Business Edge magazine
April 23rd, 2008
Published: February 2008
http://www.sussexenterprise.co.uk/data/7153345.pdf
UPSTARTS - THIS MONTH: Greig Holbrook, Oban Multilingual
Tell us something we don’t know
There is no such thing as the World Wide Web.
How come?
A website that is accessible to certain cultures is unlikely to be accessible to others. Do you want to know something else you didn’t know?
Yes I am intrigued
Most internet searches are not conducted in English. People prefer to search in their own language. This means that over 90 per cent of the world are unable to find businesses whose websites are solely English.
So what do you do exactly?
We are the world’s leading multilingual search engine optimisation (SEO) company.
Er… you’ll have to translate
Basically we help companies build websites that can reach a truly global audience. Multilingual SEO is not simply about translation. It’s about knowing key phrases, habits and customs, specific to different regions and cultures. Keywords typed into search engines may be written according to regional spellings, which vary vastly. They may be misspelled, or they might be words we would never have associated with the topic.
Can you give us an example?
French web surfers searching for travel agencies tend to look up the word ‘holiday’ spelt with two ‘l’s. If a travel agency attempting to market themselves in France is aware of this fact, they will be able to hit a much larger portion of their target potential page visitors.
So are you a global company?
We have offices in 26 countries, including Spain, Czech Republic, Japan, China, Taiwan and Sweden, but we are based here at the Sussex Innovation Centre.
And what about the future?
The demand for what we do has grown exponentially. Brands need a strategy to stay on top. Without a search engine strategy, they risk becoming invisible.
