Understanding the Importance of Local SEO
In the competitive landscape of B2B businesses, particularly in Southeast Asia, leveraging local SEO can significantly enhance your online visibility. Local SEO focuses on optimizing your website for local search queries, which is especially beneficial when targeting audiences in their native languages
Why Local Languages are often overlooked by B2B companies
As English is in practice the “international language” when it comes to B2B business, many European and US companies often overlook the use of Southeast Asia languages on their corporate website. If it is true that English is for many the conversational language in business meetings, it doesn’t mean that decision makers and stakeholders in prospect companies are typing search queries in English when going to Google in the first place.
Local language matter to customers
When potential customers search and find products or services in their native language, they are more likely to engage with content that resonates with them culturally and linguistically.
- – Deeper understanding about the subject and its context. This is especially true if your business requires to be visible at several level of the organisation, for example by Purchasing teams and officers.
- – More time spent engaging with content.
- – Boost credibility and trust about your long-term involvement and presence in region.
- – Differentiate from your competitors. You will be instantly differenciated from international brands trying to sell similar services from overseas.
- – Higher conversion, as users feel more comfortable interacting with content that speaks their language. They will act on download or contact forms more easily. Giving you leads that may have ignored your site in the first place.
Local keywords unlock additional traffic easily
One of the most significant advantages of focusing on local languages is the reduced competition for translated keywords. Many businesses overlook the potential of local language SEO, leading to a less saturated market. By optimizing your content for these keywords, you can achieve higher rankings in search results more easily, resulting in increased organic traffic and visibility for your B2B offerings.
Key benefits of reduced competition on local keywords:
- – Faster time to reach page 1 of Google for a given keyword.
- – Allows your company to try to reach more ambitious keywords with more traffic.
- – This does not compete with your ability to reach the keyword in English, go for both!
Provide users and Google the ability to switch language
Most modern CMS allows to tie language variants of a single article together. This often allows to provide a “language switch” to human users as a module somewhere in the page. By making the language switch easy, without loosing track of the current content being browsed, you make sure your visitors are able to read your content in the language that fit them best.
A similar tactic exists for Google bots. By providing “hreflang metadata” in your page headers (something that is visible to Google bots but not to human users), you indicate to Google which are different language versions of the page available for this piece of content. This will boost your page visibility in Google (regardless of the language), and make sure search engines serve the best version of the page to the visitors depending of their Search language preferences.
A mini-site is cost-effective way to capture local keywords
Some large B2B groups are not willing to implement regional languages like Thai or Vietnamese on their global website, that would just be too much content to translate. A good alternative is to provide local mini-sites that focuses on key solutions sold in those countries. Because those mini-sites will be entirely in local language (Thai or Vietnamese in that case), they do not compete for the attention of global users and will not cannibalize international English traffic. They are also cheaper to implement and make it easier to experiment with local content or products that should not be visible on the main international site.
Conclusion: Embrace Local SEO for B2B Success
In conclusion, embracing local SEO in Southeast Asia languages offers numerous advantages for B2B companies. From lower competition and increased visibility to building trust and authority, the benefits are clear. By prioritizing local language optimization, businesses can position themselves for long-term success in the dynamic and diverse markets of Southeast Asia.
