We’re making changes to our Translation Management System (TMS) plans

Posted on October 4, 2016 by Vincent Chan

Today, we are rolling out new plans for our OneSky Translation Management System (TMS).

An advanced management platform, our TMS is the ideal solution for projects involving multiple collaborators. To better serve the growing demand and our clients’ diverse needs, we are expanding the number of available plans and adjusting the pricing. Our new plans start from 10 collaborators for $89/month, to 50 for $299/month, billed annually. Custom plans are available as well.

To learn more about our new plans, please visit our TMS pricing page.

To minimize the impact of these changes on our clients, all current paying TMS subscribers will be automatically enrolled in a legacy plan. This means that if you already have a OneSky TMS plan at or before October 3, 2016, the terms of your current account will remain the same until further notice, unless you wish to upgrade.

Though they look a little different, our TMS plans are still simple and straightforward.

We remain committed to offering you access to our full set of features, including an unlimited number of words on an unlimited number of projects.

Interested in learning more about TMS? Read our blog post on 7 reasons TMS is essential to your localization.

Why Mobile Games Often Fail at International Expansion?

Posted on September 10, 2014 by Vincent Chan

According to WSJ, the global mobile game market is expected to increase eightfold from $3.77 billion in 2010 to $29.6 billion in 2017. And among all the countries, the Asia Pacific region, with China and Japan as leaders, is the biggest market for mobile game developers with 48% of the global revenue and three times more paying gamers than the second biggest region, North America.

Considering these statistics, it’s no surprise that there are countless mobile games tried to expand abroad each year; however, very few can claim success.

Part of the problem is that mobile gaming has become a modern-day gold rush. Worldwide developers flooded the market hoping to strike it rich, making today’s mobile game market extremely competitive, no matter in domestic or oversea markets.

But the biggest factor is that developers often underestimate the challenges and importance of mobile game localization.

In our experience of helping mobile games go global, here are six common mistakes they make when jumping into the international market. Avoid these, and you will greatly increase your chances of success.

1. No explicit international strategy and plan

The most basic and early stage mistake a game developer can make is failing to understand that localization is more than word-for-word language translation.

Whenever you plan to take your game global, first establish a localization strategy that answers questions like:

What factors characterize an attractive market for your company? (e.g population, GDP, mobile penetration, competitors, language, regulation, cultural factors, partners…)
What’s your prioritized list of the top 10 world markets based on these criteria?
Can we test the demand of a market before going all-in?
What are the market needs of each?
Can your company address multiple markets at the same time?
Should you find a local partner?
What’s your go-to-market strategy for each country?

Lack of commitment and understanding in localization often kills an international initiative.

Therefore, make sure your company has a strong corporate champion to drive the in-depth research, explore the markets and own the execution once the strategy is done.

Without formulating the right strategy and translating it into actions, your game will fail, no matter how many languages it supports.

2. Ignoring localization in the early phase of game development

Many game developers try to postpone localization related discussion until the end of the development cycle, but they don’t realize that they have made a huge mistake from the moment they write their first line of code.

What this typically equates to is a lot of rework and additional costs to go back and modify your code to work when you add new language and localization requirements, costing your company thousands (or millions) of dollars and months of delay in getting into overseas markets.

Instead of doing costly rework down the road, your team should make an explicit decision on internationalization upfront.

Is your code well prepared for the pre-translation phase? Are your UI strings all externalized? Have you given careful consideration in international non-text elements such as symbols, colours, time and date formats, currency symbols?

If your code isn’t localized in the beginning, the problem is getting worse with every line you add.

3. No “culturalization” process

To increase the odds of a title’s success in international markets, great attention must be paid to the cultural aspects.

Basic language translation is the bare minimum that any game developers should be doing. Ideally, your translators should be able to adapt your game content to the local culture because culturalization is a necessity.

“What we learned about international markets is that it’s not enough to localize the content by just translating it. Instead, we have to culturalize it,” Craig Alexander, VP of Product Development for game studio Turbine, said.

In order to create the best gaming experience, your translators have to understand foreign cultural traditions, the latest pop culture in the targeted country, local points of reference, etc.

The same apply to non-text assets. For example, while showing a peace sign is normal in the USA, a reverse peace sign suddenly becomes an insult in places like the UK.

Why did EA’s Plants vs. Zombies become one of the biggest mobile hits in China? Just look at the localised design of the zombies and the Great Wall background in the picture below. Keep in mind that you can build gamers loyalty by fully capturing a regionally exclusive experience within the game.

4. Underestimate the challenge of global mobile game distribution

If you think that all the mobile game distribution channels in every country are similar, you are making a big mistake! In the rush to launch overseas, this is often the most overlooked problem by game developers.

Do you know that China doesn’t have Google Play? Instead, it has around 200 Android app stores creating a highly fragmented market. Without a system in place to track the performance of these channels, you basically can’t have accurate strategies for distributing your app in this country.

Each of those app stores serve a different audience with their own characteristics. You need to look at their different behaviours and adapt your games to different situations. For instance, market leaders often create different versions for different app stores. In other words, if there are 20 app stores they want to target, they will create 20 different versions and marketing strategies for their games.

