Search engine optimisation can be a driving force in online marketing, but are you selling yourself short? There are markets on the Web that lie untapped simply because your SEO strategy has not extended to the 70% of non-English searchers. While a majority of Internet users do understand English, from Europe to Asia searches are made in local languages. Whether it's Japanese Google or Yahoo! French, you need to ensure that a multilingual SEO plan is in place. After all there are customers, potential clients, whose business you lose out on when you discount their regional languages.

Major brands all have a head start, especially the ones with a global presence. After all, their websites and domains are regional for each market they do business in. However with SEO you're never too late to pick up and International SEO can provide a boost of non-English traffic to your site. Creating an international identity allows your business to keep up with the increasingly competitive global marketplace. Organic SEO can boost sales with a linguistic approach centred on keywords that translate correctly and optimally in different languages. No matter where your business is located, no matter what language your site uses, a multilingual SEO plan can be employed with assured improvement to your ROI (return-on-investment).

The first step in a multilingual SEO plan is keyword selection, just as it is for regular SEO. Study various countries and determine keywords related your business in their languages. Then rank these by the number of searches to help prioritise the translations. Identifying local markets that regularly target your keywords will help you decide the amount of content you need to optimise to penetrate the rankings for those searches. Once, you have shortlisted the languages to target now begins the important step of reviewing your content for each of them. It is crucial that you understand the cultural differences that exist to track search behaviour. Some countries have a more blog-centric approach to the Web, others use forums, and all these factor in to the way people search.

Globalisation calls for an international approach to economics with the Internet facilitating. Leveraging both European, as well as emerging economies such as Brazil, China and Russia, can provide a thrust to your sales. International search marketing can keep your business ahead of the competition, especially now as a global financial crisis looms.