By David Gikandi, CEO, SearchPositioning.com
[October 24th, 2001]

See Also   Email Marketing Primer   How to Increase Your Online Sales   Take Advantage of Google's AdWords   Using Foreign Search Engines to Boost Your Sales   Getting Sure Profits Through Google, Goto.com and DirectHit   Ten Places You Must Submit Your Site   Clever Profit Growth Software   The Power Of Personalized Email   How To Go Long With Your Web Marketing   How NOT to Promote Your E-business   Winning the Search Engine Wars   Latest Tips on Search Engine Marketing   Are You Wasting Your Money Online?   Should I Hire Another Salesperson or Invest in an Affiliate Program?   The Death of Positioning?   Links: Why You Need Them and How to Get Them   Your #1 Overlooked Business Asset

How do you quickly double your online income? Well, that's easy. Get found by the 50 of the world that currently cannot possibly find you. I can almost hear you say, "Did you just say that 50 of the world cannot possibly find me?" Yes, and that is the saddest thing but the greatest, simple to execute opportunity for many online businesses.

Let us start by seeing why half the world is in no position to find you. After that, we will see how we can change that. Some quick statistics and facts are in order here. These are the numbers and facts that we will be using to formulate our strategy and win in these foreign markets:

• According to some accounts, half the world's Internet users either do not speak English, or they do speak it but prefer to search the web in their own language. In either case, when they go to a search engine, they type in their search terms in their language and not in English. That is why they cannot find your web site - because the keywords you use are not translated into their language. But remember, they can read English or use translation software to translate English sites. The only problem here is that they cannot find your site. But if they did, they would be able to use it somehow. We will look deeper into that later.

• They tend to use localized search engines that are able to index words in their language.

• They use translation tools that are able to translate English web pages to their language as they browse.

• Although the world has thousands of languages and dialects, 97 of the world speaks just 24 languages! A quick visit to Oracle.com will show you what these languages are. Oracle has a drop-down language selector that covers them all. You can make your own simple instant translator free using this tool. Modifying it a little would enable you to have a single drop down instant translator that covers 30 languages. See FatSMS for an example of how this has been done. If you wish to have one of these on your site, you can find more information on the PositionWeaver.com Web site.

• Because very few English site owners submit to non-English search engines, and do so using appropriate content as we shall soon see, you will be tapping into a very ripe, large and untapped market with much less competition.

• Foreign language markets online are growing at a much faster rate than English speaking ones as the Internet penetrates these countries.

On a country-by-country level, here are some quick statistics and facts to go by:

• In the Latin world, Brazil is the largest single market, speaking Portuguese. Also keep in mind that roughly 1 out of every 9 people in the USA are Spanish speakers. That is a huge market.

• The German market is very large, wealthy, and high-tech. It also has a large proportion of bilingual users who primarily search and browse in German but they are able to read English sites when they do find them, without the use of any translation software.

• The French-speaking world is probably even larger than the German one, with about 150 million people spread around the world in many francophone countries.

• The Asian speaking market is phenomenal. Some researchers estimate that by 2007, the dominant language on the Internet will be Chinese. Even today, Asian users make up a big chunk of all online users. Japan, the second largest economy in the world, is non-English speaking.

To ignore these markets is simply crazy, yet most people do. But that is understandable, given the fact that most people think it is very difficult to penetrate them. I would like to show you how easy it really is, something that I myself just learnt a couple of days ago quite by accident.

Our goal is simple, and it is to get people to find our web site when they search using words in their language that describe our site. For example, say you had a web site that sold travel reservations. Let us assume that most people find your site using the search term 'cheap air tickets'. If your site were entirely in English, then you would only get people searching using the term 'cheap air tickets'. You would never be found by Germans searching for 'preiswerte Flugscheine', the German translation of that. Remember, these Germans would have been able to read your site in English or use their translation-capable browsers to read it, and then order from you. The same goes for Italians searching for 'biglietti di aria poco costosi' or Spaniards that type in 'billetes de avión baratos' into the search engine. But you could have sold to any one of them, they were definitely looking for you and they would have understood you.

Now that we have seen what the 'foreign terrain' looks like and how accessible and exciting it really is, let us look at how to take our web site abroad easily. This is a three-step process.

More: Simple three-step listing process...