Top 10 Best Practices for Multilingual Websites

Worldwide communication is at the fingertips of business websites. In America alone the Hispanic language is on many products that we purchase on a daily basis. Learning what makes a great multilingual website is important in the business website marketing.  The following article will be of great help to you.

 Prepared by GobiernoUSA.gov and Government Multilingual Websites Group based on theHispanic Online Best Practices developed by Lee Vann.

1. Language: Online communications must address the language preferences of users. The use of machine or automatic translations is strongly discouraged even if a disclaimer is added. If government agencies decide to use software assisted translation, have the translation reviewed by a qualified language professional before posting it to the website to ensure that the translation correctly communicates the message.

GobiernoUSA.gov, the trusted source for government information in Spanish, offers users a complete experience in the Spanish-language. Content, navigation, and all functionalities and features in GobiernoUSA.gov are in Spanish.

2. Culture: Conduct user research to understand the cultural considerations for your target audience. Regardless of language used, the online experience must be culturally relevant to achieve an emotional connection with the audience.

Although GobiernoUSA.gov and USA.gov, its English-language counterpart, have the same structure and look and feel, the Spanish site offers content, images, and a color scheme that resonates with the Hispanic community.

3. Access: Enable users to find your multilingual website via prominent access on the English site. Access to multilingual websites should be made available on the global navigation on the top right of every English page.

The Federal Trade Commission provides the "En español" link as part of their global navigation on their English site.

4. URL Strategy: Use a stand-alone, dedicated URL for marketing and search engine optimization purposes. That URL can then re-direct to another one more in line with your agency URL convention.

The Social Security Administration uses http://www.segurosocial.gov to market and drive traffic to their Spanish language site.

5. Comparability and Maintenance: Ensure that your multilingual website provides a comparable user experience to your English site. Plan for regular updates and maintenance to ensure that your multilingual website remains comparable to the English site.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provide a comparable experience on the English and Spanish sites through consistent maintenance of site content and experience.

6. Users' expectations: Manage user expectations by providing notice when a user is going to navigate to an English-only area, external website, or require a special program or software to view an application.

EPA.gov's Spanish site denotes English-only content by putting "en inglés" next to links only available in English.

7. Toggle: Enable users to toggle between comparable content or features on the English and multilingual websites if available.

Users on MedlinePlus and MedlinePlus en español can go back and forth between the English and Spanish sites on a page-by-page basis without having to go through the home page.

8. Online Features and Functionality: Provide interactive features and functionality on multulingual websites.

The CDC site in Spanish offers basic features such as Print and Email This Page and gives users the ability to subscribe to email alerts, RSS feeds, podcasts, and more.

9. Integrated Operations and Marketing: Integrate your multilingual website initiatives with internal infrastructure and external consumer touch points, and into your overall online-offline strategy.

GobiernoUSA.gov provides phone and email support in Spanish through 1-(800)-FED-INFO, as well as PSAs and other marketing materials in Spanish. In addition, GobiernoUSA.gov is an integral part of the overall online and offline strategy of the Office of Citizen Services in GSA. This was especially evident in 2007 when a name change and redesign were implemented at the same time for both USA.gov and GobiernoUSA.gov.

10. Online Marketing: Develop and execute a targeted multilingual online marketing program, including social media, and track results.

Many agencies conduct dedicated online outreach for their multilingual sites includingGobiernoUSA.gov, MedlinePlus en español, CDC.gov, and EPA.gov, among others. In addition, many of these sites are using social media tools to reach out to Hispanics: EPA's blog Greenversations has regular bilingual entries; CDC.gov offers RSS and podcasts; andGobiernoUSA.gov has a presence on facebook.com and twitter.com.

http://www.howto.gov/web-content/multilingual/best-practices

image: drupalbusinessdays.org  

 

Best Practices in Optimizing SEO Videos

The following article has great advice in using videos in providing information to potential customers for your business or organization.

                                                www.internetsearchinc.com

The Best Practices in Optimizing SEO Videos

SEO videos are a great way for you to expose your brand to users who are not familiar with your brand, your products or your services. All marketers and site owners continuously experiment with video as a way of intercepting their target markets. And because of this, we see more and more video-driven content surface on the Web. The popularity of video content on the web depends on the study or data you're reviewing and the results always vary.

Nowadays, there are a lot of vids out there that are useless and lacking in information in their content. Although there are a lot of great "How To" videos out there, there are still a lot of video footage that are just a noise and an interruption to those who are looking for useful and relevant information.

The growth of SEO videos has been quite explosive. Because of this significant growth, the need for online video optimization should take place. These are some best practices that one should consider when planning to optimize online vids.

1. Make sure that the clips of your videos are relevant and informative. You must ensure that your video gives useful and informative information. Vids that show step by step procedures are great while videos that express opinion about a specific topic can also be useful. Some videos that have nothing to do with your brand or service offering and also a general or vague one in nature will only confuse your audience. Save your viewer some trouble and don't upload for the sake of uploading a vid.

2. Give your video a catchy title - The best way to get users to view your vid is to give it a catchy title that should contain related key phrase which are relevant to your product, service or brand. This is one search engine optimization trick you can use.

3. Use your video as a portal to other contents on your website. You can upload some vids to Youtube and provide links back to your related content as well as other vid content on your website.

4. Optimize your video for important key phrases. Tag your vids with terms then, consider naming the file-name with terms in mind.

5. Provide transcripts of your vids. In order for your video to rank well, you need to give the search engines something to index and rank.

6. Keep your SEO videos to five minutes or less. Make sure your vid is just five minutes or less because if it's of long duration, it makes it boring to watch and your visitors might lose their interest in watching it.

7. Make use of a Video-Sitemap. Ensure that users and search engine spiders can find your content; and the easiest way to do this is by using video-sitemap on your site. Make sure you use important keywords in the anchor text links on your videos.

8. Brand your vids with Logo.

9. Offer the option to embed your SEO videos. You can allow the users to access the coding that will allow them to embed your video on their site or blog.

10. Allow your users to rate your Video. Let your users rate your vids because vids that have high ratings are the ones that users tend to favorite and save.

11. Submit your video to RSS.

The best way to optimize your vid content is to think about the user and the people you want to engage in your video. Don't just post a video just for the sake of posting it. Consider your audience. Keep in mind that SEO videos are also important factors for search engine optimization

 Article :http://www.promotionworld.com/se/articles/article/130716-best-practices-optimizing-seo-videos