DesigningIT & Acclaro Webinar Presentation. The webinar is geared towards digital marketing professionals, web admins and developers who are interested in creating or maintaining a successful, revenue-generation multilingual website. The full webinar is available here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2x-hFKS9TuU

1. insider's guide to creating
multilingual websites that
drive revenue

2. presented by
Florian Auckenthaler
Owner
Designingit
florian@designingit.com
Lydia Clarke
Director of Operations
Acclaro
lclarke@acclaro.com
Matt Grotenstein
VP Client Development
Acclaro
mgrotenstein@acclaro.com

4. agenda
 Why Multilingual?
 Language & Country Targeting
 Evaluating CMSs
 Global Brand Consistency
 SEO Considerations
 User Experience & Choice
 Q&A

5. 2002
Founded
100+
Languages
7
Global Offices
75
Staff
4,500
Translators

6. ✓ Founded 2003
✓ Team of 13
✓ Headquartered in US
✓ Presence in Europe

7. why multilingual websites?

8. Reasons to Build a Multilingual or Multi-
regional Website:
 Explosion of Internet users worldwide
 Growth of e-commerce spending
 Various business and strategic reasons
 offset seasonality
 cheaper to conduct business elsewhere
 competition is forcing hand
 customers located elsewhere

9. internet world stats
Explosion of Internet Users
2000 - 2017
360 million
INTERNET USERS
2000
5.9%
OF WORLD’S POPULATION
3.88 billion
INTERNET USERS
2017
51.7%
OF WORLD’S POPULATION
976.4% growth 2000 to 2017

10. GLOBAL B2C
e-commerce sales
$2.6 trillion
in 2016
Projected to hit $3.8 trillion in 2020
GLOBAL B2B
e-commerce sales
$7.3 trillion
in 2016
Projected to hit $12 trillion in 2020
For the first time in 2014, consumers in Asia-Pacific spend more
on e-commerce than North America.

11. poll question

12. automation
language targeting

13. automation
language vs. country
targeting

14. Domain
How to Structure your International Site
ccTLD
Country Code Top Level Domain
• amazon.de
• amazon.es
• boc.cn
gTLD
Generic Top Level Domain
• amazon.com
• apple.com
• sony.net
gccTLD
generic Country Code Top Level
Domain
• site.io [British Indian Ocean]
• site.co [Colombia]
Vanity ccTLD treated as gTLD
ccSLD
Second-Level Domains (ccSLDs)
• prudential.co.uk
• honda.co.jp
Different Domain
use an entirely different domain
name for your localized website.
-> one of the first steps to expanding internationally is to decide if you expand by language or country

15. c c T L D
S u b f o l d e r
S u b d o m a i n
Country Targeting
• de-de.facebook.com
• it-it.facebook.com
• apple.com/chde
• paypal.com/de
• gazprom.de
• gazprom.ru
• metroag.de/en
How to Structure your International Site

16. R
E
S
E
A
R
C
H
FORBES Global 1000
Country Targeting
Country code in
Subfolder: 22.5%
ccTLD: 9.5%
Country code in
Subdomain: 3.1%
Different URL Format:
49.5% **
** chevronaustralia.com, chevronunitedkingdom.com
3m.com.hk/3M/zh_HK/company-hk/
falabella.com.ar/falabella-ar/

17. Language Targeting
skype.com/en
skype.com/de/
nokia.com/en_int
nokia.com/de_int
uber.com/de
S u b f o l d e r
de.delta.com
allstate.com
de.hiltonworldwide.com
espanol.allstate.com
S u b d o m a i n
How to Structure your International Site
—> Do NOT use Google Search Console to set a region.
—> Use of HREFLANG tag to signal the appropriate language version to Google

18. R
E
S
E
A
R
C
H
FORBES Global 1000
Language Targeting
Language code in
Subfolder: 74%
Language code in
Subdomain: 8.4%

19. evaluating CMSs for your
multilingual website

21. poll question

22. Select Craft Entries for Translation

23. Confirm Entries in Translation Order Submission Form

24. Select Target Languages

25. Add Order Details

26. Submit or Save Order

27. Track Progress of Submitted Orders

28. Live Preview

29. Publish Completed Translations

30. brand voice
brand consistency

31. Crowd Sourcing Freelance Translators
Machine Translation
(MT)
Professional
Translation Agency
your brand

32. style guide & glossary

33. global - ready system &
design

34. - Linguistic reference materials as base
- Internationalization of CMS and database
- Database (UTF-8)
- Format date, currency, address, phone, etc.
- Design of International Page Templates
- using company brand assets (colors..)
- Localization of pages
- Consideration for Company name / tagline
-> Internationalization enables localization
How to Create Global Brand Consistency
PROCESS
1] Internationalize
2] Localize (translation)
3] Multilingual SEO
= Global ready Website

