Simply Translate is specialised in providing translations for online business. We therefor frequently subjects relating to translations and being successful in running an online business.

No matter how wonderful your web shop offerings or prices, there is one surefire way to lose customers: customer service. When something goes wrong – and something WILL go wrong – it does not mean your web shop is a failure. It is, however, a great opportunity to showcase your proactive customer service abilities, and step up to show your customers you care.

What is the difference between reactive and proactive customer service?

Exactly what it sounds like. Reactive customer service is when you are constantly having to react to situations that arise, including communicating with an unhappy customer. Proactive customer service describes a company that has already thought ahead to problems that could arise, and how to both solve the problem as quickly as possible, as well as leave the customer happy with the way the problem was handled. Although it is impossible to predict every contingency, you can plan how you will keep the customer informed and happy throughout the process.

Here is a quick example to help explain

Let us say you made purchases from shops A and B for the first time, and although the packages were both supposed to arrive last week, neither has arrived. Angry, you write an email to A showing your dissatisfaction. In two hours’ time you receive an email back from shop A’s customer service, with no explanation except that your package will arrive tomorrow. However, web shop B’s customer service informed you a week ago that your package would arrive late, also explaining why and apologizing for the delay. It is not difficult to guess whether you would decide to make another purchase in the web shop A or B.

What are some ways you can be more proactive for your customers?

#1 Channel that post-purchase happiness into giving feedback

  • Get their immediate reaction with a short survey option.
  • Do not forget to customize your emails with your site’s verbiage – recipients will be more likely to open emails from you.
  • If applicable, offer loyalty points or a reward system for filling out a quick survey.

#2 Keep the customer updated on where their goods are

  • As soon as possible, give tracking information!
  • Explain any major delays before the customer finds out.
  • Again, personalize the email so it feels like your web shop; a little bit of humor goes a long way.

#3 Send a follow-up email after the package is delivered

  • Often shops forget about this opportunity, but this is a great time to ask for feedback again!
  • Include a referral code they can share with friends for a reward.
  • For brand strengthening, include links to social media to share their experience / purchase with others.

#4 Announce mistakes before customers find out

  • Alert them to the problem and apologize.
  • Take a page from the major credit card companies, and use whatever means available – email, text, social media, etc. – to make sure you get in touch with them, and show a sense of urgency.
  • Offer discounts on future purchases immediately, or offer to refund if they are unsatisfied.
  • Explain exactly what you are doing to fix the issue.
  • Make sure they know who and how to get in contact if they have questions or feedback. Sometimes you really want to talk to a live human – so consider making that option available.

#5 Pay attention to what customers are saying online

  • If you have included any hashtags on your site or in your communication, check them on social media sites, and respond as much as possible.
  • Implement changes from the critiques you read, and alert your followers to the modifications.

#6 Create content that answers frequent customer questions

  • Do not waste your customer service representatives time answering, or your customer’s time asking, the same questions.

#7 Offer a live-chat option

  • People are on their computers all day; give them an option to immediately get in touch without having to pick up the phone.

As evidenced by the above list, it does not take a ton of money or time to put some excellent proactive customer service in place. Remember to put yourself in their shoes, and see what would make you smile – and come back to shop again, and again, and again…!

Sophisticated social media campaigns, pricey television commercials, full-page spreads in magazines or banners on a website. Just a few of the many options you can choose to draw attention to your web store. None of these tactics, however, are as effective as the old-fashioned personal recommendation. Nowadays, these personal recommendations are mainly issued by posting an online review.

Online reviews as social proof

Research from BrightLocal reveals that a whopping 88 percent of online shoppers admits to reading online reviews before they purchase items online. In addition, online shoppers indicate that they perceive online reviews the second most trustable source of information, after a personal recommendation from family or a friend. How this works? People are more likely to purchase a product or service when others have had a positive experience with this product or service. This type of informational social influence is better known as social proof.

Different from the rest

As a small or medium sized online business owner, gathering online reviews is an extremely effective way to attract new customers. Your visitor will see the online reviews as a natural and true source of information. In fact you are actually using social proof as a means to convince new visitors. Nowadays people have a lot of choice. When they are looking for a certain product they end up on similar looking web stores. The range of products and style of the various shops are more or less equal to each other. Even though there are small price differences between the web shops, is does not mean the customer will simply choose the cheapest option. To determine which web store is most suitable, the visitor will consult the online reviews.

Dare to ask

If your web store system does not allow to leave reviews right away, consider enabling your customers to talk about your business. There are many tools available online to facilitate the collection of reviews. Just a few to mention: Yelp, the Feedback Company and Kiyoh. For more internationally orientated businesses, I suggest to use a platform like Trustpilot or Reevio. To increase your online visibility, you can also use Google + to create a business page. Customers can rate you, which is visible for all who use Google.

Fear for negative feedback

It is virtually impossible to make every customer completely satisfied. Therefore, it may happen that you receive negative online reviews. Please do not be afraid of them. Negative online reviews do not necessarily harm your business. It basically means that customer service has become more important than ever. As long as the dissatisfied customer expresses his or her disapproval in a polite way, the negative online review has no impact on your sales. There are in fact some tricks to increase the likelihood of your reviewers to behave well.

#1 Do not be afraid of negative feedback

Allow customers to post online reviews on your web site or social media channels. Never remove reviews because they are negative. Up to 67 percent of the readers will perceive your business to be more fair, grounded, positive and civilized when there are polite (properly formulated) negative reviews present. In case of solely positive reviews, visitors can suspect censorship or fake reviews.

