Website Translation? Not Without Optimization and Localization

The business case for the value of website translation has long since been made. In a word, it’s all about ‘stickyness’. Website visitors are twice as likely to remain on a site and three times more likely to do business with an organization if the content is available in the visitor’s native language.

If your website content were available in the world’s top ten languages in use on the internet — with English being the dominant language in use — your content would be accessible to over 961 million web surfers (approximately 62% of the total)*.

It’s no secret that the vast majority of internet users resort to search engines to find information**. It’s also common knowledge that most people who use search engines do not look beyond the first three pages of search engine results to find what they’re looking for.***

So the message is clear, it’s clearly beneficial to have at least one multilingual website. It’s even more important to optimize your content so that your website will come up in at least the first three pages of search engine results if you want any sort of meaningful visibility.

*Figures available at March 2007. See Report: “Languages in Use on the Internet” – click on the Other Recommended Link in the listing for details.

**The Google search engine is available in 45 languages including English. Our very own sister website (www.cilfotranslations.ca) is available in English, French and Spanish.

***According to an April 2006 iProspect Search Engine User Behavior Study, as many as 62% of Search Engine users don't look past the first page of results, 19% don't look past the first two pages and 9% don't look past the first three pages. Only 10% look past more than three pages.