SEO …

You’ve heard of it, you’re familiar with its role in bumping up your website on Google, but you’re not exactly sure how it works?

Don’t worry. You are not alone. Fortunately, you can quickly become familiar with how SEO works and how to implement it so that it works for you and in the long term, lands you a nice comfy seat on the first page of Google for certain keywords. Just so you know, getting to the first page of Google in itself is not a very good SEO goal – but let me cover the basics first!

Did you know: On the first page of Google alone, the first five organic results (I’ll go into that in just a moment) account for approximately 67.60% of all clicks.

In other words: SEO is fundamental for every business that wants to be found online and approached by potential clients as a result of their Google searches — and that includes translators and interpreters.

Let’s take a closer look at what SEO actually is and how to incorporate it for your own translation or interpreting website.

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of optimising a website (making it more efficient and effective) so that it will appear high up in the organic results of search engines such as Google.

Let me put it this way. If someone were to search for a German translator in London, websites offering valuable content and using related keywords would appear first. And those are the ones that usually get the first click.

Think about it. When you search for something, you generally don’t click through page 2-15 of Google to find what you’re looking for (unless you’re really exploring available options). Usually, you click the most appealing looking article on page 1 that looks like it answers your query or question.

Successful SEO makes a website easier to find and more likely to attract a greater amount of traffic.

But how do you optimise your website so that it tops your competitors and positions you in a prominent place where clients can find you?

According to Search Engine Watch: “High-quality content and link building are the two most important signals used by Google to rank your website for search.”

We’re going to delve deeper into this fascinating subject in blog posts to come. Before we do, let me start by introducing you to a few SEO basics well worth knowing.

SEO terms to remember

Organic SEO – what you can do to help your website rank at the top of unpaid search engine results pages. Organic results are what you see after the ads in your Google results. Ideally, you want to be somewhere up there.

Keyword / keyphrase – a word or phrase that best describes your content in order to help people find your website. For example, when you search for specific terms, like “German translator in London”, you will be met with the websites most relevant to the keyword you searched. If you want people to find your website, you need to include those and related keywords in your website’s content and meta title.

Meta title – an element of HTML code that defines the title of your page. It appears in web browser results and at the top of your browser tab. On Google, it’s the blue title you directly see before clicking onto a website. Meta titles are typically around 55-60 characters long and count towards Google ranking algorithm. (Check out this article on Title Tag best practices: https://moz.com/learn/seo/title-tag)

Meta description – a snippet of approximately 155 characters telling users what your page is about. While the meta description doesn’t directly count towards improving your ranking in Google, it can increase your click-through rate — quite significantly. This is what you see under the blue title. On occasion, Google may pull a different title and description from the ones you set, if it deems something else on your website more relevant to user searches.

Paid search – a type of digital marketing in which you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. These results are usually marked with an “Ad” sign.

Algorithms – a process by which stored information is retrieved and ordered in specific and logical ways. For instance, Google uses PageRank (PR) to rank web pages in their search engine results. It’s basically a way of measuring the value of website pages.

Backlinks – links from other websites that point to yours. Backlinks from authoritative websites improve the authority of your website, helping to push it up the search engine rankings.

What counts towards SEO?

Mostly your content, which needs to be adapted to customer’s needs and searches, but also – website responsiveness, security, speed, domain age, technical SEO and more!

Get SEO-educated with our 10-step strategy SEO course for translators

Marketers are investing more time and money on SEO, so don’t expect the competition for Google top spots to cool down anytime soon. In fact, 70% of marketers say they see more results from SEO than from PPC. Organic SEO is a very good long-term strategy that may not pay off in the first three months, but over three years can ensure you a steady stream of enquiries – providing you keep working on it.

Providing high quality content and overall value to your customer is still the number 1 approach to ranking in search engines.

As a translator or interpreter, your skills and experience really need to shine through on your page in order to inform Google that you’re an authority in your field.

Get the newest SEO course in LSM Academy now!

Part 2 coming soon: The Basics of Keyword Research