Translating your website into an online global business
by Simon van Gool on 02/09/10 at 6:58 am
These days having a website to promote yourself to the local community is not enough.
The beauty of the internet is that you have the potential to reach a totally global audience.
Even if you are only a small home based business, your little business can compete with the biggest companies online.
To do this though you need to think outside your corner of the globe.
Here are a few tips to make your website more ‘globally accessible’:
Communication is the Key
While it is all good to develop your website in English, remember there are many online visitors from other nationalities that may want to view this and don’t have perfect English skills.
If you regularly check your website statistics you will most likely see visitors from many foreign countries, and if your website is only in English you may be missing online sales due to the language barrier.
Make sure your website can be easily translated into other languages.
This is so simple yet rarely do you see translation tools added to most websites.
Google offers a free script that you simply add to your webpages which allows visitors to easily convert your HTML website to their native language by simply choosing the language they like!
Simple go to Google’s Translation page http://translate.google.com and select Tools and Resources and you will see the code you need to add to make your website translatable.
Is your Domain Name Global?
While the domain of your country is perfect for attracting local traffic, such as .co.uk, .com.au, etc, making sure you also have the .com domain is a must for global business.
You may not realise this, but Google.com and your local Google list your business very different, and tend to give preference to the domain that suits the local region more.
So if you are in Australia your .com.au domain will work great, but if you type in the same search term in say Germany’s Google, you probably won’t show up with your .com.au domain. In fact many international search engines won’t even add you to their local online search engines if you aren’t a .com domain.
Also, if you were in Australia and a .co.uk domain name came up in Google would you be as likely to purchase with them as you instantly realise they are in another country? Statistics show most people don’t, however they will purchase from a .com even though they are still in another country, because it is accepted as a global domain name.
Optimising your Website for International Traffic
Many people don’t consider the difference in the English language between countries, and a term that is popular in your country may not be the same in a foreign english speaking country.
For instance, in Australia you might holiday in an apartment and go drinking in a hotel, yet in the USA, you live in an apartment and holiday in a hotel!
In the USA you also go on ‘vacation’ rather than on ‘holiday’.
There are many instances where this occurs in English speaking languages, but it can be easily fixed.
Create your website as a local version and then simply set up a sub-directory and name that directory to suit the country. For example www.yourwebsite.com/US or www.yourwebsite/Australia
Then simple duplicate the entire website but change certain terms to suit the local language you want to target, and then on your homepage create a link to the different local directories.
This will not only make it easier for your online visitors, but will help with your international rankings on the search engines.
Author: Chris Bourke from Devision.com.au and Webcrowd.com
Visit www.WebSEOCoach.com and download Chris’s free ebook on Twitter Marketing Made Easy
