Translating a website might appear at first glance to be an easy task but unless you have hired a translator from a website translation service which has extensive experience in this type of translation it’s quite easy for mistakes to be made.
Common Omissions in a Website Translation
1. File Names
Many of us already know that the search engines use file names and links when calculating a ranking. Some people don’t understand that this also applies when a site is being localized when using a different language. Foreign language keywords are searched as-is. This means search engines don’t translate automatically English keywords in a file name into another language. If you are intent on maximising your keyword rankings in French for example for a “car-rental.html” file you will need to name it “location-de-voitures.html”. The renaming of a file applies also to images that have any keyword relevance. If you do this your visitors’ experience of your website will be far more favourable and it can assist your website to improve its rankings.
2. Metadata
If your website has been optimized in the past for searches in the English language and is translated directly into a further language, the metadata can get forgotten in the changeover. It’s a good thing to do with your website translation service is to get the translator to translate all of the title, keywords and any description tags. This will affect your ranking without a doubt.
3. Alt-Text
Alt-text is what is referred to as the text that suddenly appease when the mouse hovers on top of an image. This alt-text contributes to a website’s ranking. If you include translations of the alt-text your visitors will get a far better experience when accessing your website whatever their language is.
4. Image Text
Image texts are images which have text written on top of them. These need to be translated as well as the image’s file name and any link that it points to.
Summary
The above 4 points may not contribute a lot to when taken individually but when combined as part of your translation strategy can make a lot of difference to your relationship with the search engines. If you choose to get your website translation services to translate your website’s keywords you could end up on page one and not page ten that can without a doubt affect your public website presence.
