Multilingual SEO

SEO guidance

To be successful with SEO for multiple languages, we need to:

• Translate metadata — it’s very important to use the translated language to attract visitors who use that language; otherwise, the page won’t rank highly in other languages, only the English would.
  
  
• Translate the content — including H1, body content, links and assets like videos, images and PDFs. Adapt any content to the local culture, including currency, measurement system, etc.
  
  
• Use language-specific URL slugs — it's recommended to have URLs or the URL slugs in the same language you want your content to rank for. Avoid accent marks in the URL.
  
  
• Translate the target keywords into the new language — but keep in mind that simply translating the keyword might not always work; that's why it's important to understand how people search in their native language. Keyword research can be performed in each separate language and by country. Also:
  • Use other related or popular keywords and synonyms in that new language. This is important because anyone who speaks English may use a particular word but other people who speak a different language may refer to it a different way.
• Avoid putting all languages on one page — ensure that each language-specific asset or content is housed on a different page, so that Google can index each version and each page can have unique, language-specific metadata.
  
  
• Consider adding links to other language versions of a page — in case someone landed on a page by accident and they don't understand that language.
  
  
• Use hreflang tags — this is more of a technical SEO best practice that appears in the code and not something that is seen on the page. By using hreflang tags, this helps with targeting audiences with specific languages and/or countries by telling Google which version of a page is meant for which language.

URL best practices for certain countries

Japan

• Use Japanese characters within URLs.
• As long as the URLs are UTF-8 encoded, Japanese characters will display in Google search results if formatted correctly.
• Example URL structure: optum.com/path-name/旅行
• Japan uses multiple alphabets including Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana. Hiragana is the most common alphabet used in Japan, while Katakana is often reserved for foreign words.
• Users in Japan typically type in Latin before converting their search query into their preferred writing style.
  

Russia

• Yandex is the most widely used search engine in Russia; Google is a small percentage of that use.
• Use Cyrillic in URLs when targeting Russia.
• Use keywords in the URL structure, as this is what Yandex values; but don't keyword stuff.
• Example URL structure: optum.com/path-name/Компьютер

China

• Baidu is the search engine used in China. It operates differently from Google, from how it processes URLs to what it defines as a "friendly URL."
• Use descriptive URLs, just as you would for English-based URLs.
• Avoid using URLs with parameters, as Baidu can have issues in crawling them.
• Avoid using Chinese characters in the URL. This is because some Chinese characters have issues being encoded, which can lead to unreadable characters in a URL path. It can also cause issues with Baidu crawling and discovering content.
  • Instead, you can replace the Chinese characters with Pinyin.
  • Pinyin is used to represent the sounds made when a person speaks Chinese.

Middle East

• Google is the dominant search engine in the Middle East.
• It's OK to use the Arabic language in URLs.
• However, keep the URL slug short (no more than 5 words), as it's easy to make a mistake when typing a URL with Arabic in it.