Due to these complexities, many western game developers work with local publishing and localization partners when they are trying to expand to China now.

When your team comes up with the localization strategy plan, make sure to discuss whether a local partner is needed.

5. Failing to localize the monetization strategy

Although your code and content may be the most obvious localization candidates, your revenue model is equally critical.

In some developing countries, like China, their game players don’t make as much money as the average US gamers. You business model needs to reflect that reality as a result.

When Plants Vs. Zombies 2 launched in China, they initially tried to optimize for the monetization too much making the game way too hard and expensive to play, which backfired on user’s reviews, dropping their rating from five star to two at one point. To overcome this, they learned from the experience and tried to figure out the right balance of difficulty and how to reasonably ask for money by changing the game’s economy. Now they get far fewer negative reviews than before.

When sharing his learnings at the Game Developers Conference, Leo Liu, GM of EA Mobile in China, said, “The Chinese market is so different, you have to be prepared for anything unusual from the Western perspective.”

Make sure you won’t repeat their mistakes.

6. No on-device testing and translation review prior to release

This is an amateur problem that is so easily avoidable and yet we came across it time and time again.

You work so hard on the game, create a great localization plan, translate UI strings, it launches, and suddenly, you realise something is broken. You find out that some extra long German words break some of your game UI! But the worst part of this scenario is when your CEO asks you how this happened, and you say, “I thought the translator was taking care of it…”

Never assume and never leave anything to chance. At the end of the day, if something does go wrong, and you could have easily prevented it, the responsibility is on you.

Professional translators are human and people make mistakes sometimes, especially in a complex, fragmented and rapidly evolving world of mobile.

Make sure your localization partners provide localization testing and review services on a number of mobile devices because you can’t afford to disappoint your users with buggy games. After you’ve received a poor rating, there is no way to hide poor quality in the world of mobile.

Conclusion

It’s true that international expansion is hard to get right. Therefore, clear ownership, good strategy up-front, and great execution are critical. That way your mobile game will be in a great position to take advantage of the huge international opportunity!

Looking for more resources about game localization? Check out our new mobile game localization guide.

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14 Compelling Statistics About the Importance of Localization

Posted on August 7, 2014 by Vincent Chan

When companies are planning to roll out a new product, localization can be a surprisingly low priority on their to-do list. Why? Because most of the time, there is almost no localization related discussion until the later stages of the development process. That’s why localization requirements will usually be assigned a lower priority and when the project gets hectic, those requirements will likely be omitted altogether.

Even though the importance of localization and translation have been proven time and time again, there are still plenty of traditional marketers and developers out there who don’t take localization seriously or just can’t convince their boss to prioritize localization tasks properly.

If only planning for localization near the end of the development process, the lack of solid pre-translation resources, which take time to prepare, may leave translators little room to maneuver, requiring the use of workarounds to overcome obstacles and often resulting in imperfections in the final translation.

To avoid this mistake, we’ve highlighted some of the freshest statistics that will convince your boss that localization is just as important as any other aspect of your business.

Mobile

1) 50% of the countries within the Top 10 for downloads and revenue in iOS App Store are non-English speaking countries from Europe and East Asia. (Source: App Annie) Tweet this stat!

2) 80% of the countries within the Top 5 for downloads and revenue in Google Play are non-English speaking countries from Europe and East Asia. (Source: App Annie, Q2 2014) Tweet this stat!

3) 92% of the Top 25 Grossing iPhone apps in China use Chinese names and the other East Asian countries like Japan, Taiwan and Korea lie between 52% and 76%. (Source: App Annie, Q2 2014) Tweet this stat!

4) 80% of the Top 25 Grossing Android apps in Japan use Japanese names and the other East Asian countries like Taiwan and Korea lie between 64% and 72%. (Source: App Annie, Q2 2014) Tweet this stat!

5) 41% of the total app revenue globally came from Asia, while North America generated 31% and Europe 23%. (Source: Distimo, Q1 2014) Tweet this stat!

6) App revenue in Asia increased by 162% year-over-year (2012 to 2013), while North America’s revenue grew by 46%. (Source: Distimo, Q1 2014) Tweet this stat!

Mobile Advertising

7) 86% of the localized campaigns outperformed the English campaigns in both click-throughs and conversions. (Source: Appia) Tweet this stat!

8) In a research study, while english campaigns had an average CTR of 2.35% and a conversion rate of 7.47%, the localized versions saw click-through rates of 3.34% – an increase of 42%, and 9.08% conversion rates – a 22% lift over the English campaign. (Source: Appia) Tweet this stat!

Social Media

9) 41% of prestige brands maintain at least one local country page. These local Facebook pages have grown at twice the rate of global communities and register 50% higher engagement. (Source: Facebook) Tweet this stat!

10) According to an experiment done by Nieman Journalism Lab, geo-targeted posts were 6 times more successful than posts shared globally. (Source: Mindjumpers) Tweet this stat!

E-Commerce

11) 72.4% of global consumers indicated that they prefer to use their native language when shopping online. (Source: Common Sense Advisory) Tweet this stat!

