The Importance of SEO Localisation

When it comes to web content that targets international market, translation has always been the priority for the site owner, and localisation has always been neglected. It seems to be so natural that we assume if the website is translated into the language of our target markets, then all the problems are solved. But is it correct? If it is, I will not be writing this post! Language in general is deeply influenced by the culture of the place where it is spoken. Take a look at the world’s top 3 most widely spoken languages for example:

Chinese: Brunei, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Philippines, Singapore, S. Africa, Taiwan, Thailand
English: Australia, Belize, Botswana, Brunei, Cameroon, Canada, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Fiji, The Gambia, Ghana, Guyana, India, Ireland, Israel, Lesotho, Liberia, Malaysia, Micronesia, Namibia, Nauru, New Zealand, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Samoa, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Somalia, S. Africa, Suriname, Swaziland, Tonga, U.K., U.S., Vanuatu, Zimbabwe, many Caribbean states, Zambia
Spanish: Algeria, Andorra, Argentina, Belize, Benin, Bolivia, Chad, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Rep., Ecuador, El Salvador, Eq. Guinea, Guatemala, Honduras, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Mali, Mexico, Morocco, Nicaragua, Niger, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Spain, Togo, Tunisia, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela.

As a native speaker of Mandarin Chinese in Taiwan, the difference between my mother tongue and the Mandarin used in China and other countries where people speak the same language is huge. If you  ever meet people who are from a different cultural background but speak the same language as you, I believe you feel the same as I do.Very often, what a term can mean in one culture can have a completely different meaning or does not even make sense in another. That’s why we need to localise the website, and even SEO!

A vivid example is how 牛 is used in Chinese. Let me give you a Title tag from a Chinese website as an example:HTC Desire: 宏達電子2010年最牛手機

To a Mandarin Chinese speaker from China, the sentence will be understood as ”HTC Desire: the best HTC mobile phone in 2010”

But to a Mandarin Chinese speaker from Taiwan, the sentence actually means “HTC Desire: the really COW HTC mobile phone in 2010″ – which doesn’t even make sense.

From here we can see the importance of SEO localisation. As 牛 means cow, bull or cattle in general, but only in China it can also means “the best.” In the case of the Chinese title, it makes perfect sense to Chinese speakers in China but not in Taiwan at all. If a site is using this title in it’s web page to target searcher in Taiwan, the site will not only look silly, but also will miss the opportunity to convert the searchers even it ranks top 1 as it looks not credible to the site visitors.

In conclusion, if you are thinking about doing SEO for your site which will be targeting at foreign markets, always translate and localise your site first. If you are doing SEO for the site yourself, ask people from the foreign markets you are aiming at to help localise your SEO project. If you are hiring professional SEOers to assist your international marketing project, always make sure the people whom you consult with do have SEOers from your target countries to process the optimisation.