International SEO – A business opportunity for LSPs and freelancers
When Google applied the first Panda Update to its algorithm, it was a major blow for content farms. In pre-Panda times, they were able to boost their customers’ rankings with enormous amounts of low-quality content. In the following, I would like to explain how a cute endangered mammal can slash entire content farms and what this has to do with the language industry.
Google meant business when it applied the first Panda Update to its algorithm. Google’s first and foremost priority is providing the most relevant search result to its users. Now, you’re probably thinking: This is what search engines are for. Right! But in pre-Panda times, it was possible to manipulate these search results by building huge content farms that provide low-quality content in order to boost their paying customers’ rankings.
Panda helps Google and users alike
Google couldn’t let this happen any longer without losing credibility. So Google updated its algorithm and named it after the engineer who was responsible for the development – Navneet Panda. (Sorry, this is the end for our cute mammal.)
This update has changed SEO forever and has introduced a paradigm shift toward high-quality content. The first update was released in February 2011 and has been further developed since then.
Google’s goal is to develop an algorithm that is responsive to the human mind rather than a machine. In other words, Google wants to present the best search engine results based on human perceptions and engagement. Panda is a major stepping-stone to achieving this ‘ideal’ search engine world.
International SEO – More turnover thanks to Panda
What has this to do with the language industry? It’s quite simple: We are good at content, and namely multilingual content!
According to a study published by Common Sense Advisory in 2014, 60% of the world’s top global brands are multilingual, with an average number of 8.35 languages per brand!
This means that if you work for larger organizations, they will run a multilingual website. And if your customer wants to stand out from the crowd in today’s online world, they will have to offer relevant content. In many cases, customers order SEO optimization along with the internationalization of their websites.
This additional task means one thing for language service providers: completely new business opportunities. And there is no secret about the reasons for this. Your typical SEO agency – that is, an online company without any linguistic skills – simply cannot handle the multilingual requirement.
Sure, a SEO agency can perform a WDF*IDF analysis to determine which terms should be used more frequently in a text. But it will need a native speaker to take on the delicate task of applying the necessary changes to the texts and writing them in a manner that reflects the brand itself.
This represents a paradigm shift that will pay off for language service providers.
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