12) 55% of global consumers said they only buy products from websites that provide them with information in their own language. (Source: Common Sense Advisory) Tweet this stat!

13) 56.2% of the consumers in the study said the ability to obtain information in their own language is even more important than price. (Source: Common Sense Advisory) Tweet this stat!

Website

14) In 2013, among the Top 10 Global Websites, 79% of their users were outside America. In 2014, >86% of their users were outside America. (Source: KPCB) Tweet this stat!

Your Turn

Are you more convinced to give localization a try now? Read our free data report, “Why Localization Is Essential To Growth” to learn more about why and how you should be localizing for your app genre:

Don’t miss out on localization resources and tips! Subscribe to our newsletter to learn the best ways to go global.

A Step By Step Guide to Pre-translation

Posted on July 8, 2014 by Vincent Chan

According to Daniel Gouadec, author of Translation as a Profession, the translation process is a series of translating activities involving three phases: pre-translation, translation, and post translation.

Daniel suggests that most translation problems and potential risks could be resolved by getting as much information as possible prior to a translation project. Therefore, investing more resources in the pre-translation phase is a more efficient way of managing risk than having to deal with different pitfalls during or after the whole translation process. Let’s take a look at how to do just that.

What is pre-translation?

The “Pre-translation Phase” includes everything that takes place up to the moment the translator receives all the materials and resources for translation.

In order to minimize risks in a translation project, translators and their clients should do a pre-translation analysis to clearly discuss terminological issues (e.g. glossaries, previous translations, audience profiles, tone of voice…etc) and technical issues (e.g. CAT tools to be used, previous translation memory, contextual resources…etc).

That’s a lot of stuff to discuss. How does a project owner get started and actually do all of that? Well, this blog post will guide you through all the major steps in the pre-translation process.

Step 1: Separate Text (Strings) from Code

Oftentimes, developers make localization complicated because they didn’t manage their apps’ UI strings properly in the first place.

Move all text into a string file

To make localization straightforward, always separate string resources from your code and markup to create a single language-independent codebase. Hard coding any strings will make it difficult to update and localize. Instead place all the strings into a resource file, like a .strings or .xml file, so your strings can be extracted, translated and integrated back into your app without any changes to compiled code.

Provide sufficient context for declared strings

When declaring strings in your resource file, make sure to describe the context clearly in which the string is used. For example, what is this string for? When and where is it showed to the user? Is it a button or a text box?…etc. This contextual information is critical to translators to produce better quality translation.

Mark message parts that should not be translated

Over-localization is a common source of problems. To avoid that, ensure that only strings that need to be translated are provided to localizers. And if certain parts of a string shouldn’t be translated to other languages (e.g. a piece of code, a placeholder for a value, a special symbol…etc), mark text that should remain as-is, so that translators don’t touch it.

Step 2: Make Sure to Support Plural Forms

The next very important step, but often overlooked, is making sure to support plural forms.

Project owners and developers, who haven’t been involved in localization projects in the past may not be aware of these very important linguistic nuances. Different languages have different rules for the formation of plurals. For example, English has two forms: a singular form for “one” (e.g. 1 book), and a plural form for “everything else, including zero” (e.g. n books).

This may sound simple in English, but other languages make finer distinctions. For instance, Russian has different plural forms for numbers ending in 1 (except 11), numbers ending in 2-4 (except 12-14) and other numbers.

While deciding which case to follow for a given language and quantity can be complex, linguistic plurals are a key part of creating high-quality multilingual products that are relevant to local cultures.

Step 3: Pseudo Translation

Pseudo-localization could be the most cost effective way of finding localizability bugs in usability and functionality because it gives you a dummy translation without the cost of a real localization project.

What is pseudo-localization?

It is considered to be a part of the internationalization testing process performed during the product development phase. Instead of professionally translating the content of the software right away, the textual elements of a product are replaced with a dummy translation. So your team can get a feel for what the localized product will look like.

What are the benefits of pseudo-localization?

It helps to find out how prepared your product is for localization. This testing method can reveal hard-coded strings that should be translatable, find strings that shouldn’t be translated, and identify design/layout issues that will affect the localized product in the future. Generally speaking, the earlier you can identify localization problems, the faster and less costly it will be to address and reverse them.

Different ways of pseudo-localization

Pseudo-localization could be done via script or a tool. Below are some common techniques for different localization objectives:

Replacing characters with Xs
Pseudoese (similar-looking diacritical characters)
Lorem Ipsum
String Identifiers
Simple prefixes/Suffixes
Machine translation

For the detailed benefits of each method, check out this blog post.

Step 4: Define Glossary Terms

In every project, there are usually a few key terms that define the product (e.g. “Like” in Facebook) that we need to make sure they are translated accurately and consistently in every use case. This is where a glossary – sometimes called a terminology database or termbase – comes in as it is specially designed for this purpose.

A good glossary eliminates ambiguity and serves as a guide to translators on how to manage key terminology. After generating a list of key terms (e.g. acronyms, names, titles or subject specific terminology) and providing a clear definition and proper context, project owners will work closely with translators to review and approve the final translations.

When translators are working in a CAT tool, these key terms will be highlighted together with the pre-approved translations which enhance consistency and accuracy each time a key term occurs. In cases where there is a high volume of repetition, it can save both time and money as well.

