08 Oct What Makes SEO in Miami Unique?
SEO in Miami has its own unique challenges, one of them being is its diverse population. Not just cultural differences, due to its proximity to the Caribbean and Latin America, a large percentage of the population is a native speaker of another language. According to U.S. Census Bureau data, 65.6% of Miami-Dade County is Hispanic.
Over 55.5% of the internet is written in English, but other languages are gaining online presence quickly. That means that there is big opportunity for those that are brave enough to pursue foreign language SERPs. Every language you add to your website has the potential to increase sales by 100%.
For SEO in Miami Dade and Broward counties in South Florida, providing a site in Spanish or another foreign language is more a matter of convenience and user experience. A Google study indicated that 79% of Hispanics use search engines, more than half use it daily. Most Hispanic Americans living in Miami are bilingual, or at least speak enough English to navigate a search engine, but reading pages of content is more of a hurdle.
So while a Spanish speaker may search for something in English, once they arrive at the page, they will switch to Spanish (if offered) to comfortably navigate and interact with the website.
Are you ready for bilingual marketing?
If you can’t provide foreign language support, you shouldn’t pursue foreign language SEO. Period.
That said, targeting buyers in a multiple language market like Miami requires research, just like any SEO client. Unique factors include terminology and demographics.
A brainstorming trick taught in colleges is to picture the ideal client, and act as though you creating a marketing plan just for that individual.
- How old are they?
- Where are they from?
- How would they describe your product or service?
If you need help with defining these parameters, a local Miami SEO and internet marketing company, like Telx Web, can help.
Building Your Bilingual Website SEO friendly
URL Structure
Create a link hierarchy that contains language-specific extensions and file names- but keep it clean! This makes it easier for the user and the crawler.
Google prefers domain extension to manage different languages (rather than using sub-domains). This clearly identifies the pages and makes the website easier for search engines to crawl. All the content when using a language module should be in that language, not in a side by side translation.
While on the subject of crawling and indexing, keeping content on separate URLs is prefered to automatic redirects and translation algorithms.
rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x”
Google uses the rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x” attributes to serve the correct language or regional URL in Search results. This code indicates that the page has a relationship to an alternate language version at a specified URL.
Building Your Content
Google uses only the visible content of your page to determine its language. Translate as much of your pages as possible, and translate the whole page, including the navigation. However…
Avoid Literal Translations
A badly translated page will not add any additional value to the page. When translating a page, it’s best to focus on the concept, not just the content. This can help you to identify search engine patterns and rank competitively for foreign language keywords. When possible, factor in regional dialects and expressions that will make your business seem more approachable to your target market.
If you use an automated translator, its best to block search engines from crawling those pages with robots.txt. Automated translators, while constantly improving, tend to translate poorly (just ask any high school Spanish teacher) and can look unprofessional.
Accents
Generally speaking, keywords without accents receive more traffic, which makes sense, because when you’re typing into a search bar you aren’t concerned that the robot will think you are addressing them improperly. Just make sure that the meaning of the word does not change (which is true 99.9% of the time)
What about that 0.1%?
Why accents are important (sometimes)[/caption]
The general rule is no accents in the URL and metadata, correct accents on the page itself. Easy, right?