Features of IT project optimization when entering the German segment

Suppose you have a wonderful project. It doesn't matter which one — perhaps it’s a shareware program or a convenient social service.

At a certain stage, sooner or later a desire arises, or even the need to expand beyond the “native” for the site of the language segment, whether it is Russian or English. Moreover, for non-advanced users of closed language segments, there is also a dislike for English-language sites as for the inhabitants of Runet.
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It would seem that everything is simple - he hired a translator, uploaded the translated pages to the site - and rejoice. But the reality, as always, is much more fun.

Several years ago I had the opportunity to participate in the withdrawal of several projects in the German segment of the Network. I still have not forgotten that extravaganza of fakap and problems.

Since I do not do this anymore, I decided to tell habra users about some non-obvious points related to working in the German segment, so that they would not be frightened and would not repeat our glorious path on a rake.

The article is intended primarily for those who do not know the German language and have no work experience in de-net.

In case of any questions, I will be happy to answer in the comments or in person.

Stop. Why Germany?

In those cases I’m talking about, there was a steady popularity of projects with the Russian-speaking and English-speaking public, but European countries other than Great Britain were practically not involved.

The reason for choosing the German language was its prevalence - it involves not only the German audience, but also the Swiss with the Austrian one. At the same time, Germany is the most populated country in Europe. Which again pleases.

Problems begin

So, imagine that a site in German is made and indexed in search engines. Suppose, again, that we are counting on the influx of visitors from search engines. Everything looks great. Here are just some kind of inflow. Not even a stream - stream. What is done wrong?

The first problem. Great and terrible synonymy

In Russian, and in English, three synonymous words are rare. You put yourself in de-net. Congratulations. In the German language, there are cases when there are only five synonyms (without taking into account words that are distinguished by light shades of meaning). And the most foul - search engines do not take into account synonyms. Different words - different issue.

In addition, you should consider the various dialects and slangs. Moreover, the main charm of the German dialects lies in the fact that these are really dialects, and not “o” -kane- “a” -kane from Russian. In fact, this is a huge number of original “sublanguages” with its own tradition of writing words and its own lexicon. Differences of dialects from official German - approximately as in Ukrainian from Russian.

That German, which your translator most likely knows, is the so-called “Hochdeutsch” - the official, “highest” German, dialect characteristic of Berlin and central television. Yes, all Germans understand him. But if they will do search queries on the "hohe" or on the native surzhik?

Practice has shown that in the native.

Oh yes! Not only Russians like to distort words on the Internet and use slang. Only here the Germans have a number of these slangs tied to the number of dialects ...

The second problem. Writing

Inhaled, exhaled. Now relaxed and prepared to meet the second problem ...

Dialects remember? That's the same thing. The same word may be written differently in the request due to differences in dialect. This we have already discussed. And now a surprise.

Official German also offers different spellings. The fact is that at the beginning of the zero years, the Germans underwent a reform of the language, moreover, more abruptly than our recent “coffee” fuss. Changed the spelling of many words.

Are you feeling A person who graduated from school before the reform can equally well write a request both in a new way and in the old way. And Google and German search engines will consider this as different requests.

Moreover. In Germans, the genus is denoted by the article, and not the end. It is grammatically correct to write a word with an article in the query. You already guess, yes? Different issues with and without the article. At the same time, they are looking approximately equally so and so that it does not give an opportunity to score on some spelling variant.

The third problem. Feyl Grammar-Nazi

Not only learners of German language ohrenevyu from his rules. The Germans themselves too. And therefore, they almost officially put a big bolt on grammar and spelling in everyday life.

I emphasize - in contrast to Russia and English-speaking countries, where an error is a sign of illiteracy or precisely an error, the Germans write illiterately “in life”. Including for the convenience of writing on a conventional Latin keyboard.

Thus, the letter “ß” can be written as “ss”, and letters with umlauts (dots, as above our “”) can be written like this - “ae” instead of “ä”.

What undoubtedly pleases, because the issuance of something for each variant of writing its own ...

And a real circus starts when “ß” appears in one word and umlaut!

However, this is, strictly speaking, not a mistake, but a generally accepted version of writing on the keyboard. That's when they start to make a mistake, but each in its own way ...

And what to do?

There are the following methods to solve the problem:

The first is not to expect anything from search engines at all, but to focus on other types of advertising.

The second is that optimization in the Russian sense of the word is considerably difficult for obvious reasons. As a half measure - creating a site using the most popular spelling variants. This is quite a reasonable measure in case you need to ensure the flow of users from search engines in the absence of a desire to spend money on classic SEO. Before creating the site, you should study the target audience, determine the most accustomed words and spelling options, and then create the site, and then honestly compete in the search without any SEO.

Third, if optimization is really needed ... Then get ready to lay out a specialist, preferably a German, a round sum. It should be borne in mind that, firstly, the work will take much longer (by experience, the amount of material for “white” optimization for a site in German is seven times longer than for a site in Russian due to language variations), secondly, even if you want black optimization, you can’t do it in any case - the rate will be too high.

Is it worth it?

I will tell about the conclusions.

I will say in advance that, in principle, I haven’t been able to practice “black” optimization in any language, so I can’t say anything about this direction, and I don’t want to, because in my opinion, this action is no better than spam.

So. In the projects that I was engaged in, basically we went according to the second or third scheme.

As it turned out, in the case of sites sharpened on a small Central Asian (up to 2000 full-fledged visitors per month), for example, highly professional, fucking with synonyms, writing and optimizing does not make any sense at all, because it pays for itself poorly. The traditional methods of advertising and the influence of word of mouth work much better.

In the case of projects sharpened on a wide Central Asian situation is diametrically opposite. Despite the complexity and volume of the preliminary work, optimization pays off in the same way as in the English-speaking and Russian-speaking segments.

I will add that according to subjective impressions, in the German segment the competition in the field of optimization is much softer than in the Russian one. Obviously, this is due to the problems described above.

Thus, despite the high cost of initial campaign design, the effort to support the project on the fly will require much less.

To summarize: you can still be thrust. And even necessary, because the German-speaking countries represent a large market with a large number of solvent consumers.

On this round up. I hope this article will help you expand your business and evaluate your prospects in new markets. Dare!