18 November 2022
Translating for Google Search Optimization in style
Client challenge
Keys to success
Results
One of Alpha CRC’s clients in the consumer products industry reached out to the Alpha Creative team to improve the search engine performance of its product pages in French and German. It was important for the client that all content had a consistent tone of voice, even as markets and languages varied. This was a requirement that would prove difficult to fulfill for SEO agencies who were limited to one specific language.
As part of the Alpha CRC network, Alpha Creative subscribes to the ‘all under one roof’ philosophy, which sees in-house teams of linguists and industry experts working together to provide clients with the highest quality services. The ‘all under one roof’ philosophy ensures that linguists working in different language teams are able to exchange information, ensuring tonal consistency across multilingual content for international brands.
At the beginning of the SEO content creation process for this specific client, Alpha Creative’s SEO team first conducted an analysis of the material to be created and/or localized across different target markets. The team’s focus was on keywords and ad copy, while referencing the corresponding landing pages or URLs in English and target locales along the way.
The aim was to promote familiarization with content and to determine the content relevance, while identifying how a particular web page corresponds to any given search query. As part of this process, the SEO team relied on a variety of tools, including regular search engines and search query analysis.
We researched each main keyword provided by the client, to source secondary keywords based on the market’s use of the terms as well as search volumes. The next step was to analyze the search volumes and competition levels (global and local) for each keyword candidate with the aim of defining the best performing keyword per target locale. Our preferred tool for this part of the process was SemRush.
On being given the challenge of translating a source in English, the team optimized the copy by implementing the relevant keywords in two foreign languages by using a SEO tool.
The scope also included considering and noting the search volume of each keyword chosen. Title tags, meta descriptions and H1 titles needed to be optimized too.
Internal links needed to be adapted so that the copy in the new language links to the equivalent page. The client specified that in case of discrepancies, the keywords should be used across the term base. Likewise, the client’s glossary also was required optimizing.
For this project, the four main keywords correspond to four URLs of an e-commerce site (Christmas products), and the languages involved in the project are French and German.
In order to complete the project successfully, our team took care to understand the client’s needs thoroughly before selecting linguists who were familiar with the content. In this way, the team was able to produce copy that worked well in Google search rankings, as well as being well written and compelling, and meeting the client’s style guides.
Our team translated all translatable items using MemoQ. We performed a keyword research in SemRush using the main keyword as the baseline and considering the client’s secondary keywords suggestions. Finally, we updated the copy according to the keywords, the glossary and the character restrictions.
The entire process was carried by linguists already familiar with the client. Because Alpha CRC was able to facilitate all stages of the project internally, we were able to achieve a quick turnaround.
