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| Search Engine Optimisation |
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Optimising sites for different languages can pose quite a few challenges. Below you will find downloads of lists of foreign language search engines (the main ones anyway). Knowing which engines to spend time on is the first part. Of course the big internationals (Google, Yahoo, MSN) are pretty much everywhere, but, in some markets local engines dominate. Korea is a case in point. Here the main engines are all local; daum, simmani, naver etc. The big 3 still have good traffic, but you would be missing out if you ignored the locals.
Do you need a local domain name? There are a few pros and cons to purchasing a local domain. The first thing to consider is not all domain names are available. Some require you to have a local presence (as in an office or a registered company as in Korea) while other domain registries have set aside a specific domain for foreign companies marketing in their language (e.g. Japan has .co.jp for Japanese businesses and .jp for foreign businesses). Then there is the cost to be considered, and prices vary wildly (from USD$25 for a .per.sg to $1300 for a .nf or .tt!) On the pro side, a local domain allows you to present your website as a local presence. In some markets this can be a definite plus; and even if you are not presenting yourself as a local business it still does demonstrate a commitment to that market. Finally, there are some search engines and directories that only index local domains or websites of local companies. These are termed 'vertical' portals; vertical in that they are geographically limited (go figure!). While few of these are likely to generate huge amounts of traffic, they can be valuable in terms of page rank and inbound links.
Should your entire site be translated? Yes, if you want your visitors to convert to customers or enquiries. There is nothing as frustrating as getting half way through and finding that the balance of the information is in a language you can't understand! And if the information is important enought to present to your English speaking visitors, then it is also required for your non-English speaking visitors. This also includes shopping carts and ordering mechanisms, as well as order confirmations. It is not difficult to have a pro-forma order confirmation in the customer's first language, and populate it with the order content dynamically. And all this aside, the more content you put online in the target language, the more there is for the search engine to spider.
Keyword density, meta statements and inbound links. All of these items are just as important in other languages as in English. If you are translating your website (and I know it sounds silly but I have seen a lot of examples) translate the meta statements of those pages as well! Keyword density targets are the same around the world; approximately 3-7% of body text should be target keywords. Commas between keywords are important, particularily for Chinese and Japanese, the use of kanji means that distinct words need to be physically separated (in traditional Japanese and Chinese there are no commas or spaces, a sentence is just one long string of characters). Inbound links for PR (Page Rank) value are becoming more important, not just for Google but for other engines as well. Interestingly, while Google doesn't seem to care what language the inbound link is coming from, but some other local language engines do. So get inbound links from sites in the same language as your site.
Downloads
Asian Search Engine Listings
Listings of major search engines in Asian languages
European Language Search Engines
Listing of major European Language Search Engines
English language search engines
Listing of major English language search engines by country
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