Most of my clients in Japan have multi-lingual websites targeted at Japan as well as other foreign countries. So, I always keep looking for techniques which can help to rank well in different local search engines. Recently, I came across a software which claims to improve rankings in Google and other search engines in different languages. Essentially the software creates automatically translated pages of your website in 8 languages. I tested the software and found the automatic translation to be of horrible quality. By merely creating more pages, you can not create quality content. By using such software, you will not only lose your money, but you’ll also lose your prospective customers.

In my experience, it is very difficult to rank a multi-lingual website to rank high across different local search engines. If you really want to target different countries/languages, it is better to have a separate site for each language, and have its content translated by a native speaker of that language. Also, your site will rank better in local search engines if you have domain extension for that country (e.g. .jp for Japan) and you have your site hosted in that country. And, of course, you have to register your site in local search engines. It also makes sense to get links from sites from that country/language.

The additional cost in terms of time, effort and money will definitely bring tons of traffic that converts your prospects well.

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