I was recently doing some keyword research for a client that has a site targeted towards Mexico.  I double checked the database I was using to see if it tracked Spanish-language searches in Mexican search engines.  It said it did, but I still found the results my keyword database was giving me were almost totally unreliable.  Google Mexico was giving me good search result pages, but I still had no sure way of knowing if the Spanish terms I was looking up were really reflective of searchers’ queries and the local marketplace.   The Google AdWords Keyword Tool lets you see approximate numbers of searchers in different geographic locations and languages as well, but it wasn’t any more helpful in giving me reliable numbers either.

So given this, how can I (and how can you) get good keyword research for an international site?

Start by having your terms professionally translated.  Translators often specialize in areas of terminology or subjects, so you can know that the person turning your English into Spanish knows what they’re doing.  Technical and business terms should be translated with care so that accuracy is maintained.  They can also give you pointers about what terms locals are actually using and how people talk about subjects.  They might also have some helpful information on your local market.

Speaking of local markets, do some market research.  Do you know who your local competitors in Mexico and Europe are?  If you do, go to their sites and take a look at their content.  What terms are they using in their copy?  If the site has title tags and meta descriptions, do they have any useful keywords in them?  Who comes up in foreign search results?  Taking a good, in depth look at your market is good business sense anyway, so apply it to your website, too.

Talk to your foreign customers!  They found your products and services, so ask them how they did it.  What search engines did they use?  What terms did they look for?  Knowing how your customers found your site, whether by product or brand name, is valuable insight into the best keywords to use.  Also, if they’re using a local search engine, or a multi-national one like Google, they might be seeing slightly different results in Italy than you do in Iowa.  This is because some search engines can tailor results to fit the location of the searcher.

Keyword research for non-English languages is a little more time consuming and requires some extra thought.  But your end result should still be that you find the best keywords for your website that will help you gain visibility in foreign search engines.  Keyword databases may be helpful for some languages like French and German, which have large, established numbers of internet users.  But more often, you’ll probably find that concentrating on local sources to do your keyword research in is the most reliable bet.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 at 4:21 pm and is filed under International Keyword Research, International SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.