Did you know that Google can recognise 119 particular languages on voice search? This is beneficial for the user experience. However, ranking in Google SERP  is more demanding of website owners, most likely due to the use of multi-linguistic organic traffic. eCommerce managers should acknowledge that different users have a different view of the search. This is where multilingual SEO comes into play, with voice search in mind. In today's blog post, we will tackle all the details on multilingual voice search.

First of all, what is a voice search for multiple languages?


As technology evolves, search engines such as Google, Bing and Yandex are implementing new ways to develop UX and simplify the search process. They allow people to communicate with them in their native language, accept it and acquire the results that they were searching for. 

The statistics say that 30% of smartphone users are using voice commands daily while a quarter of UK households own a smart speaker.  Without a doubt, increasing your visibility for searches in multiple languages will result in better visibility on the Google Search Engine Results Page.

What is Multilingual SEO?

Multilingual SEO is a method that helps your e-shop to engage with your audience by using multi-linguistic search. It requires translating the web pages, by adopting the most relevant keywords and increasing the organic visibility of the web pages as a result. 

The Rise of Voice Search 


Voice search is completely different to classic typing searches. On one hand, when you are typing, you want to put in minimum effort and get the expected results straight away. However,  when you are speaking, you are not exerting any physical effort. . Consequently, voice searches are longer and can have a different style and intonation.

For example, somebody who is searching for a Japanese restaurant will try it in different ways if they choose the voice and regular search.  When typing, he/she will be looking for something like´´ the best Japanese restaurant near me¨.

Therefore, when using the voice search feature, he/she will say to Google: ´´Hey Google, find me the best Japanese restaurants where I can go to right now¨.

Long story short, to create optimization for voice assistants, you should accommodate this difference while doing SEO and add the multilingual voice search.

Another example might be checking and typing how the forecast will be in your hometown, we could have the following sequence:

“[name of my city] weather.”

Nonetheless, by using the voice, we should add an entire phrase in a native language and Google can find results in a particular language.

How can I optimize voice searches using multilingual SEO?

 To strive for a global audience, broaden your search and acquire more results on Google SERP, you need multilingual SEO.

Below, you will find all the footfalls to improve the search visibility of your e-shop for multilingual searches:

Keyword Research

No matter what, an SEO strategy shouldn´t be launched before performing keyword research. 

When you start translating your website, you shouldn't translate the keywords or phrases either. Bear in mind that a search term that has a lot of searches in one language is not viable if it is translated into a different language.

To better assimilate this point, we should take as an example the Ahrefs tool. Ahrefs checked the search volume for the key phrase ´´last-minute holidays´´ and they noticed that this keyword received 117k searches from the UK in only one month.

Nonetheless, the exact group of keywords which was adapted into French  “ Vacances dernière minute”,  had a total search volume of 8.4k. These results show how important keyword research is for multilingual SEO. What you can do in this case is choose the expressions from your original website, (presuming it is in English and optimized for voice search). Translate them, brainstorm additional keywords and add them into a keyword research tool to verify their search volume and competition.

Translation

The following step is to translate the content of your website and optimize it with the right keywords.

You should consult a professional translator who is a native speaker in the language that you wish to translate the content into.

Hreflang Option

Last but not least, we have arrived at the technical part, which is essential in SEO.

The Hreflang option is mandatory to have for e-shops that have different language versions for different searches.

It empowers Google to analyze which web page to display to each visitor. For example, if you don't want your English visitors to see the French version of your page, you should enable the hreflang option. In this way, English visitors will be redirected to English pages and French-speaking people will land in the French version.

 On top of that, an important part that should go in your website's HTML while conducting an SEO campaign is the alternate attribute, which tells Google that a particular page that was translated, is a different version in a different language of a page that exists already.

This happens because Google detects duplicate content and could penalize your website if you haven't used the alternate tag.

URL Architecture

We cannot talk about multilingual SEO without mentioning URL structure. Creating a different URL structure for every version will allow the search engine to drive the visitor to the right page.

If we talk about URLs for multilingual websites, you have many alternatives and of course, each option has advantages and disadvantages. You can check how Google shows them at the following link.

Not sure which URL structure to use?

You might as well choose an option that you think best suits your case. Google states that no URL structure has an important impact on SEO except applying parameters within the URLs. 

Let's talk about content

Content writing is very important for improving the organic visibility of your website for multilingual SEO. Your content needs to have a natural style, available for each type of user. Voice-related queries are used in formats like question formats (FAQS) or short paragraphs, highlighting questions that are suitable for search queries.

Why multilingual SEO is important for Voice Search

Having agreed on how to establish your website for multilingual SEO, you might ask at this point if doing multilingual SEO is worth your time.

Below, you will see all the reasons why:

  • Voice search is the future of search as 51% of people are using it already to search for products before buying them. Hence, starting with multilingual voice search should help you find the challenges of search and SEO that the future brings.
  •  Your brand cannot grow unless you customize your offers to the user.  For example, speaking to them in their native language which results in a better user experience.
  • For sure, multilingual SEO will increase your website visibility by generating multi-linguistic searchers. If your online business is international, you will lose a good part of traffic. This would be quite challenging for English keywords with higher competition globally and keywords difficulty.

Conclusion


Multilingual SEO for voice search is something worth doing as it is the future of search. We recommend you start now and get ahead of your competitors.

The most important takeaways for optimizing your website for multilingual voice searches are target language keyword search, human translation, hreflang tags and a proper URL architecture.

By doing proper keyword research, an accurate translation, correct technical SEO and generating an SEO friendly structure that fits with your own eCommerce targets, you can prepare in advance for the multilingual voice search arrival.