You may learn more about how to set up a translation glossary via this blog post.

Step 5: Use Translation Memory

Translation Memory is a translation tool used to monitor and assist with the translation process by storing all the content that have been translated previously. Similar to a glossary, Translation Memory maintains consistent translation throughout the project.

So what’s the difference between Translation Memory and Glossary? A Glossary is a guide for translators on how to translate specific key terms, whereas a Translation Memory automatically translates repetitive content, eliminating the need to re-translate the same text in current or previous projects.

During the pre-translation analysis, a Translation Memory is useful to calculate the estimated word count and costs for new or pre-translated segments. As a result, updating Translation Memories is a very important step after each translation project. They will not only significantly reducie translation costs and turnaround time but also improve overall translation quality in future projects.

Step 6: Create a Localization Style Guide

Many people mistakenly think that localization means to translate their content word-for-word. They didn’t know that in order to create a successful localized product, they should adapt their messages to the local culture and tone of voice. In other words, the brand sentiment shouldn’t be ignored during the localization process.

Therefore, project owners are recommended to prepare a localization style guide before starting a translation project. It works as a framework for translators to understand the company’s voice, personality, and brand goals. A consistent translation voice can be achieved if all the translators involved in the project follow these guidelines as closely as possible.

Typical elements in the style guide include:

Punctuation (spacing, quotation marks)
Branding elements (unique to the country or language)
Formatting (bolding, fonts, trademarks)
Localization or Adaptation (formal vs. informal tone, how to deal with currencies, addresses, phone numbers)

Learn more about localization style guide via this blog post.

Step 7: Prepare Screenshots as Contextual Information

In a poor organized localization project, translators have to work with anonymous strings in a translation tool without looking at the actual product, which increases the chance of contextual errors and excessive project management time.

As the project owner, if you don’t want your translators to do guesswork, you need to provide them with a sufficient amount of reference materials, such as screenshots. And if possible, it’s recommended to let translators use the actual product during the project.

Screenshots allow translators to see their works in context, so they can adjust the text length or translation meaning in the best possible way. The most helpful screenshots should be able to indicate where the associated strings are located on the screen and all necessary elements that may influence the translation process.

If you want to learn more about other ways to make translators’ lives easier, check out this blog post.

Takeaway

It’s true that setting up your pre-translation process the right way might take a little bit of time, but in the end it’s worth it and will produce the type of results that turn into successful localizated products and happy international customers for your company! If you want to learn more about how this can be applied in your own business, I invite you to get a Free Pre-translation Assessment below. We’re here to help!

Image source: Flickr

Content Localization is Essential for Business Growth

Posted on June 3, 2014 by Vincent Chan

Many US companies still don’t really think about the language of their content, which means there are big opportunities for the companies that do. Because English has been so influential around the world, content used to be rolled out around the world without localization. That fact is changing rapidly as consumers are beginning to demand more relevant content.

English is considered the world’s most influential language by far, based on criteria such as number of secondary speakers, economic power of English speaking countries and the number of fields where English is important. However, a recent series of Gallup polls in Europe found that a majority of Internet users (55 percent) used more than one language to read or watch content online. Surprisingly, in a few countries like Italy and the Czech Republic, a majority said that they only used their own language to read and watch content.

In the new global economy, American companies are waking to the profit and potential of content localization. In fact, nearly half of marketers (49 percent) in a survey by the CMO Council, said that localized marketing is absolutely critical to their business growth. Localization affects not only profitability, but also elementary demand generation and sell-through rates. That same study revealed that nearly 9 out of 10 marketers (86 percent) planned to search for better ways to adapt and localize their content for more direct prospect engagement.

One of the reasons that localization isn’t done more, despite the clear ROI, is that getting it right can be extremely difficult. At the Confab 2012 Conference, Lise Janody, owner of Dot-Connection, offered some great insights about the biggest stumbling blocks that companies face.

Localization can:

drive up costs
become time-intensive
require closer scrutiny for quality issues
fragment budgets
necessitate further support tools
generate complexity across the organization

Effective Localization Plans

An effective content localization plan involves much more than just content translation. For example, neighboring countries can require completely different terminology, which complicates collaborations and analytics. In terms of branding, marketers have been perplexed about how to retain a consistent tone and voice while appealing to very different audiences in different languages.

Despite all the complexity, though, the profits and market share bear out successful localization and there are some guidelines that have been developed to streamline the process. Companies without experience in the subtleties tend to take a generalized approach to content localization. The result is invariably a much larger invoice than is appropriate or a localization that completely misses the target audience.

Content Localization Checklist

In her Checklist for Content Strategy, Erin Kissane identified three major areas that deserve the most attention. Localized content should be:

Appropriate – It must create an emotional connection with the user to remain relevant. Localized content helps them accomplish their goals in a way that is easy and familiar. Language is just a small part of that.
Centered around the user – Forget the way the content is organized from the company’s standpoint and picture the user’s goals. This is often an enormous competitive advantage.
Reliable and consistent – Inconsistency is a certain way to get forgotten quickly. Users shy away from products that require cognitive effort to understand and where the form distracts from the substance.

