Professional Global SEO – SEM | janet bartoli

Latino Search Market – and other foreign languages…

August 19, 2007

In your opinion, does it make sense for a company that is targeting just the U.S. Hispanic market to optimize for Spanish language keywords?

Many clients I work for have foreign language content they’d like to get in front of their non English speaking audience. The biggest challenge so far has been getting the clients to grasp that in order to secure non-U.S./non-English language visitors; they will need to produce keyword rich content in the language of those they’re seeking to attract. I think a lot of this has to do with an American-centric perspective and our culture’s inclination to not be concerned with HAVING to know another language in order to do business and be successful.

Most clients do have foreign language translators, what they don’t have are those that specializes in search engine optimization within that specific country. As someone learning a foreign language I can say, it may be easy to translate basic jargon, such as “Which way to the nearest bank?”, but it’s another to know what these foreign language folks are searching for when looking for a specific product or service. Every culture is different and you can pretty much figure out what one American is typing in when searching for small business resources, but what words or combination of words are they using in France or Japan?

It’s become very obvious how necessary it will soon be to know both English and Spanish, at the very least, in the U.S. marketplace.

Filed under: Search Marketing