Internet marketing in other languages

Hi Lucy,

I have a little experience dealing with this issue myself, (just a little ).

One thing to keep in mind if you want to rank well in the SERPs is that having multiple languages on the same webpage will hurt you rather than help you. Keep the language on the page consistant.

Also, translation tools suck. There's no getting around it, and anyone that tells you otherwise is blowing smoke up your keister. Their use is limited at best.

As far as focusing your efforts on specific targets, the more narrow your target market is, the better repsonse you'll get. You can't be all things to all people. Segregate your efforts and focus on providing good content to only one niche per page. Use as many pages or sites as you need to cover all the folks you want to focus on. Don't bundle them all thinking your visitors will pick and choose what appeals to them. The odds are against that. Create content that is laser focused per niche or segment.

And yes, you can pay someone to write your content in other languages, just be sure you understand what it is they are writing for you. It's your reputation at stake here...

Good luck,

KJ

Unfortunately, the language barrier isn't the only problem, if you would like to do IM in other regional market. Actually, this is the least you will have to worry about. Just imagine learning IM and SEO techniques from the start all over again. That's what it's like to enter those markets. You simply don't understand how the market works there.

You have given example with the Russian market and Twitter. Well, russians just don't use Twitter that much - they use Mblogi, they don't use facebook, because they have vKontakte, Google delivers only 5% of russian search engine traffic, everything else is served by Yandex and Rumbler, which have different ranking algorithms than Google. I hope you see my point. You don't have to worry about the language, but about the specific knowledge you have to posses about the market itself.