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1. Advice for multilingual SEO. Part 1

2. Consider all the possibilities.

3. Living as I do on the conjunction of three countries, that
is Belgium, Holland and Germany, can make search
engine optimisation (SEO) quite a challenge. Just in the
surrounding area of the village I work from are four
spoken languages so if you extrapolate that out to every
possible combination of search terms, browser settings
and computer language settings then you begin to see
the scale of the problem.

4. Leaving aside the differing search terms and therefore
your various sets of keyword targets, each different
language user will have their own set of computer and
browser language and preference settings that will give
completely differing search results.

5. As a quick example try searching - management
consulting Liege - on Google.com and Google.be-fr.

6. OptimaGest Management Consulting is 2nd out of
392,000 on Google.com and 24th out of 291,000 on
Google.be-fr. (Don't worry, I'm still working on the
Google.be rankings)

7. So here are a few tips that I have picked up to make your
job a bit easier.

8. First setup your browser for multilingual searches.

9. Arm yourself with a browser that has configurable
profiles. Firefox springs to mind.

10. Set up a profile for each required language so that your
preference language and search engine preferences can
be configured.

11. For Firefox installed with the installer:Make sure firefox
isn't running.Then open the Windows "Start" menu, click
"Run" (or Windows key + R) and then type:firefox.exe -
profilemanager or firefox.exe -P

12. If that doesn't work (it doesn't on my machine) then you
need to type the full path to the firefox.exe surrounded
by quotes and then the switch in the "Run" box. e.g.

13. "C:Program FilesMozilla Firefoxfirefox.exe" -
profilemanager

14. For Mac OS X launch the Terminal

15. (Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal) and
enter:/Applications/firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
-profilemanager

16. If that doesn't work then include the -bin switch e.g.:

17. /Applications/Thunderbird.app/Contents/MacOS/thund
erbird-bin -profilemanager

18. The profile manager dialogue will open and I
recommend that you keep the "default" profile as this
will preserve all your current settings. Click on "Create
Profile" and follow the instructions. You should create
and name a profile for each language and then make
sure the "Don't ask at startup" option is unchecked.
Now when you start Firefox normally the profile
manager will open and you will be able to select your
required profile.

19. As you start each profile for the first time go to "Tools"
then "Options...", "Advanced" tab and then click the
Languages "Choose..." button. Here set the language
that is required for that particular profile and remove
the default en-us.

20. Then open each search engine e.g. google.be in turn and
specify in the preferences the required language etc so
mirroring as closely as possible the actual setup your
target audience will have.

21. Now you can quickly check your search engine rankings
without having to re-configure your browser settings
each time for each target market.

22. Now the multilingual keywords problem.

23. Of course before you can monitor your success you must
first develop your keyword strategy and that is not as
straight forward as it would seem. We must research
carefully our target keywords in each of our target
markets. It is pointless OptimaGest Management
Consulting being number one on Google.be-nl if the
chosen keywords are never actually used in dutch.

24. My native language is english with a passable
knowledge of german and the small beginnings of french
so I am dependent on my translators for french and
dutch. But web designers are not in the business of
producing perfectly grammatical and vocabulary correct
sentences such as translators delight in. We are trying to
pack an optimum number of relevant search terms or
keywords into our copy while keeping it on message and
readable.

25. In our native language we can, with a bit of research and
practice, produce web site content that just "glows"
with pertinent keywords and phrases leading on to
mega search results. But where do you start in language
2, 3 or 4?

26. That will be the subject of my next article.

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