From the high street to the online world, globalisation is undoubtedly upon us. Every day, more and more companies are going international, with eLearning, software, consumer goods and high tech industries among the fastest growing online markets. Even for an inherently global profession such as translation, the last few years have been huge in terms of its expansion into the worldwide marketplace. Indeed, a recent spike in Google searches and blog posts about international SEO translation shows that people are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of good language practice to the success of their business.

However, translators themselves would be mistaken to believe that an accurate SEO translation in itself is all that’s needed for their work to reach its full potential. While SEO translation is one of the latest and most efficient methods of optimising your online business results, it is not always enough if you want to speak to your potential clients in a language they truly understand.

Any of us who have spent any time in the translation field are aware of the basic practices to avoid. Relying on translators who are competent, but not native speakers of the target language comes with a considerable amount of risk. Furthermore, using automated translators such as Bing or Google Translate is even more perilous. As a Scot living in Europe, I’m always reminded of one particular translation of Robert Burns’ Address to a Haggis. The poem is customarily read before the cutting of the Haggis before a meal, and contains the line ‘Great chieftain o’ the pudding-race!‘. It was once translated into German for a Burns event in Berlin, and then independently translated from the German back into English. This ended up with the rather curious description of our national dish as the ‘Mighty Führer of the Sausage People‘.

While perhaps an extreme example of why it’s a good idea to avoid using Google Translate for anything, it’s not the only way that a poor translation can lose an audience. One thing that SEO translations often fail to take into account is the importance, or even the existence of, a target culture – as well as a target language. In this case, what’s needed is a touch of Cultural Consulting.

The overall point here is that, even within the same language, there are a number of cultural factors that have to be taken into account. The same concept therefore applies to business translation. In terms of SEO translation, getting the site architecture, page titles and keywords correct is, of course, extremely important. However, if you neglect the cultural side of things, the translation will never reach its full potential.

In a world where translators have deadlines repeatedly thrust upon them at short notice, they often focus too much on just getting the SEO details right before sending their translations off again. As a result, what really makes a translation palatable for your clients can be easily overlooked. The world may be bigger and more anonymous now than it has ever been, but if you’re thinking about entering the global marketplace, it’s important to choose a language service company that understands what makes your target audience’s culture unique among the rest.

Go Global with SEO

Is your website doing well in your company’s business sector? Would you like to open up to the market on a global scale? If you haven’t done so already, you need to learn about SEO translation. By definition, SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the technique used to ensure that one’s website is among the first on a search engine results page, which is obviously very desirable for companies wanting to obtain maximum visibility when it comes to promoting their services. As the name suggests, SEO translation is the translation of content, keywords and meta tags, while taking into account the way certain words or ideas would be conveyed in each language. A valuable way of considerably improving your website’s global visibility! However, as with anything in this world, there are certain rules of conduct; the do’s and dont’s of SEO if you will.

There are considered to be three main types of SEO translation. The first one, which is very much a ‘don’t’, is black hat SEO. This method goes against search engine regulations and is therefore illegal. They are generally high-risk, on a short-term strategy and used for a quick financial turnaround. Such techniques include keyword stuffing, which attemps to forsee the keywords a regular Internet user would type into a search engine when looking for a particular service or article, and join as many of these keywords as possible throughout the different pages of the website. Another method is parasite hosting, which involves posting a link to a blog, wikipedia page or forum on a high-ranked website, which will then create a backlink to the black hat’s website. Also, cloaking is considered a black hat SEO method. This involves delivering completely different web page content to that of the one found in the search engine, due to misleading meta tags. If caught when performing black hat SEO, the penalties are extremely high and could result in the website being removed entirely from the search engine’s index.

Then there is grey hat SEO, considered technically legal but not completely ethical. This includes methods such as article spinning, in which, as an attempt to escape copyright penalties, a webmaster will take portions of an already existing and successful article in order to create his own content. Another technique is that of buying old domains, where a grey hat will look for domains that are soon to expire and then use it to link back to its own site. One method has more of a comical or satirical purpose, called Google bombing which ranks in the first position for searches on unrelated or off topic keyword phrases by creating a large number of links. An example of this was a Google bomb in January 2007, which resulted in typing ‘miserable failure’ into Google and the first result being George W. Bush’s biography on the White House website.

Lastly, there is white hat SEO. This is based on a long-term strategy and is associated with ethical SEO, complying with search engine regulations. One of the most recommended methods, it consists of is creating solid titles and meta tags and making insightful alterations to the content of your website. Having content of the highest quality will appear much more valuable to the search engines and to visitors. Quality is therefore essential in obtaining the best results in Search Engine Optimization.