Setting the right targets for yourself before you begin introducing the product to the new market. Make sure you understand the market size and your own share potential. Consider internal, market and cultural forces in comparison with your own objectives. This is also the time to identify gaps in your most crucial tools such as your translation and terminology management.

The New Standard

Content localization isn’t a new trend, but its only now becoming the new standard. Companies that are successfully integrating their content into the lives of their users in other countries are the ones with a comprehensive strategy. Effective content localization cannot simply be generated as an afterthought. There needs to be a feedback loop that your company arranges with its language service provider in order to continually refine the content translation. Remember that, in the end, increases in trust and persuasion will directly result in more sales and revenue.

Image source: Flickr

Star Trek-like Real-time Translation Technology Is Getting Closer To Reality Than You Think

Posted on May 29, 2014 by Vincent Chan

Star Trek‘s futuristic technologies has long been a source of inspiration for scientists and engineers, who hope to turn science fiction into reality. Although no one has invented a transporter yet, some of its technologies, like the classic universal translator, is less far-fetched than you might think.

Imagine a tiny device that could remove language barriers and let you communicate with anyone who speaks a different language that you don’t understand. This is what a true universal translator is supposed to do in the famous TV show.

To make it happen in the real world requires sophisticated natural language processing technologies including speech recognition, real-time machine translation and speech synthesis.

Over the years, the progress in voice recognition, however, has been disappointing, making people wonder if automatic simultaneous translation will ever become the norm.

But things changed a little when Microsoft came into the picture with their breakthrough product, Skype Translator, yesterday. It is their most incredible new product in years.

This is how Microsoft describes this new product:

Imagine in the very near future technology allowing humans to bridge geographic and language boundaries to connect mind to mind and heart to heart in ways never before possible…the Star Trek vision for a Universal Translator isn’t a galaxy away, and its potential is every bit as exciting as those Star Trek examples. Skype Translator opens up so many possibilities to make meaningful connections in ways you never could before in education, diplomacy, multilingual families and in business.

Experimentation in this area isn’t new for Microsoft as it has invested in speech recognition for decades. So what makes it so special this time?

Skype Translator is definitely a product that falls into the “You need to see it to believe it” category. If you haven’t already watched their awesome demonstration at the Code Conference, I encourage you to take a look at the video below. During the demo, they showed off near real-time audio translation from English to German and vice versa, which was considered a nearly impossible task.

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In fact, Microsoft is not alone in its effort to crack the simultaneous translation technology. Last year, NTT DoCoMo, the largest mobile-phone operator in Japan, unveiled an augmented reality glasses that can translate text on menus in near real-time and introduced a service that translates phone calls between Japanese and English, Chinese or Korean.

The goal is to have these new gadget and service ready for action in time for the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, so foreign tourists can more easily navigate their way around the city.

Meanwhile numerous startups are betting on growing needs for real-time translation as well.

For example, Word Lens, which was acquired by Google recently, is an amazing app that translates any text your camera can see. Simply pointing your device’s camera at the text to be translated and the translation immediately shows up on the screen in real-time, helping travelers feel like a native in every country. It is quite mind-blowing when you try it for the first time. You can check out their introduction video below.

SIGMO is another startup in this space. It is a small device equipped with a microphone and speaker and connected to the cloud via a smartphone. When a user speaks to it, it will use existing online translation services such as Google Translate to translate from one language to the other in real-time. Their Indiegogo campaign has been wildly successful, blowing past its original goal of $15,000 to raise over $240,000, proving the huge demand of a universal translator-like solution.

With all these promising new technologies, a true universal translator, perhaps, can be possible in our lifetime. It may be just a few more years before “Star Trek” style conversations become commonplace.

How Adobe Achieved Double-Digit CTR Increase via International SEO

Posted on May 22, 2014 by Vincent Chan

After learning about all the best tools for international SEO, you may ask yourself, “Is it really worth the extra time and effort to make it work?”

In determining its worth, let’s look at a real-life example of successful international SEO marketing.

With more than half of its revenue earned outside the U.S., Adobe Global SEO team has to manage 30+ domains, subdomains, & microsites, 1.8M pages, 10M keywords, 14K ad copy rotations and 1000+ landing pages everyday. It’s safe to say that Adobe’s online marketing effort is among the most sophisticated across different industries.

In 2013, their SEO team were able to achieve double-digit increases in their sites’ impression and click-through rate in SERPs. And for some of their international sites, average visits and revenue were increased by 485%(!) and +133% respectively. How did they bring such a significant improvement to a giant enterprise like Adobe?

Fortunately, Dave Lloyd, Senior Manager of Global Search Marketing at Adobe Systems, explained how they work behind the scenes in great details at Share13, a premier digital marketing event organized by BrightEdge, an enterprise SEO platform.

We’ve summarised some of the key points in his presentation here.

Localization Matters

In order to be successful in international SEO, Dave believes that people have to understand the importance of localization, especially for those who think that localization is equal to translation.

Oftentimes, a translation that is linguistically correct may not express the right meaning in your target audience’s culture and context.

