MIAMI, FL – April 4, 2019 – (HISPANICIZE WIRE) – Translating your website(s) to Spanish is essential if your company or brand wants to connect with Latino clients living in the United States, Mexico and/or other Latin American countries, as well as Spain. Website localization goes beyond simply translating your website content. It includes some technical areas and website management, including keyword research, anchor text usage, and SEO optimization.
Some considerations for your bilingual websites
1. Decide on multi-language or multi-site web structure – Those who decide for a multisite often purchase their site’s name and secure it in different countries to make it more “local” and relevant to local readers.
— Google.com [For USA]
— Google.com.mx [For México]
— Google.com.pe [For Perú]
— Google.com.ar [For Argentina]
However, you may ask, “Should I develop the new site in a new domain, subdomain or language folder?” This article by Hispanic Market Advisors® may help you decide what may be best for you.
2. Select a Content Management System (CMS) with multilingual capabilities – Unfortunately, many CMS don’t have multilingual features and Spanish-language content ends up being mixed up with English-language content which can be detrimental and even counterproductive to any business.
Although this strategy may be justified for certain type of websites that future user-generated content, like forums, typically translating the body content and keeping the same language (English) in the template, such as the navigation and footer, can make your Spanish-language web pages look very awkward to the most sophisticated users.
In our view, your Spanish-language content should be easily accessible and clear to the reader. Choosing a CMS that has multilingual capabilities should be a priority if targeting the Hispanic market is an important part of your marketing strategy.
3. Define a clear keyword strategy and optimize your content using rich keywords – until voice search takes over for good, for most searches nowadays, it all begins with words typed into a search box. Having said that, ranking for the right keywords can make or break your website, as cited by The Beginners Guide to SEO – Moz. Therefore, conduct a keyword research, incorporate data from your competitive intelligence efforts, and optimize your web content for SEO success.
4. Add all tags using rich keywords – do not forget to add your alt tags in Spanish using your primary and secondary targeted keywords. Same goes for your h1, h2, h3 tags, and META tags.
5. Add hreflang attributes to tell Google about localized versions of your page – using hreflang or sitemaps for language- or region-specific pages will help Google Search point users to the most appropriate version of your page by language or region. Read this Search Console Help page to learn methods for indicating your alternate pages.
6. Add markups to your xml sitemap to help Google know which of your websites corresponds to which languages and countries. Google might still find alternate language versions of your page, but it is usually best for you to explicitly indicate your language- or region-specific pages by adding language markups to your xml sitemaps.
7. Monitor changes in your keyword rankings and make changes accordingly to your content marketing and keyword ranking strategies – for instance, if you realize it is very difficult to rank well for some highly competitive keywords, you may decide to enact a long tail strategy, instead. On the contrary, if you notice that a certain primary keyword being targeted by your business has a high-volume search and is within your reach, you may want to refine your content creation and digital marketing strategies towards emphasizing that keyword and go for the kill.
8. Monitor your Spanish website for errors and warnings and fix them in a regular basis so that your site’s health remains with a high score, which is essential to earn good rankings. Your website content needs to be optimized for SEO from an On-Site and Technical SEO standpoint.
9. Make sure your Spanish website has high page speed scores – At Hispanic Market Advisors®, we like to use PageSpeed Insights by Google. Web developers, webmasters, and marketers can analyze their websites with PageSpeed Insights. By getting the PageSpeed score for your websites, you can use PageSpeed suggestions to make them faster, more SEO-friendly, and ultimately maximize the user experience, which should be the primary goal.
Remember that behind the successful running of your websites are experts who perform website maintenance tasks, including updates and edits, and other essential roles such as troubleshooting website and server issues, and constantly test your site for functionality, ease of use and load time. Learn about our professional webmaster services.
10. Avoid the WordPress multilingual plugin, also known as the WPML, if page speed is important for your website – The WPML is a special plugin available to all WordPress websites which makes it easy for businesses and professionals to create multilingual websites. However, having these benefits come at a cost: it tends to make your site slower speed wise and heavier coding wise.
This point may be the most controversial of all but using the WPML versus the Multisite option boils down to the primary objective of the brand or business. Given that our clients’ primary objectives are to rank high on SEO and every detail counts, we, as a specialized agency, always give more weight to fast, super lightweight responsive WordPress sites that can rank high on the search engines. Thus, we prefer a multisite over WMPL, but can work comfortably with either environment.
Final Thoughts
Of course, depending who you are and what your interests may be, you may not agree with some (or all) of these recommendations for your bilingual websites. But hopefully, you have found these tips helpful and actionable. Please leave us some comments, whether good or bad, and we’d be happy to respond to you at our earliest convenience.
Hispanic Market Advisors’ focus and ability to build highly effective Spanish-language websites for its clients:
“When translating a Web site from English to Spanish, it is important that you do not translate the content literally but develop a user experience that addresses the needs of all online Hispanics, regardless of their language preference,” says Sebastian Aroca, President and Founder of Hispanic Market Advisors®.
Some clients and partners’ comments:
“Hispanic Market Advisors has been a trusted partner of Hispanicize Wire and the Hispanicize Media Group brands for more than five years. I have utmost respect for Sebastian Aroca, Johnny Lozada and the whole HMA team. Sebastian is one of the rare national SEO experts who specializes in the U.S. Hispanic market. This made HMA a natural fit for Hispanicize Wire, the only Latino-owed and operated press release distribution service in the United States. As a bilingual press release distribution service with an innovative multimedia and social media platform, our clients expect to receive solid SEO benefits when they distribute a multimedia news release in either English, Spanish or both languages. We needed a partner who was not just an SEO virtuoso, but who was also Spanish-dominant and understood the cultural nuances of the growing U.S. Hispanic market. That’s Sebastian. We began working with Sebastian by inviting him to speak on Latino SEO-related panels at Hispanicize Event. Impressed with his Hispanic SEO acumen and solid case studies, we later partnered with him on Hispanicize Wire. The Wire required optimizing not just our main website, but each individual client press release and our growing network of news feed widgets and plugins on media partner websites. What I discovered and appreciate about Sebastian is his big-picture strategic marketing thinking and his holistic approach to our company as a growing business, as opposed to just an “SEO project.” Today, HMA has become our main technology partner, providing responsive website design, web programming, website maintenance, marketing consulting, and complex plugin and widget development. HMA is much more than just an SEO partner. We highly recommend Hispanic Market Advisors to any growing and competitive business, brand, agency or influencer….” Bill Gato, CEO Hispanicize Wire.
A Note on Terminology
The terms “Latino” and “Hispanic” are used interchangeably in this press release.
About Hispanic Market Advisors®
Hispanic Market Advisors ® is a boutique company focused on connecting brands with Hispanic consumers digitally, through various Hispanic marketing strategies that are aiding companies of all sizes to reap the growth of the Latin American and US Hispanic market.
The Hispanic market continues to be a very large portion of the untapped consumers in the US. By researching various aspects of Hispanic marketing, a business can realize its potential in bringing in more valuable consumers who contribute to heightening overall revenue. Should you be interested in exploring opportunities with Hispanic Market Advisors®, please contact us online. Our main office is in Miami, FL (Midtown area), and we assemble specific teams depending on our clients’ needs and budget.
