Many companies use a blog in English to publish news articles, improve their SEO (search engine optimisation), and do content marketing.
But it’s not as common for the blog to be translated into Spanish or other languages, although the rest of the site is translated.
Is it really that difficult to translate a blog?
And most importantly… is it worth it?
A translated blog is a great SEO tool
There are more than 650 million blogs in the world.
Some are more active than others. A big portion of these blogs belong to companies that use them as an key component of their content marketing.
A blog isn’t only useful to publish company news, or showcase products, services or events. It’s also a highly effective tool to improve search engine positioning and attract users who search for content related to your sector.
As you most likely know, the best way to make sure that your potential customers find you on Google is to offer as much content as possible related to your activity or sector.
In this context, a company blog allows you to add new and relevant content to your site on a regular basis.
After all, Google LOVES fresh content.
It helps you position your long tail keywords, phrases with more than three or four words that don’t get a high number of searches on Google. For example, translation agency vs. translation agency in Barcelona, where the latter generates fewer search queries per month.
A company blog is great as it generates new links pointing to your site.
These can come from users who recommend your articles on social media like LinkedIn. Or from other websites that find your articles informative and give your domain a backlink. It can make visitors stay longer on your page. And, if you do things well, they will come back to check out new content you publish.
You can also invite industry experts to write guest articles, and improve your company’s reputation as a specialist in your sector.
Simply put, a blog is a great SEO tool!
A multilingual blog
If your company exports products or offers services in other countries, a company blog is perfect to reach international customers as part of your multilingual marketing strategy.
Despite all these advantages, as a translation agency we are aware that few companies bet on translating their blog into Spanish or other languages. Even if they DO have their website translated.
Why?
Well, to sum up, companies and marketing professionals usually think a multilingual blog is:
- Expensive
- Complicated
- Not worth the ROI (return on investment)
But hey, we’re here to tell you that they’re all wrong!
Should I translate our blog? A couple of reasons why the answer is YES
Let’s imagine for a moment that your company is expanding into new international markets. Woohoo!
This obviously means your business needs to attract customers from other countries.
How would you do this?
Your options are a bit limited.
- You can run an advertising campaign using media channels that are relevant to your sector. This however, tends to be expensive and the ROI is pretty uncertain.
- You can organise events or go to industry fairs. These might have a higher ROI if you do it well and make sure your employees have an adequate level of the local language. These events also tend to have a limited reach.
- You can spend money on Google AdWords, LinkedIn, or other digital media. But hey, if you’re in a competitive sector, the price might be quite high as you bid on adverts.
- Or you decide to go for content marketing, which is all the rage these days. Compared to the other options, this strategy is much cheaper and more efficient for your business. It’s also easily measurable. Just define your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) such as leads, revenue, retention, etc.
How to get started with Spanish content marketing
How can you easily start with a multilingual blog and Spanish content marketing?
Simply translate your website (if you haven’t done this already) and a handful of blog articles into Spanish. Well, or to the local language in the new market you want to enter or expand your revenue.
This means that customers from other markets can find you on Google in their own language, which they tend to use online. As a result, they can learn about your company and what you offer. Over time, this builds trust so that they will buy your products or hire your services.
You can even prepare an ebook in Spanish with a selection of articles from your blog. Offer it as a free download in exchange for providing their contact details.
Ideally, you would translate your website and blog into all the languages of the countries where your company is present.
But if you have a limited budget, starting with Spanish is definitely an interesting option.
Articles in Spanish
As many as 20 countries have Spanish as their primary language. This makes Spanish a no-brainer when it comes to multilingual marketing and content strategies.
For example, Spanish is BY FAR the second most popular language in the USA. 13% of the population speak Spanish at home.
Pretty high, right?
This makes it an intriguing business opportunity.
If you’re a native English speaker it might be hard to imagine just how basic and important it is, but your customers prefer reading (and searching!) in their native language.
It really isn’t as complicated as it seems
On a similar note, translating a blog into Spanish, or any language really isn’t as complicated as it seems.
