How to approach internationalization
A complete guide to your localisation strategy for global markets
guide
Localization
Guide contents
- 1 Overview
- 2 Design your user interface (UI) to be localization friendly
- 3 Develop your site to handle i18n needs
- 4 How Google crawls, indexes and serves up web pages
- 5 Make each language version easily discoverable
- 6 Understand your user intent
- 7 On-page and off-page SEO
- 8 How we determine a website’s targeted country
- 9 URL structures
- 10 Duplicate content and international sites
- 11 Taking your website global
- 12 Best practices for websites in any market
- 13 Design your app
Overview
The challenge
Around 75% of consumers are more likely to buy from websites in their own language.1 So, if you’re going global, speaking your target market’s language is crucial to your success.
Your aim
To maximize user engagement by creating a website that looks, feels and reads local, but packs all the branding and sales punch of your original site.
How to go about it
Gather a team to determine your localization strategy. As a starting point, consider these questions:
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What languages do the customers you’re targeting speak? Consider the variables. For instance, countries like Switzerland, Canada and South Africa are multilingual. Languages like Chinese, Arabic, Spanish and others have various dialects.
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Does your content management system (CMS) support multiple languages?
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Who will ensure your site’s content e.g. images, symbols, colors and text are appropriate for your market?
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Does your site have a mobile–responsive design?
Tip
If your market is a large expat community, they may prefer content to be in their own language with prices in the local currency.
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Design your user interface (UI) to be localization friendly
Talk to your design team about creating an adaptable user interface for all your target languages. This design should allow translators to focus on the accuracy of the translation. Your user interface should:
Accommodate variations:
- Spacing — e.g. often German is longer than English, Arabic takes more vertical space
- Density — e.g. Traditional Chinese characters are detailed, so use 12+ point font
- Right-to-left languages — e.g. Arabic, Hebrew, Persian
Include:
- Transliteration capability — make it easy to enter any language using Google Input Tools.
Tip
Transliteration is to write words or letters in the closest corresponding characters of another alphabet. For example, the name for Russia in Cyrillic script, "Россия", is usually transliterated as "Rossiya" (it's translated as Russia).
Develop your site to handle i18n needs
Internationalisation is the process of preparing for localisation. It ensures products and services can be easily translated into local languages and cultures. It's often shortened to i18n.
Aim to make your site easy to use for everyone: customers, and translators. First, work with engineers to code your site with different languages and content types in mind. Then, create a localisation engineering guide. Your best practices for coding/engineering should include:
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Workflow and tools
- Ensure that commands, buttons, and forms are easy for each culture to understand.
- Allow users to configure their language preferences by using a Universal Language Selector (ULS).
- Consult user language profiles to learn what languages multilingual users most likely speak.
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Character and string handling
- Avoid showing users UI strings before they’ve been translated.
- Store all data in a language/country-neutral format (e.g. Unicode for strings).
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Libraries
- Use industry standard libraries for language-specific formatting (e.g. Unicode Common Locale Data Repository [CLDR]) for dates, times, time zones, numbers and currency).
- Create an international identifiers’ library to properly represent languages and regions (as needed).
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How Google crawls, indexes and serves up web pages
In simple terms, searching the web is like looking in a huge book with a mammoth index telling you exactly where everything is located. So, when a potential customer performs a Google search, our programs check our index to determine the most relevant search results to be served to them. The three key processes are:
Crawling
Crawling is the process by which new and updated pages are added to the Google index. We use a huge set of computers to fetch (crawl) billions of web pages. The program that does the fetching is called Googlebot (also known as a robot, bot, or spider). Googlebot uses an algorithmic process to determine which sites to crawl, how often, and how many pages to fetch from each site. Google doesn't accept payment to crawl a site more frequently, and the search side of our business is separate from our Google Ads service.
Indexing
Googlebot processes each of the pages it crawls to compile a massive index of all the words it sees and their location on each page. In addition, we process information included in key content tags and attributes, such as Title tags and ALT attributes. Googlebot can process many, but not all, content types. For example, we cannot process the content of some rich media files or dynamic pages.
Serving results
When a user starts a search, our machines search the index for matching pages and return the most relevant results. Relevancy is determined by over 200 factors, only one of which is PageRank — the measure of the importance of a page based on the incoming links from other pages. Each link to a page on your site from another site also adds to your site's PageRank. But not all links are equal: Google works hard to identify spam links and other practices that negatively impact search results. Powerful links are those given based on the quality of your content.
In order for your site to rank well in search results pages, it's important to make sure that Google can crawl and index your site correctly. Our Webmaster Guidelines outline best practices to improve your site's ranking.
