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How to Make Your Travel Business Into a Global WebsiteBY: Christian Arno | Category: OTHERS | Submitted: 2010-10-01 16:54:26
Planes, trains and automobiles still have the same distances to cross but in terms of reaching new customers the world has never been smaller. The world wide web is literally that: a tool that potentially puts a truly global audience at your fingertips. Establishing a global, multilingual web presence is important for any business wanting to take full advantage of the opportunities afforded by the internet, and is even more essential for a border-spanning sector like the travel industry. Here are some tips we've discovered at Lingo24 for going global with localized websites. Translate your content... English is still the single most widely used language online and, to a certain extent, remains the lingua franca or common language of the internet. Even so, almost 75% of internet users speak a native language other than English, according to Internet World Stats. Studies have also shown that multilingual internet users place more trust in websites written in their own native language, especially when it comes to booking services or buying products online. Clearly, translating your content is essential, and there are a number of ways to achieve this. The simplest and cheapest is to use a translation widget such as Google Translate, which will allow visitors to select and translate content to a language of their choice. Inline translation code can provide a more intuitive automatic translation, but you should remember that machine translation can be prone to throwing out contextual and linguistic errors. The optimum route is to use the services of a native speaking translator, which will help avoid mistakes and retain nuances and meaning. ...but take extra care with keywords Even if you use machine translation, you should never rely on a straight dictionary-style translation of your keywords, as synonyms, colloquialisms or other alternative terms might be more successful in different markets. If you had a section in French on high-speed bullet trains for example, a good keyword would be 'TGV' - an abbreviation of 'Train à Grande Vitesse' (or 'high speed train'). In French-speaking Belgium meanwhile, a good keyword would be 'Thalys' after the main operating company, while a direct translation from English to French of 'bullet train' would leave you with the nonsensical phrase 'train de balle'. Local knowledge and thorough research are essential when it comes to multilingual keywords. Create back-links Link building is an important part of SEO but with multilingual websites, the location is as important as relevance. In practical terms this might involve targeting travel sites ranked highly on Alexa in your target market and language, and leaving guest posts and reviews or offering content with expert advice to generate back links. Boost SEO with country code domains Google and other search engines take location into account in their algorithms, and investing in country code top level domains (such as .fr for France or .de for Germany) for your localized websites will help boost your rankings on Google's local engine and any other local competitors. Ensuring the sites are also hosted on servers that are physically located in the target country will boost your rankings still further. But separate top level domains can be expensive to set up and time-consuming to maintain. If you decide to just use one top level domain, Google advises that you keep your different languages separate by using subdomains or subdirectories. Google also has a Geographic Targeting tool in Webmaster Tools that allows you to specify particular geographic targets for different subdirectories or subdomains, localizing your web pages without the necessity for separate top level domains. Take other search engines into account Google is of course the single largest search engine but in some markets local competitors have the edge. In the Czech Republic, for example, Seznam is the most commonly used search engine, while Baidu is the most popular in China. The basics of SEO remain the same but each search engine has its own algorithm and quirks, meaning you should use study their algorithm and use their keyword tools for keyword research to come up with an effective SEO strategy. By taking into account the peculiarities of culture, language and SEO in each of your target markets, you can create highly effective multilingual websites, and truly expand your business globally using your web presence. Article Source: http://articles.travelandtourisminfo.com/ About Author / Additional Info: Christian Arno is the founder and Managing Director of global translation and localization agency Lingo24, www.lingo24.com. Launched in 2001, Lingo24 now has over 4000 specialist translators worldwide, operations spanning four continents and clients in over sixty countries. Comments on this article: (0 comments so far)
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