How to do Keyword Research

Translating a website is a crucial moment in your expansion strategy. We already know that machine translation is not the best solution for this task, and that we must have a team of professional translators if we want to successfully internationalise our business, but it is also necessary to apply some digital marketing techniques in order to achieve a good search engine position.

What is Keyword Research?

Keyword Research, is a technique that allows us to find the keywords used most in Google searches or in other internet search engines by users. This practice provides us with very significant information, which lets us create our content with a consideration of search engine positioning.

When it comes to translating a website, a literal translation of words is usually not enough to achieve a good search engine position in the target language. This may be because the translator has provided an excessively literal or formal translation of the content, and has not considered colloquialisms or terms that reflect the reality of everyday language.

In Spanish, for example, the translation of "online" is en línea. However, while this translation is technically correct, it does not conform with the language used by Spanish speaking internet users . Statistical data from search engines such as Google and Bing show that searches in Spanish usually make use of the English term "online", whereas en línea is much less common.

Keyword research tools

There are a number of tools available that can be used for keyword research. The most basic tool is Google Trends, a Google resource which shows us the evolution of the volume of searches for a word or group of words over time. The main problem with this tool is that it does not show important data regarding words that have a low search frequency.

Another free tool is Adwords (also by Google). Its Keyword Planner allows us to obtain information about search volume and trends, as well as about words related to our keywords. The issue it poses is that we must set up an Adwords account in order to access the service. There are other tools available to buy which can provide us with information about which term is best to use in our translations, such as Sistrix or SEM Rush. They also have a freemium option which can be useful for complementing the information obtained through Google Trends or Google Adwords.

It is important to have a team of professional translators who are capable of performing keyword research in the target language, so that the resulting translation is a good base to start work on the SEO in a new language.