Google's Did you mean and Autocomplete features are designed to help users save time by displaying related terms, common misspellings, and popular queries. The keywords used by these features are automatically generated by our web crawlers and search algorithms. We display these predictions only when we think they might save the user time. If a site ranks well for a keyword, it's because we've algorithmically determined that its content is more relevant to the user's query.
Make each language version easily discoverable
One language, one page
If you offer your website in multiple languages, use a single language for content and navigation on each page, and avoid side-by-side translations.
Flag language in your URL
Keep content for each language on separate URLs and flag language in the URL. For instance, an URL ‘www.mysite.com/de/’ would tell a user the pages are in German.
Language target
Show Google which language(s) you're targeting through hreflang — or language — meta tags. (In HTML, ‘href’ stands for ‘hypertext reference’ and is used to code all HTML links, while ‘lang’ is short for language.)
Cross-link
Display a gateway button on the top right of all pages for customers to select their region or language of choice, whichever version of your site they originally land on.
Dynamic content
Although Google recommends using separate URLs for content in different languages, we have adapted to deal with dynamic, personalized content, where a website recognizes where a user’s IP address is located, and automatically displays relevant content and language. So, if your site uses a dynamic structure, don’t worry about rewriting it. It will be found in online searches, and dynamic content providers won’t be disadvantaged.
Habits to avoid:
Boilerplate-only translation
Don’t translate only the boilerplate text of your website while keeping the rest of your content in a single language (as often happens on pages featuring user-generated content such as forums). It may create a negative user experience, if the same content appears multiple times in search results with various boilerplate languages.
Automatic translation
Automated translations don’t always make sense and could harm customers’ perceptions of your site. Block search engines from crawling automatically translated pages on your site by using robots.txt.
No cookies
Don’t use cookies or scripts to show translated versions of the page. Google can't crawl that type of dynamic content to index your site’s content correctly, and users may not be able to see it either.
Understand your user intent
At the heart of every Google search, there’s a user with an purchase-related intention, whatever that might be — to find reviews, products to buy, price comparisons — the list is pretty well endless.
One of the best ways to discover more about your users’ intent is to look at your own marketing analytics. Google Ads' Keyword Planner lets you see which keywords (don’t forget the valuable long-tail keywords too) that are being used to find your website. Through analyzing these, you can more deeply understand what your site’s audience is looking for, and then develop a content strategy to meet and fulfill them.
Long-tail keywords are more specific 3—5 word phrases that searchers use when they’re getting closer to making a purchase. For example, say someone starts searching for the term ‘dining chair’. After visiting various websites, looking at styles and comparison shopping; as they narrow down their choices, they might begin searching for ‘Eames style contemporary dining chair’.
Content crafted and tailored in this responsive way will connect with the user immediately, and that’s an effective way to increase traffic, clickthroughs, leads, sales and conversions.
On-page and off-page SEO
When Google assesses your website in comparison to others, we look at precisely what you rank for (on-page), and how high you rank in search results (off-page).
Your aim is to enable Google to clearly understand what your site is about, easily index your pages, and smoothly navigate its structure and content, in order to rank it accurately. Your aim, of course, is to build your ranking, especially when you’re competing at a national or international level, with a world of online content and competition.
On-page SEO
Your goal with international on-page SEO is to optimize your pages to make it easier for Google to geo-locate them and identify their relevance. So, make sure to organize your global URLs in a rational, repeatable way, so that localized content can be geo-targeted by sub-directory, sub-domain, or domain.
It’s vital to localize your site for each target country while presenting a consistent brand presence globally. Localizing your design reduces the risk of duplicate content and enhances user engagement
For effective on-page SEO, it’s essential to localize:
- URLs
- Title tags, with localized targeted keywords
- Headings (H1)
- Body content
- Alt attributes, including image file names
- Meta titles and descriptions
- Navigation labels
- Address details
- Fast upload speeds
- Mobile-friendliness
- Internal links e.g. link to internal blog
Off-page SEO
This focuses on increasing the authority of your site through building links from other websites, and basically, through all optimization that happens off-site. The more links your website has, the higher it ranks in Google search. Ways you can build these links include:
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Creating amazing, relevant, engaging and localized site content
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Social media marketing — encouraging sharing of your content
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Genuine reviews on third party sites
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Article sharing — submitting interesting, high quality articles to well-regarded PR article submission directory, with links to your website
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Image and/or video submission — on image and video submission sites, including title, description, tags and links
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Document sharing — unique and valuable content in pdf or ppt format, on document sharing sites
How we determine a website’s targeted country
Country-code top-level domain names (ccTLDs)
Multiple, separate websites for each target region and language — for instance .de for Germany, .cn for China — are a strong signal to both users and search engines that your site is explicitly intended for a certain country. Some countries have restrictions on who can use ccTLDs, so be sure to do your research.
