Competition for domain names and search engine dominance in the English language web is stiff – for SEOs, climbing the search rankings with a new website can be like trying to get a job in an economy where there are 100 equally qualified applicants going for every position (which I’m sure many of you can relate to!).
The good news is, competition isn’t so tough in the foreign language internet (and if you’re asking right now ‘what is the foreign language internet?’ then follow the link to the video to find out). The simple fact is that there is far less content online in foreign languages than there is in English, despite the fact that the use of foreign languages online is growing at a far more rapid rate than English, which is comparatively stagnant.
As more people around the world get access to the web, the amount of foreign language content will grow and grow – because people prefer to use their native language to shop and browse online. However, for the moment, there is comparatively far less competition for many keywords in languages other than English; which means there’s a huge opportunity for ecommerce businesses which currently only operate in English to look into securing foreign domains and sourcing a fresh customer base in countries overseas.
In fact, in some cases there may even be the opportunity to secure a domain name which incorporates your main keyword, such as www.kamera.de for Germany if you’re a specialist camera sales shop (that particular domain is taken, but you get the idea).
At Lingo24, we were able to do just that for our domains www.agence-de-traduction.lu (Luxembourg, French), www.uebersetzungsbuero.lu (Luxembourg, German), www.service-de-traduction.ca (Canada, French) and www.service-de-traduction.be (Belgium, French) – securing the local domain name with the translated version of our top performing keyword ‘Translation Agency’.
But even in scenarios where your top performing keywords are already taken, you still have two opportunities to take advantage of lower levels of keyword competition. Firstly, you can look at registering a brand name incorporating the top keyword and your brand name, such as www.kamera-yourcompany.de or www.übersetzungsbüro-lingo24.de.
And secondly, you can use your top performing keywords to build anchor text-rich links to your translated website or microsite. For instance, for your German camera shop www.mycompany.de, you might use the word ‘Kamera’ as the anchor text for the link, as we’ve used Übersetzungsbüro as the anchor text for links to our German translation agency website.
The idea is that you use this keyword to build links both within your own network of websites and for when you build links with external websites – of course you don’t want to over-do it with the one keyword, and it’s good to always build a variety of links that are keyword-based, brand-based and natural (such as ‘click here’), but you will see a demonstrable – and quick – improvement in your local search rankings for targeted keywords if you use them to build anchor text-rich links; especially since, as mentioned before, the levels of competition are generally far lower in foreign languages!
