The Internet has very rapidly become fundamental to the global economy. More than 20% of the world's population, a billion people worldwide, use it at work and socially. In little more than 20 years it has grown from an experimental research network to a system that now is the worldwide technological backbone of new economic activities and infrastructures, supporting our international economies, financial markets and health services, energy, transport and defence systems.

The most common language used online is English. Over 430 million people, equating to about 30% of all Internet users, use English as their first language (L1). Whilst clearly a long way ahead of other individual languages in terms of proportion of use, it would be unwise to be too English-centric when considering ways and means of communicating with web users. After all, the same statistic also tells us that nearly 70% of Internet users don't have English as their L1.

In second place to English is Mandarin Chinese with 20% of all Internet penetration. The 276 million people currently using the Internet in Chinese represent a rapidly accelerating 755% growth between 2000 and 2008. With only one in five Mandarin speakers currently using the Internet, many analysts consider it only a matter of time before the Chinese language has a dominant online presence; a presence that is predicted to offer endless new business opportunities.

The third most commonly spoken language is Spanish, with 125 million Spanish-speaking people using the Internet. This represents 6.8 % of all the Internet users in the world. Out of the estimated 450 million Spanish speaking world population, only 27.6 % use the Internet. The number of Spanish speaking Internet users has grown 405.3 % in the last eight years (2000-2008).

By far and away the most dramatic growth in Internet usage (as a proportion of the total amount of worldwide L1 speakers of a language) has been Arabic. Whilst having only 5.4% (60million) of all Internet users, Arabic has experienced an explosion in growth of over 2000% from 2000 to 2008. That is still only 16% of the total number of Arabic speakers worldwide, with huge potential for expansion.

The assertion often heard these days that English is 'the international language' is true to the extent that English is enjoying increasing coverage through international education programs in schools and colleges around the world. English is individually the most commonly used Internet language. David Graddol in his fascinating and insightful report for the British Council entitled 'The Future of English' estimates that there are now a total of 750 million L1 (first or native language) plus L2 (second or nth language) Internet users. What defining English as the only really important Internet language fails to address is that while an increasing number of people are now bi or multi-lingual, a majority of the world's Internet users don't speak any English at all. Of those that do, many would rather experience the Internet using their L1.

As well as presenting language barriers to organisations and website owners, the international diversity of Internet languages also presents many opportunities.

For example, the online Spanish speaking market is growing exponentially, currently boasting $500 billion in spending power. That only 1% of English websites are currently translated into Spanish means that there is huge scope for expansion into the Spanish speaking markets. The same principle applies to most non-English L1 markets. Local language combined with local knowledge will prove to be an extremely powerful marketing tool.

The Internet is making economic activity more efficient, faster and cheaper and is extending social, B2B and B2C interaction in unparalleled ways. Increasingly, the largest productivity gains for businesses come from using online networks in some form. For example, UPS used multi-lingual online networks to optimise delivery routes, saving 12 million litres of fuel in 2006 from a fleet of nearly 100,000 trucks.
Making Multilingual SEO a part of your organisation's international marketing strategy is critical for increasing exposure and sales globally.

At SEO-MAMA we expertly apply our experience and abilities in multilingual SEO and web marketing to effectively support our clients with their international web presence. It's not just Google that people use to search on internationally. We make sure our clients get to the top of regional and local search engines wherever they are - Baidu in China, NHN in South Korea, Yandex in Russia, Voila in France, Netsprint in Poland and also the international versions of Google.

We understand that proper representation isn't as simple as applying a quick translation to existing sites. We give our clients and their websites log lasting, robust and effective international coverage, taking into account not just language but cultural nuances, context and sensitivities. Insightfully translating a website into other languages is just the first step in it becoming a part of the international marketing campaign. For the site to enjoy profile and traffic, Search Engine Optimisation needs to be applied expertly in conjunction with all the usual on and Off Page Marketing techniques, as well as managing multi lingual PPC campaigns.

Our multilingual expertise covers a range of services, professionally integration multilingual web design and development with SEO (search engine optimisation), Online PR and pay-per-click campaigns. We apply the same professional tasks to a foreign language site as we would to an English language site - be it in French, German, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Italian, Dutch, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Russian or any of the other languages we specialise in.

We identify business objectives and begin with a definition of semantic space - the foundation of any SEO campaign. Appropriate local terms bring appropriate L1 visitors, which are likely to convert into leads, customers and ROI.

Search engine preparation: we apply clean, current standard compliant HTML code to develop sites that foreign language search engines can easily read and add to their indexes. We develop a high ratio of L1 content to code and a fast-loading, accessible search engine friendly structure. Close attention is paid to core web-programming principles.

Content and structure: search engines like text content. But what they absolutely love most is relevant search returns. Each page on the site should contain high quality, Local Language Content and use structural elements (heading, paragraph and other HTML tags) to indicate importance to the search engines. All in context and all applied appropriately.

Link popularity: Link Analysis is a critical part of search engine's ranking algorithm. We develop local language incoming links from other relevant sites as part of our multilingual link building Search Engine Optimisation.