Therefore, thoughtful marketers should pay attention to relevancy when doing in-country keyword research. They have to make sure the chosen keywords are the ones that users are actually searching for. When the keyword’s meaning is accurate and makes sense, it will greatly improve the click-through rate in local search result.

“The premise is understanding why customers are coming to your site – what unique tasks are global and mobile users trying to accomplish? Once core markets are understood, it’s critical to define your team & company’s unique value to deliver to those markets.” – Dave Lloyd

Below is Adobe’s keyword ranking improvement in three months due to localization in Japan and Korea.

SEO Localization Process

The practice of optimizing your website for search has a lot of moving parts, so good planning and alignment processes are essential for an effective international SEO campaign. To kickstart a SEO project, Dave suggests marketers to follow this general process:

In-country keyword research
Each keyword mapped to preferred landing page
Content localized using keywords (content, video, images, links)
Reviewed by Editorial & SEO & added to Sitemaps
Localized & optimized content goes live

After understanding the core ideas behind this process, companies can innovate it based on their own needs. Below is Adobe’s internal localization process, see if you can learn a thing or two from this world-class company.

Href Alt Lang in XML Sitemaps

Historically, Google’s search algorithm values large multinational sites more than smaller single country sites. As a result, localized sites are often outranked by the US or predominant language version sites. For example, many US sites have higher rankings than Australia sites, even if users did the search in Australia.

To tackle this challenge, webmasters should add HrefLang annotations to their XML Sitemaps, like the image below, indicating to Google which country a specific page is targeting.

Image source: Search Engine Land

By following these practices, Adobe improved its international sites’ rankings in Germany, France and Spain significantly.

Global Title Tags and Meta Desc

Finally, some marketers may forget that there are difference in character limits for title tags and meta descriptions in languages using single-byte characters (e.g. English and Spanish) and double-byte characters (e.g. Japanese and Chinese).

Google typically displays the first 60 characters (with spaces) of a title tag and 160 characters (with spaces) of a meta description. For double-byte characters, the limit is half that.

With that in mind, we have to make sure our main in-country keywords and clear call-to-action showing up within the limits in different languages.

Check out Adobe’s SEO enhancement in Italy and Russia as well.

Want to learn more? Check out Dave’s actual slides below or follow him on Twitter to keep up with the latest trend in international SEO.

8 Tools to Kickstart Your International SEO Mobile

Posted on May 15, 2014 by Vincent Chan

Do you know that Google recently estimated that global mobile searches could exceed desktop search volume by the end of 2014?

If you still consider mobile as a secondary international distribution channel, it is NOW the time to take it more seriously because it can significantly increase leads and revenue for your company.

Well, some of you may argue that most of this growth mainly comes from developing regions, Asian countries (e.g. India, Japan, Korea…etc) and young people who prefer to use mobile devices rather than desktops. These groups of people may not be in your target demographic, age range, or geographic groups at this moment. But that doesn’t mean mobile opportunity should be ignored entirely as traffic from mobile devices only continues to climb.

So how to prepare your business for this inevitable trend?

There are many different ways to extend your SEO success to the mobile and global markets. Below are three steps to help you get started:

Understand your current mobile international demand
Identify your future mobile international market potential
Optimize your site for mobile international opportunities

It could be difficult to achieve these tasks effectively without a SEO specialist on your team. But luckily there are some tools that can make the process way easier.

We’ve rounded up some of the most awesome tools available on the web below.

(Note: OneSky has no affiliation with these companies.)

Understand Your Current Mobile International Opportunities

1) Google Analytics

First of all, you want to check if your mobile site is already popular globally. So you can prioritize which languages you should tackle first.

By using Google Analytics‘ pre-loaded “Mobile and Tablet Traffic” segment, you can find out your current mobile traffic data by country and language. If you want to dig deeper into the data, you can further breakdown it by devices level (Section: Audience > Mobile > Devices).

Do you know if you have any landing pages that are already performing well in terms of mobile international SEO? By studying this data, you can learn a lot about your audience’s needs and discover the source of the mobile traffic. It is located in the Behaviour > Site Content > Landing Pages section.

2) Google Webmaster Tools

Next you should check your current mobile search visibility. In Google Webmaster Tools, by using the new mobile filter, you can see mobile search query data right down to the individual click or impression. You can also select the location filter to find out the user behavior in different countries.

If you want to analyze your SEO effort over time, toggle the “With Change” option to see which keywords provide best opportunities for low-hanging fruit, e.g. ranking on the top of 2nd page in SERP now.

3) SEMRush

Have you ever wondered which organic keywords were driving the most traffic to your competitors? If you wanted to do that, SEMRush is the perfect tool for the job.

It’s a keyword spy and competitor research tool that has databases for more than 20 countries, including United States, Germany, France, Spain…etc. Although it doesn’t have mobile specific data yet, you could still benefit by identifying what international markets you are falling behind your competitors.

Identify Your Future Mobile International Opportunities

4) Keyword Planner

After you’ve figured out your current situation in mobile international SEO, you need to discover new ideas and opportunities to increase your visibility in search results.

Keyword Planner allows you to check potential mobile search traffic for keywords that are relevant to your business. You can even drill down your search volume to a specific geographic location for country-wide statistics.

