How do you quickly double your online income? Well, that's easy. Get
found by the 50 of the world that currently cannot possibly find
you. I can almost hear you say, "Did you just say that 50 of the
world cannot possibly find me?" Yes, and that is the saddest thing
but the greatest, simple to execute opportunity for many online
businesses
Let us start by seeing why half the world is in no position to find
you. After that, we will see how we can change that. Some quick
statistics and facts are in order here. These are the numbers and
facts that we will be using to formulate our strategy and win in
these foreign markets:
- According to some accounts, half the world's Internet users either
do not speak English, or they do speak it but prefer to search the
web in their own language. In either case, when they go to a search
engine, they type in their search terms in their language and not in
English. That is why they cannot find your web site - because the
keywords you use are not translated into their language. But
remember, they can read English or use translation software to
translate English sites. The only problem here is that they cannot
find your site. But if they did, they would be able to use it
somehow. We will look deeper into that later.
- They tend to use localized search engines that are able to index
words in their language.
- They use translation tools that are able to translate English web
pages to their language as they browse.
- Although the world has thousands of languages and dialects, 97 of
the world speaks just 24 languages! A quick visit to Oracle.com will
show you what these languages are. Oracle has a drop-down language
selector that covers them all. You can make your own simple instant
translator free at
http://www.rohitab.com/cgiscripts ranslingo.html. Modifying it a
little would enable you to have a single drop down instant
translator that covers 30 languages. See http://www.FatSMS.com for
an example of how this has been done. If you wish to have one of
these on your site, see http://www.positionweaver.com ransguide/ for
more information.
- Because very few English site owners submit to non-English search
engines, and do so using appropriate content as we shall soon see,
you will be tapping into a very ripe, large and untapped market with
much less competition.
- Foreign language markets online are growing at a much faster rate
than English speaking ones as the Internet penetrates these
countries.
On a country-by-country level, here are some quick statistics and
facts to go by:
- In the Latin world, Brazil is the largest single market, speaking
Portuguese. Also keep in mind that roughly 1 out of every 9 people
in the USA are Spanish speakers. That is a huge market.
- The German market is very large, wealthy, and high-tech. It also
has a large proportion of bilingual users who primarily search and
browse in German but they are able to read English sites when they
do find them, without the use of any translation software.
- The French-speaking world is probably even larger than the German
one, with about 150 million people spread around the world in many
francophone countries.
- The Asian speaking market is phenomenal. Some researchers estimate
that by 2007, the dominant language on the Internet will be Chinese.
Even today, Asian users make up a big chunk of all online users.
Japan, the second largest economy in the world, is non-English
speaking.
To ignore these markets is simply crazy, yet most people do. But
that is understandable, given the fact that most people think it is
very difficult to penetrate them. I would like to show you how easy
it really is, something that I myself just learnt a couple of days
ago quite by accident.
Our goal is simple, and it is to get people to find our web site
when they search using words in their language that describe our
site. For example, say you had a web site that sold travel
reservations. Let us assume that most people find your site using
the search term 'cheap air tickets'. If your site were entirely in
English, then you would only get people searching using the term
'cheap air tickets'. You would never be found by Germans searching
for 'preiswerte Flugscheine', the German translation of that.
Remember, these Germans would have been able to read your site in
English or use their translation-capable browsers to read it, and
then order from you. The same goes for Italians searching for
'biglietti di aria poco costosi' or Spaniards that type in 'billetes
de avión baratos' into the search engine. But you could have sold to
any one of them, they were definitely looking for you and they would
have understood you.
Now that we have seen what the 'foreign terrain' looks like and how
accessible and exciting it really is, let us look at how to take our
web site abroad easily. This is a three-step process.
Step one is to get together all our keywords in English. Make a list
of all the words and phrases that people mostly use to find you on
search engines. Once you have this list, go to some free online
translation sites and translate your list into all the necessary
languages. You can translate them free using machine translation
services, although for better accuracy you would want to pay for
human translation. The site mentioned above has a free tool that
brings about 30 languages together. To start with, translate into
French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese, and
Korean. There are free machine translators on the web for all these
languages.
Step two is to have these translated keywords on your site. There
are three ways of doing that:
The easiest and cheapest way is free. It is not as effective, but it
is far better than doing nothing. All you do is insert these
translated keywords into your site pages title tag (very important)
and Meta keywords and description tags, plus in the body text and
headlines of your pages. That alone is far better than having a 100
English site.
The other thing that you can do is still more effective. This is
making pages for each language. The cheapest way to do that is to
use these free machine translators online to translate each of your
web pages. That translation will not be too accurate but it is good
enough. Better accuracy is achievable through human translation
services. Once you have all your pages translated, be sure to link
them together from your home page. By the way, the instant
translators described above are great for giving speakers of a wide
variety of languages instant local language translations of your
site, but because these translate on the fly, they do not help in
your foreign search engine efforts. Only static built pages are
indexed.
The best effectiveness is obviously achieved if you can make a page
optimized for each keyword and for each language. These are
optimized doorways in each language and keyword - and their
effectiveness is just as great as the effectiveness of English
doorways. The easiest way to attack such a task is to use a
combination of the free translation services we have talked about
and doorway generation software such as the one at
www.PositionWeaver.com. What you would then need to do is to make up
a long paragraph text in English, translate that along with your
keywords, then plug them into PositionWeaver or similar software and
in minutes you have optimized pages in any language of your choice!
Step three in our strategy is to submit our new multilingual site to
not only the usual English search engines, but also to the foreign
search engines. Many of the big English engines have localized
editions and if they don't they still index foreign language pages.
The foreign engines also exist, although you may never have heard of
them. Do not assume that all Germans or Japanese, for example, use
Google, AltaVista and Hotbot like you do. They may never even have
heard of these, preferring to use their own engines. Do some
research into this to find out what each country or peoples use. You
can submit to these engines but of course because the users
primarily search in their language, a purely English site would be
totally lost in them. But luckily, now you know how not to be purely
English.
Well, then, my great explorer friend! Go out and conquer foreign
lands for your financial gain. I wish you great enjoyment in your
adventures! Adios!
About the Author
David Gikandi, CEO SearchPositioning.com (a
search engine optimization software developer) and co-CEO
FatSMS.com, a new, globally targeted SMS text messaging and mobile
phone services company. If you wish to have an instant translator on
your site, see http://www.positionweaver.com/transguide/.