Many years ago, companies had to create a mirror site or publish a new post for each language. That’s long in the past. There are plenty of easy-to-use plugins to translate WordPress blogs or other platforms quickly and reliably.
You can even invite your agency to modify the content directly online. All you need to do is revise it and publish the translated article on your blog.
So hey, a blog in Spanish isn’t expensive nor complicated.
However, in order to achieve a higher return on investment, you’re better off if you follow some basic translation tips.
How do I translate a blog? 3 tips for translating articles into Spanish
1. It’s not a big secret that cheap translations into Spanish end up being expensive. Forget about asking the intern who spent a Summer in Madrid. Even if you have a decent level of Spanish, that does not mean you’re able to translate properly.
You can also tick automated translations of your list.
Publishing a badly written Spanish blog only means your business and brand will look ridiculous. As an added downer, Google might penalise your company for using what they consider to be automatically generated content.
2. Hiring a low-cost Spanish translator isn’t a good idea either. Take into account that in Spanish the quality of the content is extremely important. About 8% of internet users are Spanish-speaking, and roughly 5% of the total content is in Spanish. You’re facing some fierce competition to attract and retain your visitors.
This means that if you have Spanish articles that are poorly translated, inaccurate, or misspelled, your future possible customers will quickly leave your company’s blog. They won’t share your articles or recommend them, and even worse, if they don’t know your brand, they might even think it’s a fraudulent or dangerous site. Needless to say, your branding will suffer.
3. Your best option is to hire a qualified Spanish translator to handle your blog translations in a professional manner. This is the best way to guarantee that your articles get the right cultural preferences and use localisation when needed. This is particularly important in areas like technical translations where you can’t afford marketing errors.
As experts in Spanish translations we recommend the following:
1. Start with your most recent or most visited blog articles. You can verify this by checking your site’s statistics (Google Analytics, Statcounter, etc.) or using Google search console.
2. Plan ahead. Place your article translation orders well in advance. This way you don’t have to pay rush translation rates.
3. Leave some freedom to your agency to adapt aspects such as blog titles. Not everything should be translated literally. Trust that your translator knows what works best in their language and culture!
4. Make sure your translation agency knows how to optimise the articles for SEO and maximum Google exposure.
5. Consider publishing fewer, but longer and more in-depth articles per month on your blog. These articles will be more effective from an SEO point of view and will reduce translation costs.
6. Try not to use images or graphics that include text. To translate them you will have to edit the images and that increases your agency costs.
7. Keep in mind that, in addition to the text in the blog post, you need to translate the description, the link text, and the keywords. We suggest generating a database of your company’s most popular terms.
8. You will also have to modify the links in the translated articles so that they lead to pages that are in the same language. Otherwise, they might not be useful to your readers.
9. Share your translated blog posts on social networks to attract visitors. Create a separate account for each new language, or country if that makes sense.
10. Apply a continuous approach to get the best results for your multilingual blog. Get used to the fact that you have a company blog in two languages – you must pay attention to both versions equally.
Competitive advantage
By now you know the advantages of translating a business blog, multilingual blog writing services and Spanish content marketing.
You’ve seen that it’s not as complicated and costly as you perhaps thought. Yet it’s possible that you still can’t make up your mind for one simple reason.
Which?
Well, you took a look at your competitors’ blogs. You saw that few companies have their blogs available in other languages than English.
Fair enough.
But let’s turn this argument on its head. If your business is one of the few international companies in your sector to translate their blog into Spanish, you’ll be able to differentiate yourself and gain a good advantage over your competitors!
Related article: The 10 best translation companies
Business Value
Since we launched our translation agency +20 years ago, we have helped many clients translate articles for their blog into Spanish, French, Swedish, and other languages.
We can assure you that those companies that decide to launch a bilingual blog are happy with their decision.
They see the business value and come back for more. At the end of the day, what matters is the ROI and getting more sales!
In addition to improving the international image of your business, you’ll be able to reach customers and obtain business opportunities that were previously out of reach.
¿Would you like to translate your company blog into Spanish? And nail Spanish content marketing?
What stops you..?
