editing by human professionals who can fine-tune the output and localize keywords. To make the most of it, make sure you hire professional translators who are native speakers of the target language and have in-depth knowledge of your industry.

You can assist the work of post-editors with traditional translation technologies like glossary, terminology database and translation memory, as well as brand books and style guides. This will keep the brand tone and core message consistent across cultures and languages and is highly feasible.

As a rule of thumb, the following content types need post-editing:

-Product names: Highly informative and succinct, product names tend to contain proper nouns and ambiguous words, and word order is often relatively free, which can cause ambiguity.
-Translation between language pairs with different syntaxes, such as Japanese and Spanish, as rearranging words and phrases into grammatically complete sentences becomes more challenging for machine translation tools.
-Product descriptions: Product descriptions need to be well-written and clearly state the features or benefits of the product, leaving no room for ambiguity.
-Content with moderate visibility needs to be as accurate as possible: knowledge base, FAQ, warnings, etc.
-Behind-the-scenes metadata like image alt text and captions: While their visibility is low, humans need to make sure target language keywords are present.

Lean on human translation and creative marketing and advertising content
If you are targeting a market with a culture very different from yours, it may be very difficult to get a translation, however good it may be, to achieve the same effect as the original. In such cases, it may be a good idea to use transcreation, which is the complete adaptation of your brand-sensitive, high-traffic, and evergreen content to the target market while still retaining its core message and meaning.

In other words, a translator will need to recreate the message in the target language in a way that is not literal. That is the case for:

-Homepage
-Landing pages
-Blog posts
-Newsletter campaigns
-Press releases
-SEO content
-Print advertising, etc.

Step 5: Deploy hreflang tags
Hreflang tags are HTML attributes that inform search engines about the language and regional target of your web pages. This helps search engines display the correct version of your pages for users in different countries, reducing the risk of duplicate content issues and ensuring a better user experience.

There are 3 options for placing hreflang tags:

Choosing between 3 options depends on your website’s structure. If you have a large website with many pages, managing hreflang tags within an XML sitemap is easier. However, managing them in the HTML code makes it easier to change them if needed. Finally, an HTTP header is a good option if the document in question doesn’t have such HTML, for example if it’s a PDF file.

Note that you are not only specifying the language of the current page but also the language of all the other language/region versions of the same page. This allows search engines to know that the pages are different versions of each other. One of the benefits here is that they share the same ranking signal, so if one page ranks well in search results, the others will too.

There are a lot of details to consider when using hreflang tags, so you may want to involve an SEO expert in the process before deploying them. This is especially important if your website is large and complex.

Step 6: Build backlinks from authoritative sources in each target market
Backlinks are links from other websites to your website. They are considered, according to most sources, among the top ranking factors on search engines, so getting high-quality links from relevant websites is an essential part of a successful SEO strategy.

While your localized pages may enjoy some links from your main website, they may not rank as highly. This means finding websites that are relevant to the market you are targeting and getting them to link to your localized pages.

For example, for the German and French markets, you need to collaborate with well-known local fashion bloggers, influencers, and jewelry enthusiasts to create compelling content that showcases your handmade jewelry. When these influencers link back to your website, search engines recognize the authority and relevance of your content in the corresponding markets, boosting your ranking in local search results.

Here are some of the most common and effective ways to create a “natural” reason for other websites to link to yours:

-Create great content that people want to link to (e.g. blog posts, infographics, etc.)
-Create tools and resources that people want to link to (e.g. calculators, checklists, etc.)
-Get involved in the community by writing guest posts or participating in forums and Q&A websites
-Partner with other websites in your field or industry
-Get featured on popular blogs and news websites (e.g. by writing guest posts)
-None of the above can be as simple as making a few technical changes to your website. It takes a lot of effort and dedication, but the benefits speak for themselves.

The biggest challenge in multilingual SEO—and how to overcome it
The journey to multilingual SEO success is not without its hurdles. Simply translating your website content may not be enough to establish meaningful connections across different cultures and languages. To truly resonate with your target audience across borders, a carefully considered localization strategy is key.

The biggest challenge in multilingual SEO lies in adapting content to the nuances of different cultures and languages. A mere translation can often lead to misinterpretations and disconnect with the target audience. Moreover, manually managing multiple language versions of the website can be a challenging and time-consuming task, potentially hindering your global growth potential.

This is where localization technology comes into play. By leveraging advanced localization software, global organizations can streamline the process of adapting and managing content across multiple languages seamlessly.

For instance, implementing a translation management system is an effective way to bring managers, subject matter experts, translators, copywriters, marketers, and designers all on the same page. Whether your team members are in the office, working from home, or offsite, it makes no difference when working on the cloud.

Moreover, it will help you establish a clear translation and localization workflow, track the progress of your project, and most importantly, engage different departments and branches within your organization in the localization process.

Translation management systems help you escape the most complex localization mazes with the following capabilities:

-Automation: Translated content must be automatically extracted from your content management system, source code repository, or marketing automation platform, and routed to the translation interface. Translated content should be able to be automatically imported back into the original environment.
-Centralization: Providing a single point of access to all marketing materials, resources, guides, and related content will increase productivity and reduce the potential for errors. Marketing and localization teams must be able to work from a single platform, with all the tools they need at their fingertips.
-Real-time: Translated content works as a hub through which marketing teams can collaborate with other departments and internal and external stakeholders in real time, ensuring that everyone is working with the latest content.
-Translation memory: Strong translated content allows you to store translations in translation memory on a cloud platform, allowing translators and marketing teams to reuse content across multiple marketing campaigns.
-Supports familiar file formats: No more copy-pasting. You’ll be able to send content for translation in the file types you like: IDML, PSD, SVG, HTML, etc.
-Integration: Translated content must be able to quickly and easily integrate with content management systems (e.g., Marketo, HubSpot, Adobe Experience Manager, WordPress, Drupal, Contentful, Contentstack, Sitecore), e-commerce platforms, marketing automation platforms, and CRM systems, or even allow you to build custom integrations through REST API.
-Quality control: Translated content must include a quality assurance process that checks the accuracy of translations against previously translated content (through the use of translation memory), marketing brand guidelines, style guides, and glossary terms.
-AI-powered machine translation: Modern translated content combines proven translation technology with AI-powered machine translation capabilities.
-Tracking and reporting: The best translated content will provide marketing teams with insights and reports that can be used to improve marketing performance and marketing ROI, while allowing them to track translator performance to make any necessary adjustments.

With solid supporting technology, localization efforts are almost an unbeatable competitive advantage for any company that wants to tap into the potential of multilingual SEO. Strong translated content helps teams deliver higher quality work on time and within budget, thereby driving marketing performance, increasing sales, and boosting ROI.

Multilingual SEO made easy with the right strategy and technology
Multilingual SEO is one of the most powerful tools for global businesses to expand their global presence and connect with international audiences. Once you have effectively implemented multilingual SEO, your brand can benefit from a stronger user experience, higher credibility, enhanced audience personalization, and stronger visibility.

With cloud localization technology, you can accurately adapt content and overcome the limitations of content that is only translated. A powerful translation management system streamlines the process of adapting and managing content in multiple languages seamlessly, enabling businesses to thrive in the ever-expanding global marketplace.