Tip
We treat some vanity ccTLDs — .tv, .me — as generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs), as we've found that users and webmasters frequently see these as being more generic than country-targeted. See a full list of domains Google treats as generic.
Geotargeting settings
If you’re creating a single multi-regional/multilingual website, you’ll need a generic (gTLD) domain. One domain has the advantage of meaning only one SEO campaign. So, you’d have a single generic (gTLD) domain, and then separate each language into a folder. For instance, myamazingsite.com/en/ and myamazingsite.com/de/ and myamazingsite.com/es/. Building authority to your original English site will have a positive impact on other language folders too.
For content specific to a certain country, geotargeting tells Google certain pages are relevant to users. If your site has a gTLD — for example .com, org, or .net — you can use the Country Targeting Tool in Search Console to tell Google your site is targeted at a specific country. However, don’t use this tool if your site targets more than a single country.
Tip
As regional top-level domains such as .eu or .asia are not specific to a single country, Google treats them as generic top-level domains.
Server location
The server location (through the IP address of the server) is often physically near your users and can be a signal about your site’s intended audience. But some websites use distributed content delivery networks (CDNs) or are hosted in a different country with better web server infrastructure, so it’s not a definitive signal.
Other signals
Other clues as to the intended audience of your site can include local addresses and phone numbers on the site pages, the use of local language and currency, links from other local sites, and/or the use of Google My Business (where available). Google does not use locational meta tags (like geo.position or distribution) or HTML attributes for geotargeting.
URL structures
It’s difficult to determine geotargeting on a page by page basis, so it makes sense to consider using a URL structure that makes it easy to segment parts of the website for geotargeting. Here are the pros and cons of all your options:
URL structure Example Pros Cons Country-specific example.ie Clear geotargeting
Server location irrelevant
Easy separation of sitesExpensive (can have limited availability)
Requires more infrastructure
Strict ccTLD requirements (sometimes)Subdomains with gTLDS de.example.com Easy to set up
Can use Search Console geotargeting
Allows different server locations
Easy separation of sitesUsers might not recognize geotargeting from the URL alone (is "de" the language or country?) Subdirectories with gTLDs example.com/de/ Easy to set up
Can use Search Console geotargeting
Low maintenance (same host)Users might not recognize geotargeting from the URL alone
Single server location
Separation of sites harderURL parameters site.com?loc=de Not recommended. URL-based segmentation difficult
Users might not recognize geotargeting from the URL alone
Geotargeting in Search Console is not possibleWhichever structure you choose, organize your hierarchy in the same way for each language folder of your website so it's intuitive and crawl-able.
Duplicate content and international sites
Duplicate content issues can arise when you provide the same content translated into different languages, but available on different URLs. This is generally not a problem as long as the content is for different users in different countries. While we strongly recommend that you provide unique content and avoid changing the meaning of your content from one language to another, we know that’s not always possible.
To differentiate between the different language versions of the page and serve the correct language or regional URL to searchers, follow the guidelines on rel-alternate-hreflang. Without using hreflang your content may lose value and make it harder to pull traffic.
If you disallow crawling in a robots.txt file or by using a ‘noindex’ robots meta tag, there’s no need to hide the duplicates. However, if you're providing the same content to the same users on different URLs (for instance, if both example.de/ and example.com/de/ show German language content for users in Germany), you should pick a preferred version and redirect (or use the rel=canonical link).
Taking your website global
Treat everyone the same
Think of yourself as an international company with local customers, rather than a local business with international customers, and treat customers in each market the same. Aim to have the design, functionality and content of your website(s) deliver the same user experience wherever those users may be.
One universal website or individual localized sites?
A universal multilingual website offers content in more than one language e.g. a Canadian business with an English and a French version of its site, or a blog on Latin American soccer in both Spanish and Portuguese. A universal multilingual site using a single domain such as .com has many advantages:
- It says you’re a global business.
- It’s quicker, simpler and cheaper to register.
- It’s more intuitive for users to find. But, you still have to meet the needs of your target market in each localized market.
Individual localized multi-regional websites explicitly target users in different countries. Multi-regional websites each use a country-coded top level domain (ccTLD) names e.g .ie, .de. or .fr:
- It’s a way to emphasize your close connection to your customers in each country and a reassuring signal for users who want products and service in their language, and familiar payment methods.
- But it can be time consuming and expensive to buy and register a ccTLD for each export market.
Some sites are both multi-regional and multilingual. For instance, a site might have different versions for the USA and for Canada, and both French and English versions of the Canadian content.
