Website localization and multilingual SEO: a bilingual Virtual Assistant can help you

by guest blogger Claudia Amendola of mtvirtualassistant.com

What’s the key of a successful international website?

Over the past year, many of my clients with international websites have been asking me for an easy and fast way to optimize their sites for each country or the European market. That’s the reason why I wanted to make this post and share with you my thoughts. Please feel free to share yours too by leaving your comments ,-) .

You may know already that an “international” website is a website for an international audience. In order to reach an international audience you will need to Translate and Localize your website in other languages. English is the most common language but that doesn’t mean that everyone on this planet speaks and understand perfectly English. Only 37 percent of the world’s online population speaks English as a first language.

Translate your website in other languages such as Spanish, Italian, French, German ect will assure you a niche of market you will never get if your website is only written in English.

But translating your website is not the only thing you will need to do in order to reach multilingual audiences. Your website needs to be localized. WEBSITE LOCALIZATION is the process of modifying an existing website to make it accessible, usable and culturally suitable to a new target audience. It is a multi-layered process needing both programming expertise and linguistic/cultural knowledge as well as marketing knowledge. If a website is only translated to a different language, the chances to reach a new market are lower.

The website localization process comes normally first. Followed up by the website and content translation. At least this is what I normally do as I prefer to search and focus first on the market and audience niche. It is important to study the right words, the target audience age you are communicating with, the society class as well as your competitors in that particular country. In the majority of cases it is the lack of linguistic and cultural input that lets a website localization down.

Last but not least is: INTERNATIONAL or MULTILINGUAL SEO!

Multilingual SEO is an important component to an effective global Internet marketing strategy. Some search engines are better than others and work differently, too. Google results, for instance, may differ from country to country. Just because you’ve achieved a certain rank for targeted keywords for the U.S. doesn’t mean you’ll achieve the same results for Italy or Spain, for instance.

So, these are some tips you may take in consideration for your multilingual marketing:

- Know Your Audience first

- Modify Web Page Code for your new market

- Choose the right Domain or Domain Extensions

- Always use the Native Language

Claudia Amendola, Multilingual and Travel Virtual Assistant successfully provides an outsourcing alternative for clients who typically do not have the time, space or budget for in-house staff, but have the same need for bilingual and travel assistance. Claudia speaks and writes 3 languages fluently: English, Spanish and Italian. She can be reached at info@mtvirtualassistant.com or on Twitter @italianmtva

For French or German services contact the author of the blog, Sarah Santacroce at sarah@simplicityadmins.com or on Twitter @sarahsantacroce

Article Marketing: A Great Free Marketing Tool

Since I’m still in the middle of the big move (for those who are new to my blog: I’m moving from California to Switzerland) I continue my series of guest posts. This one is

by Jodi Crosby (@SmartVAforU)

Doesn’t everybody need more activity on their website? And wouldn’t it be great to find this activity through a free resource? Well, there are several free resources, but one of the best is article submission. You take the time to write a compelling, informative article and post it to the article marketing publisher’s sites. They get free content that can be employed by others looking for great information to post on their websites. The article publisher’s readers are then given the chance to click through to your site and your additional content. This additional traffic to your website should provide you with more opportunities to help out those clients.

Another aspect of article marketing is you get to provide informative content to help “Brand” yourself as an expert in your field, show your style, and provide a foundation for building trust. Most importantly, when writing articles or any other content be you, be consistent, and be authentic. The best way to build loyal followers is by being genuine and trustworthy.

What are some of the ways you can boost traffic and, in turn, revenue?

1) Remember to include a link to your site at the end of every article.

2) Provide the reader a little bit of information about your background and knowledge.

3) Give a short explanation of the benefits of visiting your site.

4) Inquiring minds want to know, so leave them a little curious about what you can do to help.

What if an ezine publisher picks up the article to be published in their newsletter? This provides an opportunity for thousands of the ezine’s readers to view your article and click through to your site. When someone publishes your article, they should include your entire article, including the information about you and your site.

The more click-throughs to your site the higher placement you will receive on the search engines.

If you continue to add to the number of articles submitted and where these articles appear, the number of links back to you and your website increase accordingly.

As you increase the number of links to your site, the search engines will give your site higher rankings. Your click-through rates will soar as you appear higher in people’s searches, and you will receive even more opportunity to help new clients.

The general consensus is, if you can get your website up to the top 6 for your search terms or keywords, you will create a lot more traffic on your site. Article marketing can make the difference and help you reach this goal.

Here are a few of the top article marketing publishers:

http://ezinearticles.com/

http://www.articledashboard.com/

http://www.goarticles.com/

http://www.articlesbase.com/

http://www.articlecity.com/

http://www.articlemark.org/

http://www.articlealley.com/

http://www.isnare.com/

http://searchwarp.com/

http://www.ideamarketers.com/

Each of these sites has different rules. Please take the time to understand their rules prior to submitting any articles so you don’t waste time having to edit your content. Submission to multiple sites is critical to a successful article marketing campaign. A Social Medial Virtual Assistant has the skills and knowledge to submit your article quickly and efficiently to the right sites for the most return on investment.

Jodi Crosby, Smart Virtual Assistant for You, is a mom and an entrepreneur committed to working with small business owners. My goal is to enable you to accomplish your goals while leaving the administrative tasks to a professional. I understand that being in business for yourself, while very rewarding is also very challenging. Smart Virtual Assistant for You can help. Visit http://smartvaforu.com. Follow Jodi on Twitter @SmartVAforU

How to use your e-mail signature as a Marketing tool

by Guest Blogger Michelle Mangen

Wanting to have a fancy email signature for your Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail or AOL email accounts?

Come on – you know you want it! Up until now it’s never really been that easy to add an HTML signature to your Gmail account.

Several weeks ago I did a post on How To Add A Twitter Icon to your email signature for Outlook 2007. Since I wrote that post I came across “WiseStamp” which allows you to create the same type of signature for some of the free email services.

The steps on how to do this were quite easy and I was really pleased with the result.

and then….I realized that it wouldn’t work with Outlook and I don’t want to actually log in to Gmail in order to have my kickin’ new social media icon laden email signature.

So I figured out how to have the best of both worlds. For the ones of you that use the web-based email programs for Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail and AOL email you will only have to set up Wisestamp and in a few minutes you will be ready to blast off emails to everyone and their mom showing off your rockin’ new signature.

For the ones of us that still use Outlook you will have a few more steps but in the end, trust me, it will all be worth it.

Do you use the web-based email programs? If so, hop to the end and leave a comment.

If you use Outlook 2007 use these steps to add your Twitter, your Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Skype, etc. icons into your email signature.

1. Set up WiseStamp (they have directions so I won’t bore you with them)
2. Sign into your web-based program and send yourself a blank message
3. Log into your Outlook and open the message you just sent yourself
4. Right Click in the body of the email and chose “view source”
5. This will bring up a text document with all of the HTML of the email signature
6. Copy that into a free HTML editor (I use PageBreeze)
7. View the new “page” in “normal mode” (PageBreeze instructions)
8. Copy the “normal” looking page
9. Open your signature box and create a new signature (see my previous post for instructions on how to do edit your Outlook signature)
10. Go test it….are you now sporting a rockin’ new signature?

Michelle Mangen, Your Virtual Assistant, specializes in Social Media and Bookkeeping and will work with you to take your business to the next level. Find her on Twitter @mmangen