Search Marketing News

Local languages 'beneficial for online business'

November 09th 2009

Using local languages is beneficial to social networking sites and other businesses, and may help boost SEO(search engine optimisation), according to an industry expert.

Tim Gibbon, co-founder and editor of the Social Media Portal (SMP), said it was important for social media sites and online businesses to use local languages in order to engage with the audience on an individual level.

"Behaviour, culture and particularly language has a direct impact on how brands can be perceived and the way consumers interact with them," Mr Gibbon said.

"Spanish is an obvious alternative language choice for websites due to the sheer number of people that speak it," he added, pointing out that Spanish speakers are already using Twitter - and it is not the only language to be used across the micro-blogging service.

Although Twitter is currently only available in English and Japanese, it is planning on soon rolling out support for French, Italian, German, and Spanish.

Mr Gibbon recommended Google Translate, a free online language translation service that instantly translates text and web pages and is designed to accommodate many online platforms.

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