Choose your domain name
The top level domain is the suffix (e.g. .com, .org, .net) and many ecommerce sites choose .com because users try .com first when trying to find a company without a search engine. Although Google uses the content to determine its language, the URL gives your users useful clues about content. For example, the following URLs use .fr as a subdomain or subdirectory to clearly indicate French content:
- http://example.ca/fr/vélo-de-montagne.html
- http://fr.example.ca/vélo-de-montagne.html.
Signalling the language in the URL can also help you to discover issues with multilingual content on your site. It’s fine to translate words in the URL, or to use an Internationalized Domain Name (IDN).
Geo-redirection
Do your international SEO correctly, and your Google search users should land on the correct language version of your site. If you visit Google.com, for instance, and you will automatically be redirected to your country-specific Google search page. But, imagine a user arriving from a Spanish I.P. looking for English content. Forcing them to redirect to the Spanish section would diminish that user’s engagement, so what are your options?
No geo-redirect gives user the choice to stay where they land on your English site despite their Spanish I.P.
No geo-redirect until payment lets the user choose their own journey until they arrive at ‘Buy Now’, when they are automatically redirected
Automatic geo-redirect gives the user no choice but to automatically be redirected to your Spanish content
Pop up geo-direct banner such as: Would you like to go to our Spanish site or stay on our English site?” — gives the user the power to decide
Upload speeds
Don’t assume users will have access to 4G networks; much of the world is till 3G or slower. So design your site to load quickly so people don't give up before they even get in. Some hints for increasing upload speeds:
- Eye-catching media are an effective way to engage users. But, too much can cause your site to load slowly and have users leaving before they see your most important information. Compress any images you use.
- Limit the number of navigation links.
- Avoid pop-ups or other features that could interfere with navigation.
Localisation
A localized website has the same content as your home website but translated in a culturally appropriate way to the language of your export country. (When a straightforward translation is not possible – for example, of an English colloquialism – transcreation aims to communicate the same meaning and feel, and elicit the same response in the target language.) For each new market you need to:
- Speak your customers’ language
- Create a localized website version
- Build on your branding
- Max your searchability
- Consider currency and payment
- Keep the customer satisfied
- Make it legal
- Attend to the details
Design development
Unicode is the industry standard, designed to promote and facilitate the consistent representation of text, irrespective of script. Any written language, from Greek to Cyrillic to Chinese, Arabic or Hebrew, whether it reads from left to right or right to left, can be catered for. Unicode supports over 100 scripts, with a repertoire of over hundred thousand characters. UTF-8 is most commonly used.
Best practices for websites in any market
Put important information towards the top of the page
Make it immediately visible without scrolling.
Think small
Your customers use small screens on mobile phones and tablets throughout their day. Create a website that automatically adjusts to a user's device to make sure users find what they're looking for, no matter which size screen they’re on.
Writing copy
Use clear, eye-catching headlines
A clear introductory headline on your site helps customers quickly know that they're in the right place and encourage them to stay longer.
Say it with colors
Colors are also a form of language, so research your potential market’s relationship with color before you launch your site in a new market. Colors symbolize different things from country to country. For example, white in Western countries is used for weddings; in China it is used in funerals. Red is a high prestige color in India, whereas in the United Kingdom it is purple, and in China it is yellow.
Clearly list the benefits
Make sure that users know right away why they should stay; that your product or service benefits are quickly scannable. Bullet points are a great way to do this.
Provide quick links to more information
For example, a prominent ‘Learn more’ link.
Give a clear call to action
When you're clear about the action you want people to take on your site, visitors are much more likely to actually take that action and bring you the business you're looking for.
Build customer relationships
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Build trust by making it easy for people to reach you.
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If you request personal information from customers, make it clear why you're asking for it and what you'll do with it.
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Include customer testimonials or third party verifications.
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If you run ads, make sure that you distinguish these ads and sponsored links from the rest of your site content.
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Design your app
Design for local culture
Every element needs to feel right to the local audience. Consider app graphics, images, colours, style, tone of voice, functionality and payment methods for localisation. For games, think about how game characters may need to change. Be especially careful that nothing may be seen as culturally offensive or inappropriate.
Layouts
Depending on your target countries, design to support left-to-right or right-to-left text. Use the correct formats for dates, times, numbers and currencies. Include a full set of default resources.
Optimize your app
Some of your target markets may present challenges such as:
- Slow, intermittent, or expensive connectivity
- Devices with less capable screens, memory and processors
- Limited opportunities to recharge batteries during the day
To help your app succeed in these markets, we've put together some advice on how to address these. Find out more about Building for Billions.