You may have already written off multilingual SEO and localization as practices that belong to global brands. “I don’t need to worry about other languages”, you explain, “our customers all live within the United States!”

But as those words leave your mouth, something feels off. Suddenly, you remember your high school Spanish teacher yapping about the increasing population of non-English speakers. Well as it turns out, she wasn’t just blowing smoke.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 20% of the population living within the United States speaks a language other than English at home. That’s  one in five people who are more comfortable speaking a non-English language with their loved ones!

So what kind of impact does that have on search behavior? Does it affect how local non-English speakers surf the web?

Our localization agency refers to this tactic of marketing to local non-English speakers as “multilingual domestic SEO”. As you know from traditional SEO campaigns in one language, every niche has its own search volumes. In the case of multilingual domestic SEO, we are mostly dealing with B2C verticals.

Example industries:

• Auto Sales
• Healthcare
• Legal Services

Not sure if your business or client is a viable candidate for finding local non-English speaking customers? Don’t guess. Check the facts.

Measure Local Search Demand

Keyword research is foundational for any campaign. For multilingual local SEO, you will want to start with your English list of keywords (or whatever the source language might be for your country -- these examples are in the United States).

Please resist the urge to generate a machine translation of your keyword list. Even though online translations have come a long way, they still don’t account for dialectical differences or slang. Your Spanish textbook might have taught you the word “coche” for car, but Spanish speakers in the United States are all calling it “carro” or “auto”. For accurate keyword research, you will want to partner with a localization agency to localize your keyword research before executing a campaign.

Now that you have your localized keyword list, make use of the Google Adwords keyword tool. Feel free to use whatever tool you’re comfortable with, just make sure it can account for geographical and language settings.

I’m going to use a hyperlocal example to make this point. Let’s pretend you’re working with a local auto dealer in Boston. They have been trying to rank for terms like “used cars in Boston”.

Adjust your advanced filters:

Add your localized keyword list and search:

Look at that. For this small list of five hyperlocal, longer-tail keywords you have 1,080 local monthly searches. Now Boston has a good number of Spanish speakers, but it doesn’t come close to Southern Florida, California or Texas.

That same keyword list in Miami boasts 21,200 local monthly searches:

I’m aware these are broad matched keywords. But even as a phrase/exact match, there is significant search volume here. Also, these figures should be thought of as directional signals. They are intended to uncover demand within an industry.

Sizing Up The Competition

So you found demand for your product/service in another language, within your country! What does the competitive landscape look like for Spanish auto sales queries conducted within the United States?

Let’s stick with our auto dealer client example in Boston.

Using the SEOmoz keyword difficulty report, check out the first three rankings:

Query: “used cars in Boston”

¡Ay Caramba!

Definitely some heavy hitters on the board. Boston.com is ruling the #1 spot with an iron fist and a 98/100 domain authority. The other two competitors are also Goliaths in their own right.

Now, rolling “r’s” can be difficult (especially for those of us in Boston) but let’s give the Spanish version a try:

Query: “carros usados en Boston” (Spanish equivalent)

Hey, what do we have here? The #1 slot is not occupied by some steroid pumping, link jedi master, is it? Nevertheless, this guy is beating out cars.com!

But wait, it gets better.

The #1 result is optimized in Spanish, but barely has any meaningful content!

Instead of nice descriptive page content, it is mechanically generating Adsense links above the fold! Apparently Panda missed this little number, but the point remains, even basic optimization in Spanish enabled this directory site to beat out its English-only counterpart, cars.com.

Proving Value

Let’s recap what happened here.

1. We took a highly competitive and saturated industry (auto sales) and found local search demand in another language (Spanish).
2. The Spanish query’s SERP gave ranking preference to the only site localized into Spanish (despite its miserable content and lower page authority).
3. You uncovered a great revenue opportunity for your (make-believe) auto sales client.

In this case, should you build an entire business model around reaching local Spanish speakers? Probably not. But can this alternative source of traffic bring significant incremental gains in revenue to your client? Absolutely. And faster than you think.