“When trade stops, war begins,” warned Jack Ma, the CEO of Alibaba at Davos 2018. This simple yet powerful statement serves as a reminder that your business needs to keep reaching customers. Ma went on to say that global selling is not just the birthright of big companies alone. Technology has effectively made the world so small that you can buy a product from Europe even if you are thousands of miles away in Australia.

Selling on a global scale has become the norm rather than the exception, and in order to achieve success, you must have global reach. To grow their revenue and their customer base, companies are looking internationally. The BRIC countries, especially China and India, are booming, making it essential that you reach these regions to garner new customers for your business.

Even if you are a small or midsized business, you need to think outside the box and extend your reach into these foreign markets. Gaining international market share doesn’t have to be difficult: with a little foresight, it makes perfect sense and is totally attainable.

That said, you should not set your sights on going global just because that is what your competitors have chosen to do. You need to make it a priority for your business because it brings value, revenue, and of course, because it will increase your organic traffic.

Using translation in your global efforts can help you reach your goals, and we are going to let you in on the secret of doing so right here.

The Advantages Of A Global Reach

If you are still not convinced that global visibility is right for your business, keep these key advantages in mind. You will have to put in some effort to make it work, but we promise the results will be well worth it.

1. Grow Your Organic Traffic

According to Rand Fishkin, ex-CEO of Moz, creating 10 times the usual amount of content gets more eyeballs on your website. This is inherently true, but we have found an easier way. You may already have great content on your site, but you just need to translate it so you can reach global audiences. To go global, you simply have to start with good content and translate it with the help of a translation service. You will then have rankings for “translation service” as well as “services de traduction” – the French equivalent.

2. Increase Your Overall Audience

Increasing your overall audience size is beneficial in so many ways. With a plethora of products and services offered in the U.S. and European markets, it can be difficult to compete. Head east to Asia and the doors open a little wider. This growing continent will require some new techniques from you on the sales side, but it can pay off exponentially. With an about-turn, you’ll be able to improve your revenue and margins just by focusing on a wider overall audience.

3. Build Your Brand

An effective way to prove that your business is reputable and worth buying from is to have a strong brand backing it. Targeting a global audience, selling internationally, and using content that is translated in a professional manner shows you have a brand that is focused and experiencing the type of growth that commands respect in the market. Investors and buyers alike will recognize your business and the efforts you have made to position it as a global brand.

Localization and branding

Establishing a strong brand takes time and reaching global customers doesn’t happen overnight. Both require resources, strategies, and funding, but you can achieve an increase in organic traffic quickly and cheaply. Here’s how you can accomplish it:

1. Understand The Language Of Your Visitors

To communicate in the best possible way with the visitors to your site, you need to know what languages they speak, so that you can translate it to good effect. This can be done by going to your Google Analytics account and viewing Audience > Overview > Demographics > Language. You’ll then see a comprehensive list of the languages spoken by your visitors, with American English at the top. Identify the most popular languages spoken by your visitors, as these will be the languages you choose to have your content translated into.

2. Know Which Content Works

Secondly, you need to decide what content performs the best on your site. Sites that have large amounts of content can be costly to translate by comparison with a smaller site with fewer pages. Start by selecting your best content to translate. This will allow you to test out how it performs and can also help you stick to a stringent budget. If you are unsure about which content offers the best value to your visitors, use Google Analytics to identify your most-viewed posts. You’ll want to keep your audience in mind as you select which content to use. Make sure they can relate to it too.

By way of example, if you have a site that provides helpful tips for people learning new languages, and your top post is about resources for learning German, it would probably not be germane to translate this content for a German audience that already knows the language. Save yourself some money and avoid content that conflicts with your new-found audience.

3. Make Sound Translation Choices

Now that you have identified your visitors’ languages and the best content you have on your site, you are ready to acquire translation services. This is more challenging than the previous tasks as it involves deciding who will translate the content, the cost of doing so, and how many languages you will have on your site or can afford to have. When it comes to deciding who is going to translate the content, you can choose between plugins or a professional translation service.

Using Plugins For Translation

If your site has been created through WordPress, you’ll have an easy time using translation plugins. There are several available through the site, including Weglot, WPML, and qTranslate. Their prices are affordable and translation time is nominal.

There are some drawbacks to using these plugins to translate your content, though. The accuracy and quality of your translation will suffer. Each new generation of the plugin offers some enhanced translation functions, but overall, they’re not the best option if you want a site that truly converts well into a new language, and this could cause some visitors to your site to feel offended. Having poorly translated content on your site is disrespectful to the international visitors that read it. They use it as a benchmark to determine your level of respect for their culture and language and, of course, for them.

Using Professional Translation Services

Even though a professional translation service will cost you more money than a plugin, it can benefit your site on a variety of levels. You’ll have a higher quality of translated content on your site. There is no comparing an experienced translator with a plugin or translation app, as the same results simply cannot be achieved.

You will also benefit from a solid customer experience with a professional translator. They know the nuances of the language in which they specialize and can help tweak your content, so that it is truly comprehensible to your visitors. A professional translator can help you show the visitors to your site that you have respect for them, as well as their culture, with an impeccable translation in their native tongue.

You will have the advantage of increasing your SEO strategy. Plugins can actually work against you when it comes to search engines rankings. Even Neil Patel had to learn this lesson the hard way. Using a professional translator who also knows SEO can help integrate the keywords that are essential to your ranking success into your content translation. The two of you can even work together to help your translated content perform as you expect it to.

Also, you won’t have to worry about the results of your translation as you are in the capable hands of true translation expert.

4. Monitor Your Progress

Now that you have translated your content, you may be expecting instant results. Don’t! Organic traffic takes some time to complete, and your use of keywords is also dependent on the results you are going to see. Be patient and wait at least six months before evaluating your progress. You can check the performance of your translated content in Google Analytics, and this can help you decide whether or not more content should be translated going forward.

In order to be successful selling globally, you need to take the necessary steps to translate your content first. This can be a challenge, but with these tips, you’ll find that it’s not as difficult or overwhelming as it initially seemed. Remember: poorly translated content reflects badly on you and could offend your visitors. Content that is translated properly has the reverse effect, and you will soon see your organic traffic increase as a result – gaining you more leads and customers as well.

Now over to you…

What are your thoughts? Are you going to consider selling on an international scale? Will you consider increasing your traffic through translated content? Please leave a comment with your thoughts and ideas. We’d love to hear from you.