Do you think SEO in other languages is easier?
September 18th, 2008 by Mike Reining Read more about SEOI was just doing a little bit of SEO work for two of our web sites.
One is a new Spanish speaking web site that we launched recently and we wanted to get it to the top of Google for the keyword "metodo silva" and we were able to get to the top of the page within a few weeks.
Last weekend, I started to do a little SEO for my mom's new real estate web site in Mallorca (yes... once you parents know that you are into technology they just love to ask you for help for everything!) and once again I am starting to see rapid results. This time I was optimizing my mom's new web site for the keyword phrases "Langzeitvermietung Mallorca" and "Langzeitmiete Mallorca"
Once again, I noticed that I am getting results a lot faster than I was expecting. I am starting to think that SEO in foreign languages can be a lot easier. Ok, I know that the keyword phrases that I listed as examples are not very competitive but I am still surprised given that these sites are brand new and have no established page rank.
What have your results been with SEO for other languages?
By the way, the two web sites I was referring to are:
* www.MetodoSilvaDeVida.com and
* www.FincasIMas.com
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About the Author
Prior to MindValley Media, Mike was the Head of New Ventures Strategy at eBay where he conceived of the strategies that led to the investment in Craigslist, the launch of Kijiji.com and the acquisition of Skype.
Mike has an MBA from Stanford and previously worked for the Boston Consulting Group. He is also a certified Google AdWords Professional.
Check out other posts by Mike Reining
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Mike,
I've been wondering the same for a while. On the one hand, it should be easier because of less competition, while on the other hand, we don't have all the tools (article directories, website directories, keyword research tools) we use in English.
Does anyone knows any (preferably in French)?
-CJ
Mike, being from Denmark I know first hand that SEO can be a lot easier in a foreign language. However you will also have to count in that the number of searches are also (often) greatly reduced and therefore not as attractive as the English version.
- Mikael
Another Dane here with his 5 cents.
Sure, SEO must be easier if approached in a language that only 5 mio. internet users speak but as Mikael mentions: the benefits are less attractive. Another downside is that the available tools for SEO and PPC in your specific language are hard to find.
Hey Mike, i came to your blog by reading another blogpost by rand Fishkin. Great content by the way...!
I've been working for different companies around Europe helping them achieve high rankings in 9 different languages. Believe me, it's not as easy as it may have seem to you. English is a language with little or no variations from article or adjective modifiers. I speak and write 4 languages. Spanish, English, German and Italian. Even thought it was easy for me to achieve high rankings in Spanish it's not the same in Italian where you have to make sense of how people write and speak. Particularly, the Italian language allows lots of shortcuts which are embed in the spoken and written language. For instance, instead of writing "Il Italiano", it's also grammatically correct to write "l'italiano". Which indeed, gives you you two different SERPS depending on how a phrase may be use in Google.it
The same deal happens in German; however, it's not because of the shortcuts you may find in the language but because of article declinations. Plurals are changed when they are modified by a location or the article it precedes them, and since everyone in SEO knows that people look for stuff in plural to have wider selection, this changes your copywriting style and SEO strategy. Thus, whatever you idea was of the content in English, must be revised before you actually try to market it with SEO purposes in mind.
Nordic languages repeat the same effect as German, and the Engines are working hard to understand what people look for, but an "R" in German after main keyword changes the whole world and the intend of what the user is searching in the first place.
Finally, Asian languages are the hardest one, Why? Because there are 5 different ways to write a single keyphrase. It depends on form of speech, so it changes your copywriting as well. You and you in English is the same, but it's not in Spanish, Italian, German, and particularly not at all the same in Japanese.
If you are talking to an older person, or want to express to your audience with the respect it deserves, your copy must reflect it with different words and sentence construction. Therefore, changing the bases of your keywords and keyphrases because there are words you use in one form of speech are not interchangeable with the other one. Furthemore, there are three character writing styles. Romaji, Hiragana and Katakana. Making the whole mess I just try to explain, three times more difficult. Why? Cause there are some words that may use Chinese characters and others that do not. So you may use one character or the other with different purposes.
This are my two cents, I have lots of insides on International SEO. It's an amazing field. Maybe one of these days I'll find the time to publish and share.
Good SEO to all of you. Greetings from the Eternal City.
J
Thanks for the follow on Twitter my Ninja! Everyone reading this, "Follow Mike on Twitter. His name is @emailcopywriter! He has some interesting Tweets!"
I haven't done any SEO research for foreign languages but I have noticed my Alexa ranking getting better the longer I have a Translator plugin on my WordPress blog. Just click the flag that corresponds to the language you want to read and the entire blog changes languages... pretty cool stuff! Keep up the great work!
Ultimately, such tactics can be envisioned in the light of the old niche paradigm: the smaller the niche, the easier it is to target.
The advantage of targeting non-English communities though is the fact that you can be almost 100% certain that you don't overlap accidentally with other niches. As an example for my blog my ultimate keyphrase to target is "gray hat". The weird part is that I have to compete with apparel shops.
Regards, George
SEO in Hebrew is more..
It is easier, because simple every non-english Internet is smaller than English one. Going further: less websites, less competition, less SEO specialists
.
Smaller range of non-english internet is not a drawback, usually localized websites are targeted to local-language-speaking community, so we don’t lose anyone from audience.
Anyway, I have the same story with my mom
.
Interesting topic raised here, but I've got to jump in and point something out there....what's the point of being at the top of the SEO pile if you're just running a translator? Any native German speaker can understand the Mallorca site, but it's not translated well. You might get the eyeballs with the SEO, but your conversion rate has got to be in the dumps because the content is clearly not written by a native speaker.
In israel it is very common to use Talkbacks for SEO or for traffic
Wow, interesting post. I am always intimidated by performing SEO in other languages, but this gives me some good information to work with.
Hello, is obvious that SEO in other languajes is easier.
But that's not due to the languaje itself, is about the competition.
Is a fact that there is not competition for the term metodo silva in spanish, and that if there's any, is very low.
But eventually will get to the english based SEO levels.
Regards...
SEO in a foreign language often is easier though it has different problems as Jesus mentioned.
Although not if you are in a market which is *highly* SEOed. Germany is far behind in Web 2.0 but anybody trying to get good results will have a hard awakening.
Doing SEO in other than English has its own pros and cons. It is far easier to target small audience with less competitive market. On the other side, you don't have much options to market your site.
I wonder if your idea could be implemented on my blog. I thought it gonna slow down your WordPress install in any way
I would like to promote various English-language online bizops and affiliate products using Chinese-language SEO strategies, and I wonder, given the number of Chinese-reading/speaking Net users around the world (not just in China) and both simplified and traditional Chinese characters, how much competition there might be.