If you want to see if people are searching certain keywords on mobile devices, simply run the new “Mobile trends” chart to get a deeper insight into mobile trends data.

5) Google Trends

In order to be successful in SEO, regardless of location, language or devices, delivering the right content to your audiences everywhere is your gateway to success.

Therefore, mobile international SEO success ultimately requires localization excellence.

You want to makes sure the keywords you are targeting are appropriate in the language, geography and culture of your target audience because mistranslations sometimes can lead to disasters.

Besides getting advice from localization experts, you can first find out which terms are most used in certain countries. This can be verified by studying the search volume and usage trend in Google Trends.

Optimize for Mobile International SEO

6) Screaming Frog SEO Spider

After conducting all the previous research, you can start optimizing your global sites for the mobile opportunity.

You want to check how Mobile search bots crawl your site and see if they’re being served correctly, e.g. some of your pages may be redirected to the desktop version or another pages by mistakes.

Screaming Frog SEO Spider can crawl your international sites using your desired mobile bot, such as Googlebot-Mobile User-Agents, by using the “Spider User Agent Configuration” option.

Image source: State of Digital

7) PageSpeed Insights

Google uses a multitude of factors to determine how to rank search engine results and one of the elements is website speed. To avoid a negative impact on search ranking, make sure your international sites are optimized for mobile effectively.

PageSpeed Insights gives you a mobile scorecard based on your current progress and suggests areas for improvement. Following Google’s suggestions here should give you a good start.

8) SEO Global For Google Search + Chrome DevTools + Moz SEO Toolbar

At the end of the day, how your site appears on mobile SERP is the most important. So you want to make a final check on how your target audience see your site in mobile search results in different countries.

In order to do that, you will need a few tools here.

SEO Global For Google Search is a Chrome extension that allows you to see how Google search results appear in different countries, regions and cities. This is excellent for our purposes.

Then you want to install MozBar which provides easy access to the most important SEO metrics while you surf the web. It’s a good way to do competitor research as well.

At last, you can use Chrome’s built-in DevTools to realistically emulate the mobile environment so you can inspect the mobile search result from your desktop screen.

In Chrome browser, navigate to Menu > Tools > Developer tools to enable the DevTools window. And enabling the emulation view is as easy as selecting the target mobile device in the developer tools settings menu.

A Final Note

Remember that we are living in a multi-device world now. The usage of mobile search is only going to increase. It’s better to be prepared for this challenge sooner rather than later.

Follow our blog, and you’ll soon be an expert in international SEO as well!

Reference:

Mobilizing your International SEO by @aleyda

Global SEO And Localization Excellence – What Localization Really Is

Thumbnail image source: Flickr

3 Ways To Get Daily Localization Insights on Twitter

Posted on March 14, 2014 by Vincent Chan

Twitter is definitely one of our best friends to stay connected with our networks and keep abreast of the latest trends on topics we are interested in. Localization might seems a niche topic at first glance, but there are still lots of gems on twitter that can “tweet” you inspirations everyday. Here we have prepared a quick list of industry insiders, from thought leaders, insightful good-read channels to translator community. No matter if you are newbie or experienced practitioners, get ready for the flow of distinctive insights!

1. Follow The Thought Leaders

John Yunker

Follow @johnyunker Follow @bytelevel

Editor of the popular globalization blog Global by Design, Co-founder of Byte Level Research, Experienced consultant for Fortune 500 global websites, all these titles define Yunker’s authoritative status in the industry. Follow him for first hand update on his blogs, researches and personal pick of localization insights.

Donna Parrish

Follow @donnaparrish Follow @multilingualmag

Being the publisher of the leading magazine in the language industry MultiLingual and co-organizer of the Localization World conferences, Donna upholds comprehensive exposure on market practices and development. She tweets a lot on lessons drawn from case studies around the world, valuable resources for both localizers and language services provider.

Ultan Ó Broin

Follow @localization Follow @ultan

O’Broin has over 20 years of experience and knowledge on localization issue with a specialty on user experience (UX) and technical aspects . He is now working as the Global Applications User Experience Director with Oracle, follow him to peep into an experienced veteran’s daily journey and keep up with the market tech trend. Check out his shares on multilingual blog & slide share for more comprehensive and in-depth analysis.

2. Subscribe to Latest Industry News

Common Sense Advisory

Follow @CSA_Research

A well-trusted independent research company which publishes market analysis in the language and localization industry. Daily tweets on successful market practices and also updates in their blogs. Highlight goes to those written by their founder Donald A. DePalma who has 30 years of experience in the field.

Localization News

Follow @L10Ntweets

Nicely curated localization news channel on Twitter. Frequent tweet updates of articles from both renowned influencers and individual bloggers, a good mix between big picture and interesting side stories in the industry. Don’t forget to follow the hashtag #L10Ntweets as well, there might be more interesting stories missed by the editor!

3. Get To Know About The Translation World

ProZ.com

Follow @ProZcom

Translators are our very close partners in localization. The better we know about their practices and concerns, the more likely we can obtain the desired translation results. Proz.com is an online translation marketplace with over 300,000 engaged translation-providers, they definitely know them well. Tweets often cover tips from translation practices, translator selection, collaboration management to tool evaluation, a true insider guide to improve translation efficiency.

