Why should you translate your blog? Good question!

First you have to ask yourself something else, what is your blog to you?

Chances are it is a very important content marketing tool for your organization.

Chances are you spend quite a bit of time and effort in developing worthy content for this section of your online persona.

And chances are that in adapting this content accordingly you will be able to produce very valuable, consistent, plentiful text that will help expand your digital footprint and presence in your new markets.

Recently, we posted an article about how to effectively approach website translation. Of course, there are many factors to take into account for website translation, and equally for blog translation. Check out below, these are golden blog posting nuggets to live by!

 

The 5 essentials of blog translation

 

1. Translation of keywords

Like your original blog, or your original website, you will need to establish a set of keywords for the translated blog.

Keywords or key phrases are not usually directly translatable, and also will most likely change depending on the search behaviors of your new market.

To establish the proper keywords both for your translated website and blog you will have to use a keywords analytics tool such as Google AdWords Keyword Planner for example.

A professional and native translator will be best qualified in helping you establish proper colloquial keywords and phrases.

 

2. Titles that pop out, even in another language

 

Your translator will have to take great care in translating the title as well. Just as extra though went into making the blog title stand out, be enticing, and include keywords your translator will have to do the same.

They cannot simply directly translate the title word for word from one language to another – that wouldn’t work.

 

3. Article links: modifying for blog translation

 

You most likely have built up links within your blog posts (which is a great thing!), but we’ll have to address it when translating to be fully successful.

In most cases you don’t want to use original links that link to content in the original language (if you are translating for a new Spanish audience you don’t want them linking to English articles), because this is going to confuse your new readers.

So we have to be creative. What you can do is look for substitute links – English versions of the content, subtitled content, dubbed content, and similar articles that relay the same idea in the new language whenever possible.

 

4. Don’t forget about your images

 

Make sure to review your images, and verify they are appropriate for your new audience.

If you see that the image includes text, if it’s an infographic, if it’s a screenshot, you’ll want to have that text translated.

Editing text on images requires special tools and skills from a translator, and may justly cost more. You could also opt to add additional text to explain these images if translating them is not an option.

 

5. Search Engine Optimization & Blog Translation

 

Don’t think you can forget about our friend Google so soon. Just because you optimized in the original language doesn’t mean you’re optimized for life!

You’ll want to optimize you blog posts with your translator taking into account: headlines, title tags, meta descriptions, image descriptions and titles, and urls.

It’s important to work with a professional translator who is well versed in blog translation. At HelloTranslator you can find a wide range of professional translators to fit your needs.

 

Translate your blog!

 

Because it is wonderful and valuable content, at your fingertips ready to be adapted for you new market audiences.

You’re sure to increase visibility, and if you follow the correct steps you can set similar objectives for new market blogs as you did with the source blog.

Do keep in mind as you gear up for your digital translation ventures, however, that even though blogs can often be shorter in text, they still require a lot of time and thought to make sure they are properly optimized and received well online in the new language.

Best of luck!