When bringing your business to a new region, many business owners start with Google Adwords. However, what many do not know is that translating your SEO content and ad campaign is not enough. Rather, you need to have native translators on the job and make an effort to localize the campaigns.
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Localization
The reason why you should localize your campaign is that, well, you will not do very well translating “it’s raining cats and dogs” into Cantonese. Other nations use different phrases to look for the same thing, even if they speak the same language.
For example, while both Serbia and Croatia speak similar lanugages, a Serb would google “fabrika” while looking for a factory, while a Croat would look for “tvornica.”
This sort of localization is why you need to make sure whoever is localizing the campaign is a native of the area you are localizing to, rather than just speaking the language.
Think About Word Lengths
Headlines all around the world are optimized to be the ideal length. The length of an ad actually severely impacts its success. With that being said, when translating, your text will often end up 25% or even 50% longer.
This calls for a complete re-do of the title in many cases, and you will want your translator to have some SEO knowledge to do this.
How to Successfully Translate an Ad
The first thing you will need is a translator who is a native of the region you are translating to, as well as having SEO experience and ideally, having ad localization experience.
- Choose the keywords that stay and go. Users in different areas will be searching for different things using different words. Make sure that you do research on how often a certain phrase is used. In this regard, the translator is mostly here to optimize the process.
- Ask your translator how users will often misspell your most common search terms. These should also be included in your keywords.
- Make sure that you are using the correct alphabet. For example, using the Latin “a” instead of the Cyrillic “a” in a Cyrillic-writing country would render your ad useless, because even though they look the same, computers detect the two letters as different.
- Translate the ad itself; here, the translator will be doing the bulk of the word. Ensure that the finished copy is still within Google Ads’ character limit and that the titles and descriptions are of suitable length. Make sure that the overall meaning is still preserved.
If localization sounds like too much trouble to do yourself, do not worry, here at K&J Translations we have got an abundance of quality translators with SEO expertise ready to help.
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