Even if you think you already know a lot about SEO, you aren’t all set when it comes to your multilingual website. Sure, you definitely need to use all those tricks and tools that you would normally use on an ordinary website. But, there is more to it than just doing your typical SEO.
A multilingual website is a very good idea these days, as it expands the reach of our site well beyond the English-speaking world. Anything that can do that, especially when selling digital products, is going to help you take your site to the next level. If you have been mobile rank tracking and think you can improve the rank, then your multilingual SEO is likely lacking.
In this article, I will go over the SEO tactics you need to make sure that your site ranks where it should.
1. Use a professional translator
Automating your processes as much as possible is a great way to grow your site, so you may be tempted to use a Google translator for your content. This is definitely not the way to go.
Automated translations are full of errors and lack the natural-sounding qualities of a language. They don’t come across as trustworthy by your readers who will likely click the back button and move on. That sends a distrust signal to Google, who then drops your site in the rankings.
Use a professional translator for your site to make sure the language is natural and authentic.
2. Use hreflang tags
Duplicate content on a site is very bad for SEO, and Google will find it quickly even if you never intended for it to be duplicate. Translations can trigger that duplicate content signal that Google sends out, so it needs to be treated differently.
In other words, there needs to be a signal to Google that this text is a translation of original content on your site and should be treated as unique content. The way to do this is to use hreflang tags.
This will also help Google serve your site to the searchers in the correct language, which gives your site visitability in the rankings.
3. Sitemap and menus
Your sitemap is what helps Google understand your site better and helps the robot to crawl it. Creating a sitemap in the original language will not only help Google navigate your site, but users should be able to take a look at the sitemap and navigate better as a result too.
On that same token, having a menu for the option to use another language is also very helpful to the user. And anything that helps people use your site will give Google all the signals they need to determine if your site is useful or not. Then when somebody searches, Google will want to show them results with your site high in the ranking because they know that people find it useful.
Google’s sole goal is to give searchers the results that they are actually looking for.
