Website translation requires more than certified, quality translation with cultural sensitivity — it also demands that you follow search engine optimization (SEO) best practices. SEO is a continuously evolving set of best practices that ranks your website based on keywords and key phrases your potential visitors enter into Google or other search engines. For example, if someone Googles “translation services Utah,” there’s a reason certain websites pop up first, second, third and so on: SEO. Many factors must be considered with SEO, and not all of them are the actual written or visual content on a website (although those count for a lot). Other SEO elements include page speed, number of advertisements (if any) and links.
“Black hat tricks” are methods some shady website owners and SEO agencies use to trick SEO algorithms into ranking sites higher. These tricks may work in the short term, but it’s nearly guaranteed you’ll get caught. If Google (or any other search engine) catches you, you might get slapped with a penalty and your ranking will go from the first page of results to the end. In some severe cases, your website can even get removed from search results entirely. Unfortunately, it’s possible to engage in black hat tactics and not even know it.
Translation for SEO
One of the biggest black hat tricks is to buy several similar domains and use copy/pasted text on every website. Maybe you purchased www.example.com, www.example.org and www.example123.com in an effort to keep the competition at bay while having as much online exposure as possible. It’s perfectly OK to purchase as many domains as you like. Some people, such as politicians and celebrities, do this so nobody else can purchase a domain with their name and make a spoof website. Most of the time, these “like websites” are never published. The trouble starts when you have numerous like domains and duplicate content on them. That’s not playing by SEO rules, and you’ll get caught.
However, translated sites are unique. In some cases, it makes perfect sense for a company that has customers in the United States, Canada, China and Mexico to have like websites featuring English, Mandarin and Spanish. You want to serve your customers to the best of your ability, and that includes providing content in their native language. In these cases, your content might technically be duplicate, but as long as you only have one website each in English, Mandarin and Spanish, that’s allowed by SEO algorithms.
The catch? Make sure you have zero duplicate content in the same language featured on these websites, and make sure your translations are high quality. Don’t depend on Google Translate for this. You’ll end up confusing your audience, probably embarrassing yourself and ultimately wasting time and money on those extra domains. Call Verbatim Solutions for certified translations from experts for all your web content needs.
