Heb je de regio inmiddels veroverd en kriebelt het om je vleugels uit te slaan over de grens met je WordPress website? Een slimme zet! De wereld is groter dan Nederland en vol met nieuwe, commerciële kansen. Maar hoe pak je die internationale uitbreiding en het vertalen aan? Je platform simpelweg door Google Translate halen is vragen om grote problemen. In dit blogartikel leggen we je exact uit hoe je deze stap uiterst professioneel aanpakt. We bespreken de bekende valkuilen, de allerbeste software en hoe je ook in het buitenland de zoekmachines domineert.
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Why should you go international with your business?
The decision to cross the border is not one you take lightly. Yet there are huge opportunities beyond our own borders. As soon as you offer your services or products in another language, you immediately increase the potential market exponentially. Think of millions of additional consumers in Germany, France or even worldwide through the English language. It is the ultimate way to boost the growth of your business when the local market becomes saturated. In addition, an international presence exudes enormous authority and professionalism. After all, big players do not operate from one small territory either. By taking the plunge, you immediately position your brand as a serious global player in the competitive online jungle.
The benefits of a multilingual WordPress website
Een robuust CMS zoals we dat inmiddels goed kennen, biedt de perfecte fundering voor al je internationale ambities. Wanneer je jouw WordPress omgeving uitbreidt met meerdere talen, creëer je direct een naadloze en prettige ervaring voor een diverse doelgroep. Bezoekers waarderen het enorm wanneer ze in hun eigen moedertaal worden aangesproken. Het wekt direct meer vertrouwen, verlaagt de drempel om contact op te nemen en verhoogt je conversiepercentages aanzienlijk. Mensen kopen simpelweg veel sneller wanneer ze de kleine lettertjes volledig en moeiteloos begrijpen. Daarnaast bouw je een duurzame voorsprong op ten opzichte van de lokale concurrenten die deze stap nog niet durven te zetten. Met een schaalbaar platform heb je bovendien de vrijheid om later meer landen toe te voegen.
Manually or automatically translate a WordPress website?
Once the decision is finalized, you are faced with an important and strategic choice. Do you go to work yourself with a dictionary, or do you let the computer do the heavy lifting? Automatically translating a WordPress website sounds incredibly tempting at first. Software can convert thousands of words to another language within seconds. Yet our specialists strongly advise against this for your most important conversion pages. Automatic translations often miss the right cultural context, miss the mark with proverbs and therefore feel very wooden. This damages your brand identity. Manual work, performed by a native speaker, ensures that the text is not only grammatically correct, but also convincing and truly touches the reader.
The best tools for a flawless international start in WordPress
To properly manage this complex process, you need the right and most reliable tools. Within the extensive software library of WordPress you will find several excellent solutions for this purpose. The absolute market leader is undoubtedly WPML. This comprehensive plugin allows you to convert literally every technical nook and cranny of your platform. Another popular and user-friendly alternative is Polylang. This tool is slightly lighter in terms of code and focuses purely on the basics, which is perfect for simpler or smaller projects. Finally, we see TranslatePress popping up more and more, which allows you to visually modify texts right on the front end. The right choice depends entirely on the size of your specific project.
How does the famous WPML plugin work in practice?
Let's zoom a little deeper into the absolute market leader. Working with this software requires some technical attention at first, but once it's up and running, it runs like clockwork. You install the basics and then select which languages you want to activate on your domain. Then you will see a handy plus sign in your dashboard for each page and blog article. If you click on it, a blank canvas opens up that is seamlessly linked to the original. In the background, the system flawlessly keeps track of what content has already been addressed and what still needs to be done. Even complex elements, such as your contact forms or the products in your ecommerce store, are effortlessly incorporated into the new multilingual database structure.
Translate your WordPress website yourself or outsource?
It may sound like a manageable project that you can pick up on a rainy Sunday afternoon. But make no mistake: translating your entire WordPress website is an incredibly time-consuming and extremely precise job. If you only have three pages and are fluent in the target language, you can do it yourself just fine. However, do you have a hefty ecommerce store, complex forms or dozens of blog articles? Then outsourcing is a much smarter move. Professional translation agencies or experienced copywriters know exactly how to maintain your fluent tone of voice in another language. Moreover, you avoid embarrassing technical errors, such as broken links or wrong redirects in the menu structure. By turning this over to experts, you save yourself a huge amount of time and frustration.
Don't forget search engine optimization abroad (international SEO)
A wonderful multilingual platform is unfortunately worthless if your foreign target audience does not know how to find it in the search engines. International SEO is truly a profession in its own right. You can't just convert your successful Dutch keywords one-to-one. French or Germans might use completely different search terms or synonyms for exactly the same services. It is important to conduct in-depth, local keyword research for each country. Then strategically incorporate these new terms into your texts, meta titles and file names. In addition, make sure your technical settings, such as the so-called hreflang tags, are configured correctly. These invisible pieces of code tell Google exactly which language version to show to a specific visitor, so that you score directly in the right foreign search results.
The importance of a logical menu structure when translating a WordPress website
Once you get started enthusiastically, the main navigation is one of the most important elements not to overlook. When translating your WordPress website, you absolutely must make sure that visitors can effortlessly switch between regions at all times. You usually do this by placing a clear language switch neatly in the header or footer, recognizable by small flags or text labels. Make sure the menu structure in the new language is as logically structured as in the original. Foreign words are sometimes simply a lot longer, causing your nice, clean web design to suddenly jump ugly. Take this into account during the early design phase so that your navigation always remains intuitive, clean and user-friendly for everyone.
What do you do with images and visual content within an international website?
Catchy text only tells half the story. The visual aspect of your platform communicates at least as strongly with your visitor. Do you have images or banners that incorporate Dutch slogans? Then make sure that you also upload specially adapted versions in your WordPress media library for the foreign pages. Also pay close attention to the specific context of your imagery. A photo of a typical United States polder landscape will elicit little recognition or emotion from a Spanish consumer. In addition, from an SEO perspective, it is absolutely essential to correctly include the alt texts of all your images. By filling in these invisible descriptions in the right language, search engines understand the context of your images even better.
Need help with your WordPress website translation?
We understand very well that expanding abroad quickly feels like a gigantic, complex and time-consuming expedition in the digital jungle. It is a technical precision job where one small mistake can have major and detrimental consequences for your online findability. Don't fancy spending hours fiddling with complicated settings yourself? At Monkey Vision we lovingly take your WordPress website translation completely out of your hands. Our headstrong professionals build a watertight, multilingual foundation that is lightning fast and perfectly matches your brand identity. You focus on bringing in your new international clients, while we take care of flawless technology behind the scenes.
