How to Do Multi-Language SEO? Ranking in Google for Several Foreign Languages - Hernan Vazquez

Hola, mis amigos. Welcome to another video. This is Hernan Vazquez. How are you guys doing? On this video, I want to talk about multi-language SEO—how you can rank your website for several keywords on several languages. So if that's something that you want to do, stay on this video. Vamos. Hey guys, what's up? Hernan Vazquez again with you. Thank you for watching this video and welcome to a new episode. Of this Hernan Vasquez TV. Okay, anyways, it's a YouTube channel. Okay, whatever you want to call it. Now my main point on these YouTube channels, you may already know, is to give away a ton of value. And you guys have been really, really supporting the channel with comments, with likes, with thumbs up. So I really appreciate you guys taking the time. Now every Wednesday at 3 p.m. Eastern with Semantic Mastery, what one of my companies that I'm partnered with, we answer live SEO questions. So if you have any SEO questions whatsoever, you know, any pressing SEO question, any questions that you do not find anywhere else, you can come and ask those questions every Wednesday at 3 PM Eastern. We answer SEO questions live, free, and it's held on Google Hangouts. It's pretty cool. We have been growing that platform a ton, so I'm gonna drop a link on the description below so that you can come and drop your questions. And one of the recurring questions that we have is, how do I approach multi-language SEO? Let's say that you have a website that you want to rank in English and in Spanish, for example. I do a lot of foreign SEO. I'm a native Spanish speaker. English is not my mother tongue, as you can probably see, but, you know, and I have been experimenting a ton with multi-language websites. And this is a great question because with a couple of tweaks to your SEO campaign, you can double your traffic, which is, you know, which is a great thing in my opinion. And for those guys that are out there that they want to sell products abroad, this is also a great topic. Now, how do you do that? Well, the first thing that comes to mind and the first thing that usually we get asked about are plugins, WordPress plugins in particular. Now what you need to know when it comes to multi-language SEO is that those, you know, if you're ranking your website, if you're trying to rank your website in English and in Spanish, those are 2 different SEO campaigns because Google and other search engines behave differently in different languages. And I've said time and time again that, you know, SEO in English is way harder and, you know, it's way more complicated. And for 2 reasons basically, because one, everyone is doing SEO in English. So if you want to rank for a keyword, you know, you need to compete with bigger budgets, etc. And number 2, think about this, when you have to develop AI rules, algorithms, etc. And if you're a company with limited resources like Google, what you would do is to invest those resources in the biggest market, which is, you know, the English-speaking market, because everyone in the world is doing SEO or is trying to sell their products in English. So my point is that usually the first hit for the algorithm changes, for the new patents, the new algorithms, everything hits first on the English market. And then as time goes by, it rolls out to other languages. So you could safely say that ranking in Spanish, ranking in Italian, in French, in any other language is way, way easier because you could safely say that Google is far behind on those markets when it comes to grammar, when it comes to determining which content is quality, which content is garbage, you know, spammed content, those kind of things. I mean, interaction is kind of the same, you know, bounce rate, those kind of things, but content in particular and keywords, it's, you know, the rules are completely different. So English and Spanish, they are way different languages and The truth is that even if you're learning a language, Google is trying to learn as a person and it takes time and it takes effort, etc. Having that said, with that being said, the main point here is that you need to understand that both campaigns for Spanish and for English, they are separate. However, if you have had good results in English, which is kind of the tougher market, then you have a good chance of ranking also in Spanish because your website will have authority, your website will have backlinks, they will have interactions, they will have, you know, a base. It's not like a brand new website that's coming from out of the blue to try to rank. Okay, so that's step number 1. Now, the second question that I get time and time again is which plugins do I use, and I'm not, you know, I haven't had great results with plugins because here's the deal. Most of the plugins for WordPress in particular, what they will do is to kind of translate the content inline. So you have your page written in English and on the same page you are writing it in Spanish. You are translating in the same page or Spanish or whatever other language that you want to use. Usually it won't show 2 different versions of your website. Have in mind that being 2 separate SEO campaigns, you need to take them as 2 separate websites. Plugins are probably not my best choice, and this is totally a personal choice. You may have another idea, and please drop me a comment below because I really want to know what you have to say about WordPress plugins. This is the deal. What I like doing and what has worked really, really well in my opinion is to have subdomains. So let's say that you have your English website and then you have a Spanish version and a Portuguese version. So what I usually do is to have something like es for Spanish, es.domain.com, and pt for Portuguese, pt.domain.com. Those will be my secondary versions or my additional languages versions for people that are actually speaking in those languages. Now what that gives you is that the subdomain will leverage on the domain authority and the trust flow that the domain already has, so it will be much easier. And they will also be treated as different entities by Google, not completely different websites, but different entities. And this is good, this is a good thing because they are under the same domain. They will inherit some of the strength that that domain already has and also it will feed the main domain authority. That means that it's kind of synergistic, if that's a word. What you are trying to do here is that with your efforts on Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, whatever the other language you're trying to rank, you will also help ranking your tougher market, which is English, and vice versa. With your efforts on ranking in the English market, you will help your other languages. And then the process goes about kind of the same. Even if things are more relaxed when it comes to other languages, I still like to comply with English rules because you know that when complying with English rules, you will be able to outrank any competitor Because again, English is like the tougher market out there, and you will be able to outrank any competitor, and you will be able to set your website for the long term. Because I like to think that if you're ranking in English and then you want to rank in Spanish, it's like seeing the future, okay? You are actually seeing the future of the search engine right now, okay? Because you're seeing what's gonna be in Spanish in 1 year or 2 years. So you need to be prepared, and that's a great way of seeing the future of Google. That's how I basically approach different markets. If a client comes and says, hey, since you're already ranking me for English, can I also ask you to rank me on Spanish? Say yes, but it's a different SEO campaign because the rules are different, the keywords are different, the content will be different. But you already have an asset in place which is your main domain. So use subdomain, treat each variation of the language as a different website, install WordPress, clone the website, and use different content. Okay, and it's not considered duplicate content, of course, because it's in another language. Okay guys, so this is how I approach multi-language SEO. If you have any questions, if you have any inputs, if you are using, for example, subfolders instead of subdomains, just drop me a comment below, tell me why, because I'm really into case studies and I would love to know your experience with multi-language SEO. Thank you guys for watching, muchas gracias, and I'll see you on the next video. Bye-bye.