Food for translators

Follow @FfTranslators

How to judge the quality of your translation? What are the tricks and considerations when translating in different contexts? How to cater the target audiences better? This platform offers answers to all sorts of tip helping translators to get the job done in good shape. Sound inputs for localizers to review on the quality assurance process.

For more quick guide to obtain localization insights? Stay tuned with our blog!

7 Facts You Should Know Before Marketing An App in Japan

Posted on March 5, 2014 by Vincent Chan

Did you know that Japan has the world’s most lucrative app markets? This isn’t exactly a surprise, since Japan is constantly one step ahead in the world of technology. Recent reports from App Annie and Distimo has shown that Japan has led the world both in app spending and in profit margins on mobile games since 2013. Naturally, many app developers are keeping an eye on the Japanese market, but Japan is not an easy place for foreign players to establish a new product.

Fortunately, we can help. Here are seven key facts you need to know if you’re wondering on how to market an app in the Japanese app market.

1. Japan tops App Spending Charts since 2013

The first lesson of bringing an app to Japan is that it can be very, very lucrative to do, especially since 2013, when smartphones in the country increased drastically from 28% to 42%. Plus, Japanese mobile users are accustomed to paying for digital content, so it was no surprise when total spending on smartphone apps skyrocketed.

Check out this chart (below) from App Annie, which shows how Japan produced almost $350 million of combined monthly app revenue across iOS and Google Play, surpassing revenue in the United States and pushing Japan to the top of the world app market.

2. True Success = Highest Profit Margin

It’s not enough just to look at the revenue generated by a particular market. After all, for a business; what really matters is the profit margin. And in terms of profit, too, Japan seems to be topping the charts—at least according to a recent report from Distimo. With the world’s highest revenue per download and the world’s third-lowest cost per download, each app in the Japanese market will obtain on average, a profit margin of $4.48.

For foreign developers, those kinds of numbers are tempting. They’re also hard to achieve. In order to compete in the Japanese market, the main key is to analyze how domestic developers are managing costs and boosting demand for paid apps.

3. Five Key Domestic Players Sharing The Revenue Pie

With high revenue and high profit margins, Japan may seem like a developer’s dream. Still, it can be a difficult market to enter because just five major domestic players share a full two-thirds of the country’s app revenue. Equipped with strong local knowledge, extensive connections and a deep foothold in the app market, these major players make for some tough competitors. In order to thrive in Japan, it’s essential for app developers to consult with people, who know the country well. Japanese app developers, marketers, and localization experts can help you tailor your app to succeed in a competitive market.

4. Android or iOS? Neck-and-Neck Competition!

Good news for Android app developers: while iOS app revenue is still ahead of Google Play, the gap between the two platforms has closed quite a bit in Japan. However, with the largest mobile operator in Japan, DoCoMo, now offering iPhones, Apple’s smartphone market share reached 76% last year. Apple sales figures tripled Samsung in October 2013. For now, at least, iOS seems likely to have an edge on Google Play, but it’s a tough competition and maybe more so than any other markets.

5. Gaming as the Favorite App Genre

Are you trying to figure out what kind of app will be a hit in the Japanese market? One word: games. Puzzle & Dragons, a huge gaming hit in Japan, helped GungHo Online become the most profitable publisher of 2013 in Japan. Last year alone, the company reportedly earned $691 million through the iOS App Store and $820 million through the Google Play Store—altogether, more than $1 billion in revenue. GungHo’s success makes sense, because the company focuses on building games. And looking at the top 50 paid apps in Japan for both Google Play & iOS, over half of them belong to the gaming genre.

6. Japanese Language as the First Step in Localization

If you want to compete with the major domestic players in Japan, localization is essential. In particular, to develop a successful app for Japan, translation into Japanese is a must. Of the top 50 paid apps in Japan, 80% have developed a Japanese version to suit users better. Plague Inc. and Infinity Blade III are two examples of gaming apps that originated in the West and eventually came to top the charts—but only after finding localization experts to help translate and customize their app for the Japanese market.

7. Visual Items as another Key Concern

For western developers, localizing an app for East Asia involves far more than overcoming the language barrier. After all, the cultural gap isn’t just about words. Visual items in particular can work well in one market but fall flat, or even cause offense, somewhere else. David Ng, Chief Executive of the Singapore-based gaming company Gumi Asia Pte Ltd, shared his experiences in an interview with Global Post:

“In Puzzle Trooper, a game originally intended for western players, a character resembling the wrestler Hulk Hogan got some manga makeovers. When we started doing testing in Asia, we realized that they don’t really like the western art that much, then we tested with some more Japanese-looking art and the response was really good.”

Before settling on the details of your localization effort, it’s helpful to conduct focus-group research with Japanese app users, or to partner with a local design house. That way, you can figure out what parts of your app may or may not appeal to customers in this lucrative—and growing—market.

Learn More

Learn more about which app genres worldwide are localizing—and how your competitors are localizing—in our free data report:

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