35. Nivea
GermanyKorea

36. Volvo
ChinaUSA

37. Champion System
USA

38. Champion System
SwitzerlandAustria

39. automationseo considerations

40. Which Structure is Best?
it depends ..
we need to consider:
- type of website (e-com, SaaS,.. )
- brand reach / company size / office locations
- target audience
- business Strategy
Best URL Structure for SEO
PROs CONs
- Clearest signal to SE
- Best way to rank locally
- Best conversion rate
- Expensive to maintain
- Separate Domain Authority for
each Site
ccTLDs - amazon.de .. amazon.it
- Easier to maintain
- Shared DA
- Geotarget with Google
- Weaker signal to SE
- Users prefer ccTLS, higher
conversion rate.
Subdirectories - skype.com/en .. skype.com/de
- More control than sub
- Easier to maintain
- Geotarget with Google
- Weaker signal to SE
- Diluted DA
Subdomains - de-de.facebook.comtypically more reasons to go with subdirectory
over a subdomain.

41. ▪ Perform Keyword Research in your local language (don’t translate keywords)
▪ Get content professionally translated (LSP)
▪ Build appropriate, local backlinks to your language or region URLs
▪ Make sure you don’t have duplicate content
▪ Avoid mixing ccTLD with gTLD (this complicates SEO efforts)
▪ According to google, server location is not a factor anymore (CDNs)
▪ Follow all the regular SEO best practices
▪ For usability make sure to
▪ Translate your URLs
- skype.com/en/about
- skype.com/de/uber-uns
▪ Give users an easy way to switch/choose country or language
▪ Target your URLs correctly with either Google Console or hreflang
SEO Considerations

42. How to Structure your International Site
Country Targeting - Google Search Console

43. hreflang
 Correct hreflang configuration + international targeting in google search console best way to provide google with the right signals.
 75% of multilingual websites have implementation mistakes [from test of 20,000 multilingual sites]
 hreflang is a signal, not a directive. (this means, you need to still boost your localized URLs with a strong local backlink profile)
 hreflang can NOT be used for country only targeting.
 Region can not be used (like eu or asia)
 hreflang is per individual URL/Page, not site wide.
 Use x-default on homepage for country/lang selection
 Cross Reference and Self Reference
Implementation
Language (in ISO 639-1 format) first + optionally the Country (in ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2 format)
 de: German content, independent of region
 en-gb: English content, for GB users
 de-es: German content, for users in Spain
Format
How to Structure your International Site

44. <link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="http://href-lang.com/chord.html" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-ie" href="http://ie.href-lang.com/chord.html" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-gb" href="http://uk.href-lang.com/chord.html" />
<link rel="canonical" href="http://href-lang.com/chord.html" />
Code
h r e f l a n g = “ e n ”
<link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/en-gb" hreflang="en-GB" />
<link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/en-us" hreflang="en-US" />
<link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/" hreflang="x-default" />
Default
h r e f l a n g = “ x - d e f a u l t ”
Common Mistakes
 Using underscore instead of hyphen
 Mixing up position of language and country code
 Using country code without language code
 Using invalid country code or language code
 Missing the self-reference url
 Defining UK for country code of Great Britain GB
How to Structure your International Site
hreflang

45. How to Structure your International Site
Language Targeting - Google Search Console

46. targeting optimization

47. Targeting Optimization
There are three main ways to get users to their appropriate locale.
1. ccTLD
2. Geolocation (IP) or Language Negotiation
Recommendation: Only suggest country or language.
Automatic redirect can have implications for Search Engine Spider.
3. User Choice
- Global gateway
- Language Switcher
- Country Picker
For Users
How to Structure your International Site

48. Targeting Optimization
Global Gateway
Language and
Country
switching
3% of Forbes 1000
How to Structure your International Site

49. Targeting Optimization - Country
Flag as triggerGlobe Icon Country name in English
18% 4% 3%
Recommendation
Country Trigger
Country Selector
English Country name only Country name in current lang
36%
Flag and Country Name
15% 9%
Country names translated to
user’s native language

50. Targeting Optimization
Language code as trigger
23%
Language name in local language
24%
Flag and Language name
8%
Language Trigger
56% 20%
Language name in native language Language code
14%
Language name in english
NO!
!
Language Selector

51. Country and Language Selection Location
L a n g u a g e S e l e c t i o n
Top Right 56%
Top Left 7%
Footer 4%
Other 11%
C o u n t r y S e l e c t i o n
Top Right 50%
Top Left 7%
Footer 14%
Other 28%
How to Structure your International Site

52. No Language Option

53. Language Available
only if you speak Chinese
http://www.vim.net.cn/machine/inde
x.php?lang=en

54. Language Available
only if you speak Spanish
911/1000 (Forbes)#

55. takeaways

57. website translation/localization: info@acclaro.com
web design: info@designingit.com