Multilingual Marketing, SEO And The Global Village

Marshall McLuhan was the Canadian educator, scholar and philosopher who popularized the term “global village” way back in the hippie sixties. He coined the phrase in reference to the effects of mass media on the world, in that it enabled people to instantly experience the effects of their actions on a global scale. At the […]

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Marshall McLuhan was the Canadian educator, scholar and philosopher who popularized the term “global village” way back in the hippie sixties. He coined the phrase in reference to the effects of mass media on the world, in that it enabled people to instantly experience the effects of their actions on a global scale.

At the time, most people were probably more concerned with skipping the light fandango than fretting over the mass-communication musings of Mr. McLuhan. Today, McLuhan’s observations seem more than a little astute, given the proliferation of the internet across the globe.

Digital technology has shrunk the world—time and space no longer inhibit real-time communication like they once did. A business in Uptown Chicago can communicate just as easily with the UK as they can with downtown. A simple laptop and broadband internet connection can reduce oceans to streams, making online marketing one of the most powerful sales channels available to 21st century business.

But the unity of the market in the global village breaks down when it comes to language: there is no universal language.

English may have emerged as the de facto language of international business and, subsequently, the web, but any organization that is looking to make serious inroads into foreign markets shouldn’t allow the fact that many foreigners speak English obscure the following facts:

  • Asia accounts for over 40% of the world’s internet users
  • China has 30% more internet users than the US
  • 75% of the world’s population speaks no English at all
  • Internet users are four times more likely to buy from a website in their native language
  • People search the internet in their native tongue

Online marketing and SEO go hand in hand. With international markets, localization is an obligatory addition, given the cacophony of cultural and linguistic complexities that come into play.

Take French for example. In France, dîner is “evening meal,” but in French-speaking Belgium and Switzerland it means “lunch”. Similarly, déjeuner is “lunch” in France, but “breakfast” in Belgium and Switzerland.

There are clear differences between standard German and Swiss German too. For example, the Swiss don’t use the “ß” (Eszett) symbol, choosing to use “ss” instead. And Switzerland sometimes uses a different grammatical gender to that in Germany (e.g. “das E-Mail” instead of “die E-Mail”). There are many such examples from within Europe alone that help to highlight the importance of following a strict localization strategy.

When launching a foreign language website, it goes without saying that you should always use a professionally qualified translator who is a native speaker not only of the language in question, but the precise country variant too. Now we can talk search.

Keyword translation

Research from eConsultancy has shown that more than half of European marketers planned to increase their SEO activity this year. When converting this activity onto the international arena, however, there are a few issues to be wary off.

As a general rule of thumb, translating keywords is a bad idea. Even if a search term is correctly translated, it may not be what people use to search for a product or service locally.

The term “car insurance,” for example, ranks highly on Google. A correct translation of this into French is “l’assurance automobile.” However, by checking the keyword tool on Google France, it’s clear that most consumers search with “assurance auto” or “assurance voiture” instead. You can avert a major SEO travesty by carrying out just a little research.

With some languages, English keywords can be imported directly. In German, English words are often used with regards to technical and web-based terminology. Terms such as “web design,” “web designer” and “design web,” for example, rank very highly on Google Germany’s keyword tool, meaning a business that ranks highly for those terms in the US or the UK would be fine to import them straight into their German language website. But the business would need to have this checked by a native German speaker first.

Language, SEO and the web

If any persuasion is needed as to the wisdom of adopting a proper multilingual marketing strategy, consider this: English may be the dominant language of the web in terms of content, but over fifty percent of all Google searches are in languages other than English. This figure is likely to rise as online populations grow far quicker in foreign language-speaking emerging markets such as China and Russia, than in the west.

This creates a great opportunity for international marketers. Because online competition for key search terms in foreign languages is much less fierce than in English, many businesses find that they can attain lucrative high positions on country-specific search engines, with much less effort than in English.

If this tells you anything, it tells you this: a multilingual marketing and localization strategy should underpin any international campaign, with SEO playing a pivotal role.

It pays to address the linguistic and cultural complexities that come with targeting foreign markets and you must speak to customers in their own language. By using inappropriate style, terminology and grammar, key messages are often lost and overall confidence in a brand diminishes.

Marshall McLuhan was ahead of the game in realizing the changes that mass media would bring to the world’s consciousness. But language is one of the last remaining barriers in creating the global village he envisaged.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Christian Arno
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