Help your business reach international success by following these top 10 tips for website globalisation

1. Translation and interpreting
The world of e-commerce is changing
at an incredible pace. Social media
and search engine optimisation
(SEO) are now a central part of any
marketing strategy. That’s why it is
vital that your website presence is
consistent and fully optimised across
your global operations.
At Capita TI we understand that it’s
not simply a case of translating the
words into another language; it’s all
about getting the tone, style and
messages right.
It’s also important to address
customers and prospects in a way that
both enhances the brand and meets
the growth and development strategy
in each country. What works in one
country won’t always work in another.
That’s why we take account of the
cultural framework and emerging
trends and vocabularies in each
country where our customers have
an online presence. This ensures that
our customers always appear relevant,
up to date and totally natural when
engaging with their audiences.
to successfully globalising
your websitesteps

2. Translation and interpreting
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Following these 10 tips will help you to increase
international traffic to your website and grow your business:
Analyse your
target market
Success begins with knowing
your market. Market analysis
should start by asking (and
answering) the following
questions:
• What geographic markets are
you targeting?
• Who is your target customer?
• What languages do they speak?
• What market opportunities
exist for which your company
has a product or solution?
Identifying the characteristics
and needs of your market
segments will help you
understand their specific needs
and define any keywords and
specific content to use to
connect, engage and interact
with your target audience.
Research keywords
For each identified market,
you need to build a list of
relevant keywords – i.e.
the words and phrases that
people in your target market
use when looking for your
type of product or service .
This really should be carried
out by a native speaker with a
good knowledge of SEO, who
understands the target market
and the specific search habits
of each country or region.
Often, a direct translation of
an English keyword will not
be appropriate to use in your
target language – so take
some time to get this right.
Select the site
structure
There are key three ways to
structure a multilingual site.
You can:
1) Purchase country-specific
domains and set up
separate websites
2) Use sub-domains for
each country
3) Use subdirectories for
each country
If your international marketing
is country-specific, then we
recommend that your site be
structured firstly by location
and secondly by language.
If you plan to market to
all speakers of a particular
language irrespective of their
location, then you may only
need to incorporate language
translations into your site
architecture.
Choose the content
The content you publish for your international
audience should be designed to meet the
specific needs of your market and directed by
the results of your market analysis and keyword
research. What service are they looking for?
How do they talk about your solutions? Much
of the content will be similar to the content
you provide for your English-language visitors.
However, a few new content pages will
probably be required based upon the specific
market and language requirements.

3. Geo-target using
Webmaster Tools
Take advantage of technology. By using
Google’s Webmaster Tools, site owners
can select settings that inform Google
that certain content is meant for users
in particular countries. This is a fairly
straightforward process if you have set
up multiple country-specific sites. It’s a
little trickier if you have chosen to use
subdirectories or subdomains. In this case,
you have to establish each subdirectory
or subdomain as a separate “site” within
Webmaster Tools. Take a look at the Google
site for more details.
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Use a professional
translator
If you are serious about
marketing to an international
audience, employing a
professional translation
provider to localise your web
content is essential. Although
using free translation services
might be quick, they can often
return text that is incorrect
to a native reader. Search
engines are increasingly able
to pick up on this as they can
mark your content as spam
and blacklist your site from
search results.
Don’t forget to
localise the content
and design
In addition to language
translation, be aware of the
effect of cultural differences
on language and web
design. For example, content
translated into Spanish may
need to be localised for each
Spanish-speaking country of
Latin America. People can
spot a non localised site in
seconds and it is proven to
put them off spending time
on a website. Also, site design
elements are very different
in Asian countries to those
typical of Western sites. Be
aware that localised text can
increase or decrease by up
to 20% depending on the
language, which may impact
on your design templates.
Optimise the
content
By this point, you’re hopefully
ready to launch your
multilingual content. So now
it needs to be optimised! The
process of optimising sites for
international search results
isn’t a great deal different from
optimising sites in English.
Optimisation is all about
using keywords that attract
traffic. This is how most major
search engines rank results.
It is advisable to use the
services of an experienced SEO
professional in each country to
give you the added advantage
of insider knowledge, on how
to deploy these keywords
correctly within your page text
and title tags.

4. On your marks, get
set, get your staff
ready to go
Don’t forget to brief your
staff about your new
venture so they know
what’s happening. Make
sure you have enough
people on site who can
speak the target language
to respond to all the foreign
language enquiries.
Translation and interpreting
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Good luck.
in touchGet
Find out more about how partnering
with Capita TI gives you the assurance of
quality, global reach and trusted delivery
on time, every time by visiting:
www.capitatranslationinterpreting.com
Tel (UK): +44 (0) 845 367 7000
Tel (US): +1 (800) 579-5010
or contact Capita at enquiries@capita-ti.com
Don’t just translate – localise!
Another way of informing Google and other
international search engines that your content is
targeted at a particular country is to acquire ‘links’
from existing sites from that country. The more links
you acquire, the more likely you will be to rank highly
in that country’s search engine results. However, be
warned, you need to be choosy about who you link to.
Links from low quality websites or links that you have
paid for could damage your site rather than boost it.
However, the very best way to acquire valuable links
is to produce high quality, engaging content in your
website so users will want to link to it naturally. If your
content is genuinely interesting and informative, they
will naturally share it amongst their online audiences.
So consider using a professional copywriter who can
make your content stand out.
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Get your links in order