Reaching Latin American Audiences with Hispanic SEM

Technology is bringing people together across borders in the Latin American market. More than ever, people in Latin American countries are gaining access to computers and the internet, which means Latin America is slowly coming online. The world wide web used to be a predominantly English speaking environment, but many changes have occurred in the last several years, and now it is common to find blogs, newspapers, and other sources of information and entertainment in nearly any language one can imagine, including Spanish. As a result, the time for Hispanic SEM (search engine marketing) has never been better.

Language, culture and content play a crucial role in what type of people come together. When people share a common language, they share a common culture, and they become more likely to experience a common content on the internet, as well as in real life. Today, there is more Spanish language content on the internet than ever before, which means people in Latin American countries have more opportunities than ever to contact each other and express their shared and unique cultures with each other. Companies and businesses that can tap into such cultural connections with Hispanic search engine marketing and effective communication strategies are at an advantage, as they have access to an audience that has been largely ignored by many businesses and companies in the United States until now.

Business Practices Designed to Effectively Reach Hispanic Audiences

Fortunately, many major marketers have begun adapting their strategies to this new framework through business practices designed to effectively reach Hispanic audiences. A number of techniques that have been shown to be successful in reaching English language audiences are beginning to be applied toward Spanish language audiences, such as targeted ads written in the language of the intended audience, search engines that operate fluidly in the target language, and informative and entertainment based content in the target language. Hispanic SEM/SEO has become far more popular in the last few years than in the last decade, and the results are becoming visible all over the internet. Companies who make efforts to reach out to Spanish language markets are being rewarded with increases in popularity, site hits, advertising revenue, and on and offline attention.

The role of traditional media, social networks, and mobile is also significant in the effort to reach Spanish language audiences with search engine marketing. Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace have allowed English language audiences to stay connected, share content, and distribute information freely and at the speed of the internet. These technologies are rapidly adopted by younger people in any society, regardless of language, and they are becoming much more popular among Spanish language speakers, both in the United States and in Latin America. Furthermore, technology involving mobile phones and wireless connectivity is enabling people to access the internet no matter where they are, which further increases opportunities for Hispanic marketing. Traditional media such as televisions and newspapers still play a role in effective Hispanic audience marketing, particularly among middle aged and older adults, who may be more hesitant about using the internet for information and entertainment.

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How to Translate your META Tags from English to Spanish

The world of search engine optimization has now forced itself into the life of the internet. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is now considered something nearly everyone owning a web page or online business must consider. The theory of SEO is to try to increase the amount of key words in the body of your website so when those using a search engine type in those words, your site will be among the ones being listed. The simple fact is SEO is a form of advertisement. By changing your website to fit future customers’ interest, it’s possible to lure them to your page and convince them to use what you have to offer. There are thousands of web sites out there exactly like yours, and it is imperative to use SEO to enhance your website.

Once your website business becomes useful, it may be time use Spanish SEO. In other words, translating your META tags to Spanish will help Spanish search engines list your site along with other Spanish web content. This is because, like every other search engine, when a word is typed in the search engine looks through every website containing the Spanish on-page content. This means that translating your META tags to Spanish properly will undoubtedly expand your diversity, bringing in more leads and more customers.

Landing page testing for better performance and conversion rates

Some people say you have to be willing to suffer through the short term pain of landing page testing in order to get the long term gain of a better performance and better conversion numbers. If you don’t understand the point in taking the risk or you don’t understand the point at all, you may want to consider taking the risk. Your landing page is essentially your home page, or the page that appears when a consumer clicks on your link. It takes practice to achieve perfection, and you may need to try different Spanish SEO strategies in order to achieve that higher conversion number you’ve been searching for. Taking the pain of landing pain testing allows you to find the right landing page to attract your consumers. If you don’t try new things, you may always be stuck with the same number with no new results. Without a change in results, you may never see better results.

Of course, translating your entire body text to Spanish will result in a better Spanish SEO. Nevertheless, for some websites, this may not even be necessary in an early stage. Maybe simply translating the META tags and having a few entry pages in Spanish can do the trick. Of course, until having the entire site translated to Spanish and fully optimized makes more economic sense.

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US Hispanics, History and Growth of the Internet

There has been an incredibly fast evolution of the Internet from 1995 until the present time. As you can see in the graph below, Internet Users in the World has grown from 16 millions in Dec 2005 to 1,596 millions in Mar, 2009.

However, there’s an important distinction which is the language fabric composition of the Web content. What do we mean by this? Well, in the early ages of the Internet, almost everything was in English because most internet applications started in the United States. Therefore, in the early to mid 90s the search engines were in English as well. Anyone within the US or overseas conducting a Web search had to do it in English, there was no other option. As technology caught up around the world, the Web has become a multilingual platform and foreign Web growth has been astonishing. While in 1996, 75% of all Web searches were conducted in English, today English searches accounts for only 25%. Search engines and directories understood the importance of this non-English segment and today it is becoming easier and easier to find content in your mother tongue.

Reaching the entire spectrum of the US Hispanic community

As one article explains, U.S. Hispanic advertisers have historically lagged behind in moving their budgets online and therefore have provided less of an incentive for U.S. Hispanic publishers to post a wide variety of content online. However, this trend has shifted. Last year alone, the biggest Hispanic surge has been in internet media, up 36.3% in 2007 (according to the Hispanic Fact Pack 08). As a result, more Spanish-language sites/pages based in the U.S. are being optimized for search engines. US Hispanics will increasingly have more search options as Spanish Web content is being propagated over the Web. And since we know that people speaking the same language show an inclination to form their own online community no matter what country they happen to live in, it’s becoming almost imperative for many US businesses to make all or some of their Web content available in Spanish if they want to maximize their reach to the entire spectrum of the US Hispanic community.

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