As more and more Websites add languages and pave the way for communications to non-Anglophone people online, the question arises how these people can find the site in the search engines in their language. After all, they look for words and ideas in their own language, not in English... indeed, most of them would not know the English word for the object of their search. How does one prepare a Website so that it can be easily found by the non- Anglophone search engines?

Non-Anglophones look for Websites in search engines and directories in their own language (and occasionally in the top English-language ones, such as Yahoo, Altavista, Infoseek, Hotbot and Excite). So it is important to be in these non-Anglophone indexes and have one's META tags and titles ready to be spidered in those languages. As there are 60 million non-Anglophones online now (see http://euromktg.com/globstats/) and you are set up to sell to them, these markets should be taken seriously.

Non-Anglophone indexes and directories do not accept English Web pages, by and large, since they were created to help people from their own country to find local Websites. Sometimes you even have to have a local address in their country (both physical and email), in order to register with them. It doesn't cost much to make one's Website visible to non-Anglophones.

One economical solution is to have a summary page for a Website translated into several languages, and register it with the various indexes and directories. A simple summary page of 250-300 words should be enough to interest a potential visitor to your Website. If you use image files as navigation tools or masthead for the page, it would be good to translate the words in these images too, and substitute the English with the translated text. (It's best to start with the original Photoshop files for these images, but usually a gif can be doctored so that the translation replaces the English words.)

Be sure and translate the META tags and title too.

A technical point: non-English languages are full of accents and diacritical marks. These have their HTML equivalent: for instance, the letter á is rendered á in HTML for the Web page. Some browsers (the later ones) do not require these complicated equivalents for accented words, and would read the accented letter directly. However, older browsers did not incorporate the possibility of rendering accented letters on the screen. So in order to reach the greatest number of potential visitors, you should keep on using the HTML equivalents of the accented letters, beginning with an ampersand ("&") and ending with a semicolon (;).

Now, when it comes to META tags, it's just the opposite. The foreign search engines are usually ready to accept the accented letters, since people in that country use these letters constantly as part of their language. Some of the more advanced engines will be able to read the HTML equivalent (for instance, "á"). But to make sure that your META tags are read correctly, you should use accented letters in the META tags.

This becomes quite important for people overseas finding your Website. If someone from France were looking for a screen (monitor), he'd search for the word "écran". The search engine would have to locate this word, accent and all, in either the title or one of the META tags. Furthermore, you would want for the description of your Website to come through accurately to this visitor's screen, on the "results" page, so make sure that the "description" META tag reads well in every language you use.

However, to be absolutely thorough, you can also include the English keywords in the META keywords tag. Your non-Anglophone visitor might be using a search engine in their own language, but searching for an English word. Rare, but possible. You have 2000 characters maximum in this "keyword" tag, and that is generally enough for keywords in both languages.

When you have prepared the "jumper" pages, register them in 30-40 indexes and search engines for major languages, and in 10-15 indexes for minor languages. Of course, you have to find someone who can do this in each language. Be prepared with an address and phone/fax number for the countries you are targeting -- these are sometimes asked for (however, I seriously doubt whether anyone ever verifies them).

And make sure every few months that your Website is still carried by each index. Make a search for your site name, then the subject matter. Even if it is in the index, another submission might bring your site up closer to the top of the list. Some online marketing specialists in Europe recommend to submit every two months, whether or not your site is in the index' database.

And with this work, you should start receiving more email from your targeted countries, asking about your products or services. This is the beginning of a successful overseas online marketing campaign. But it should not stop here. Listing your Website's translated pages in foreign indexes and search engines is the equivalent of having your company listed in a phone directory. This step would hardly be called marketing... but you would never run your company without it. Be sure to follow this step with constant press releases, banner ads, online promotion and strategic linking... in each targeted language. When you take foreign markets seriously, sales growth is the natural development.

Written by Bill Dunlap
Managing Director, Euro-Marketing Associates
ema@euromktg.com

Last revised on 22 Aug., 1998
URL: http://www.euromktg.com/eng/ed/art/rep-eur9.html