International Keyword Research Prep

With many tools available to marketers, it seems very easy to “go global” overnight with the click of a button, targeting hundreds of countries in dozens of languages. While it is possible to carpet-bomb the world with your magically translated website, it is quite another to be successful. It is far more effective to identify markets that are aware of your type of products and actively seek them out. Even the simplest of keyword research efforts can reap huge dividends by knowing if the market is even aware of your type of product. If no one is aware that a product like yours exists, we cannot expect many searches for it.

When conducting keyword research for new or existing markets, brands should follow a relatively simple process and avoid getting overwhelmed by trying to understand the entire keyword universe. Suppose you already have localized content for a market. In that case, you should review your analytics, Webmaster tools, and site search logs to understand the words people are using to find your site today.

There are many articles on keyword research on the web. Still, most of them jump into the deep end, trying to find every possible variation or sacrificing opportunity by going too broad in their search. I have seen several companies paralyzed by an exhaustive research report from an agency on all the keywords they should target. The following are the three key steps for any business wanting to target a local market. Please note that these are country- and language-specific.

Step 1: What is my product categories called in the local market?

Understanding what your product category is called in the market is important. ?For example, if you want to sell your laptops in Sweden, you have to know that they are called barbar dator in Swedish. Don’t just use Google Translate, but look at what others in your category call it on their site and, most importantly, ask native local language people and partners.

Step 2: Identify product attributes and descriptors that help define a “searcher journey”.

The Searcher Journey is a set of queries conducted from the initial to the final stage to understand a product category. This step helps you understand the specific demand for the product attributes of your offer. For example, if most of the searches in Sweden are for “barbar dator” then you know they are looking for lightweight laptops, and that is an important feature and should be included in your paid search and on-page copy.

Step 3: Understand the Purchase Journey of the searchers in each market.

Once you know the category and attributes of a market, you need to understand if and how they want to purchase, especially online. There are many markets where they prefer to research online and buy offline. While others like to touch and feel products in a store, they often go online to purchase, saving money or reducing taxes. Buy cycle terms are search query modifiers that help you identify people researching products or those who are ready and looking for a place to purchase. These phrases and data are one of your best indicators of opportunity in a local market. Are people in Sweden looking for a barbar dator? Are they looking for the price, ‘barbar dator pris’, or if it is on sale using ‘barbar dator’? If your research reveals that there are not many later-stage buy cycle searches, then it’s possible that they are not buying online, which would necessitate additional research on market viability for an online store, especially one not located in the target market. The more you understand the Searcher Journey for each market and the more of the query refinements you can identify and integrate into your content, the more engagement potential you will realize. This is particularly true if you’re selling a product or service, or if you have an ad-supported site that relies on local market traffic.

While this seems relatively straightforward so far, it can become pretty complex quickly. Many brands jump into this too quickly, often translating the site and launching it, and hoping for the best—this agile method of market launch results in several missed opportunities.

Most localization companies begin the process with a file called a Localization Glossary, which is essentially a list of English words and their corresponding local market equivalents. The primary purpose of this document is to eliminate ambiguity on which word to use and enforce consistency. Additionally, many localization firms utilize translation memory tools that can perform a search and replace function for these common keywords. Let’s take, for example, the phrase monitor. In one context, it is a display on a computer, but in healthcare, it is used to look for changes. Many people often use the term ” screen when referring to the viewable area of a monitor. In Chinese, there are 21 different character variations for antivirus, and the glossary ensures the translators use the correct one.

From a search perspective, the glossary is where you are able to ensure that the local phrase they use is linguistically correct but also has the highest search volume. For example, a translator used the German phrase Projektor to describe an LCD projector. When there were 100,000 more searches for the colloquial variation beamer. This is why you should review the glossary for search demand before starting the process to ensure the word you choose is linguistically correct and the most searched variation.

Another often overlooked opportunity in international keyword research is failing to consider both English and local variations of keywords to understand how people search in the market. It is frequently surprising to marketers that an English word is more popular than its regional equivalent. For example, in Brazil, the Portuguese word for whisky is usque. The local market was targeting that phrase in paid search but was not receiving many impressions or clicks. They did a quick Google Keyword Planner check and found that usque had 5,400 searches vs. the English Whisky, which had over 90,000 monthly searches in Brazil. Combining the English phrase whisky with the local language ad creative allowed them to target a significantly larger share of the opportunity.

Keywords research is simply listing to the voice o the consumer and understanding their collective needs and wants, in their language, will give you most of the insights you need to create effective content and the right messages and offers that will connect in the local market. Failure to spend time understanding your target market search queries can lead to a significant loss of opportunity and costly rewrites and post-launch optimization activities.