Do you have a high-quality Weebly blog with original content that’s only in English? If that’s the case, you might want to consider adding an additional language in order to target a wider audience. And what better language to add as secondary one than Chinese? I mean, think about, localizing your blog for a Chinese audience can drive a huge amount of traffic your way while also keeping the conversion rate high.
This is, of course, no easy task, but if done right it can yield many benefits. However, right now you’re probably wondering if making this step is the right thing for you. In which case I’ve compiled a list of advantages and disadvantages of optimizing your Weebly blog for a Chinese audience. Now if you’re a are a native Chinese speaker and want to get straight to the chase you can check out this article called: 架站平台比較：台灣、香港、新加坡、中國現今市場上平台完整評價.
Advantages of optimizing your blog in Chinese
Apply the same strategies as before
A great advantage of adding a second language to your site is that you can pretty much use the same on-page and off-page SEO strategies that have already worked for your primary language version.
Increase your keyword portfolio and reach a broader audience
If you’ve been on the internet long enough you probably know that English is the most widely used language online, period. However, according to Internet World Stats, Chinese is not that far behind. And in the past 20 years, China’s growth in online users has risen more than 3 times that of English speaking users. So it would be a smart move to target both English and Chinese audiences.
And if your website is already ranking very well in its primary language chances are, it will rank well in the second one as well. This will in turn bring you thousands of pageviews from Chinese people visiting your website. As the easier a site is to find, the more visitors it will get.
Increase your conversion rate while maintaining customer satisfaction
According to these two studies(one conducted by “Eurobarometer” and one done by “Common sense advisory”) on people’s preferences when browsing the internet, it’s clearly visible that most online users prefer to use websites which are available in their native language, over those that aren’t. These studies also show that people tend to engage longer with content that is written in their mother tongue. So if you’re targeting a Chinese audience it would be easier to convert them if your content was in Chinese.
Disadvantages of adding Chinese as a language to your site
Finding a good translator
Are you fluent in Chinese to the point that you can write freely in Mandarin? If no, you’ll probably need to hire a translator to help you out. That is easier said than done, however, as finding the right translator for the job can not only take a lot of searching for but can also cost you a fair bit of money.
Translating an entire site is not a one-time thing
Even if you translate all of your up-to-date content, you’ll probably have to continue working with a translator for all future posts on your site. So bear in mind that translating a blog is not a one-time thing!
So do you still think that adding Chinese as a secondary language to your Weebly site’s the thing for you? If so, keep on reading to find out how to do it right.
Using Weebly’s multi-language app
Weebly is a very simple site-building platform, however, there’s one little thing it’s missing, a native multi-language feature. But fret not, there’s a way around this. You see, there’s a great multi-language app that you can get from their App Center for just $3 a month. This app once installed helps visitors easily change the language of your website and best of all you don’t need to code anything in.
Installing and using the app is super easy, just follow the steps listed in the official app provider’s blog.
Although this feature is not free(but should be) it’s totally worth the price, coming at just $36 a year. But if you don’t want to pay that price and are confident in your coding skills you can set all of this up for free. Just follow this amazing tutorial by Widgets4U.
How to do your keyword research
Doing keyword research in another language is quite easy, especially if you know said language and if not you can always work alongside your trusty translator. Now before you start doing any work, it’s best you decide on which tool to use for your keyword research. In my opinion, the best ones on the market at the moment are Ahrefs and Semrush.
Now, both of these are paid, however, Ahrefs have a very good trial deal on their website, where you can use all of their premium features for a full week and all it will cost you is $7. A week is more than enough to do the desired keyword research for the Chinese version of your blog.
The best way of choosing the right keywords to target is by “stealing” them from your competitors. Simply open up Ahrefs and click on “Site explorer”, then paste a subpage or the domain of one of your competitors and hit the magnifying glass.
Now click on “Organic keywords” and check out all of the keywords your competitor ranks for. Just bear one thing in mind when checking the organic keywords – the language. As many sites rank for keywords in multiple languages, those will be displayed as flags above. Click on the language most appropriate for you.
Conclusion
So is optimizing your Weebly website for a Chinese audience a good step to take? In the end, it all depends. It’s a very time consuming and tricky thing to do, but if done the right way it can bring you a hell of a lot of traffic and new clients. There is risk, of course, you might end up spending a lot of money for nothing and so on, however, that is why it’s essential to first study the market and learn whether what you’re offering is something the Chinese people are searching for.
At the end of the day, it all comes down to demand. If the demand exists then optimizing your website in Chinese is probably more than worth it!