#2 Respond to negative feedback in a proactive and polite way

Always be polite and respectful when you answer online reviews. Treat your customers professionally and try to solve problems in a proper fashion. Where possible, you may answer complaints publicly. Possible future reviewers will respond politely when they see that you read and reply to reviews.

#3 Personify your brand

Personification helps you to create a voice for your business. Connect with your customers on social media and do not be afraid to show that you are a person, not just another faceless company. For example, show pictures of the office crew or share behind the scenes moments. This allows customers to see what a day at the office looks like. When people are reminded that they are dealing with honest and real people, they are more inclined to post a politely formulated online review, even if it is negative.

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The worst nightmare of every business owner, both offline and online, is to receive bad reviews or negative feedback. In this online era, the impact of complaints, bad reviews or negative comments can have tremendous effect on the future of your business. As it is open for everyone to see and it often stays online too, it is of great importance to prevent negativity as much as you can. Going the extra mile on otherwise basic things, may be the reason why a customer will place a neutral or even positive feedback where otherwise it would have simply been negative.

What the fuss is all about

In my previous blog post about post-purchase support I have explained to you what it is and why it is essential for you as a web store owner to pay attention to it.

Bad customer service can deter both potential and existing customers, no matter how good your product or service is. Customers that are satisfied and positively surprised with a web store’s post-purchase support more often decide to stay with the company. This will shift them from being a one-time purchaser to a long-term loyal returning customer.

You should take into account that repeat customers are worth investing in as research shows that attracting new customers cost approximately 5 times more than retaining existing customers. Moreover, the study of Consumer Reports revealed that as much as 91 percent of customers will not purchase at the same business again if they are faced with bad customer service.

Now, when it comes to paying more attention to your customer service in the after sales phase, you might wonder where to get started. Or maybe you already pay extra attention to your post-purchase support and you want to spice things up even more. To help you create one of a kind and creative elements in your support, I have come up with personal favorites of our team that will surely help keeping your customer with you:

1. Make your customers say ‘wow!’

The way a product or products look when delivered to your customers has a great influence on how your customer service is perceived. If you surpass customers’ expectations with the way a product is packed, you are on a good way to stick to your customers’ memory. There are numerous videos on how to wrap your products nicely, so just go ahead and find what works for you.

Recently packaging of products has become an art for many of online stores. It is no wonder why, in the era of social media, customers want to share their unwrapping experience with others. Fun fact is that the word ‘unboxing’ originates from the seventeenth century and it is due to its recent popularity in social media that the term saw a resurgence. Especially bloggers (photos) and vloggers (video bloggers) are really into sharing their unboxing experience. Google Analytics data shows that one out of five Internet users has watched an unboxing video on YouTube. The peak of people watching is in November and December. So, time for you to wrap holiday gifts extra nicely. Want more attention drawn to your creativity? Think about contacting a blogger or vlogger to send over some monsters and ask them to create an unboxing experience post.

2. Attach a personal ‘thank you’ card

As said before, adding a ‘thank you’ card to a customer’s order is an another great example of personalized post-purchase support. A card where you or your employees express gratitude to a customer for choosing your product(s) is likely to be reminded and highly appreciated.

There are some tricks that can make your ‘thank you’ card more personal. You or your colleagues can, for instance, write a short note by hand. Remember to write down customer’s name. A simple ‘Dear John’ can have a big difference on how your web store is perceived. Do you sell cosmetics? Try to spray or add a nice scent to your card. Perfume would be great for this. Especially if it is different from what they purchased, they will love to try out the scent and they might even like it so much they buy it.

3. Give away freebies

Giving away goodies is the way to exceed customers’ expectations and make them feel special. Offering your customers free gifts without mentioning what they will get, creates a mystery. Research has shown this stimulates customers to purchase new items in order to see what they will receive now.

Depending on the product that has been purchased, you can add a pen or a small sample of a new product. During holiday season try adding colorfully wrapped candy or a decoration, such as a Christmas star. For beauty products, adding an extra lipgloss or scent monster will do the trick. Do you sell food or edibles? Definitely go all in on the theme and send gingerman bread or Christmas tree shaped cookies.

4. Celebrate a customer’s birthday

You probably are sending your customers specialized offers for Christmas or Valentine’s Day. Go the extra mile by requesting them to fill in their date of birth when purchasing items. You can surprise them on their birthday by either sending them a small gift by regular mail or a gift certificate by email.

In addition to congratulating them on becoming a year older, you can give them a special discount on products from the brand they purchased most. This is actually a cross-selling technique. If you own a clothing store or any other store in which you just introduced line, you will make the birthday extra special by giving away a discount of gift certificate especially for the new collection or the newly added products. Happy birthday guaranteed.

As a business owner you are focusing on the pre-purchase and purchase phase for most of your time. It is understandable that you feel like when a product is sold, your main goal has been achieved. You might feel that there is no sense in contacting your customer anytime soon unless you contact your customers after a purchase in case of a problem or to answer one of their questions. What you are actually doing this way, is making customers forget about you.

Post-purchase support

As I already have mentioned in my previous blog post about the holiday season, it is extremely important to boost your customer service this time of the year. What most web store owners tend to forget, is that there is lots of room to contact customers after a sale has been made. In addition to your general customer service, it is good to start thinking of what you can improve in your post-purchase support.

Post-purchase support is communication between a company and a customer after a purchase is made. It concerns for example messages that are sent to confirm the order and the shipment of the purchased products, but also other messages to keep in contact with the customer. By using post-purchase support you are giving your customers as much attention before as after a purchase is made. Customers that do not receive any communication other than an automatic order confirmation are less likely to revisit a web store and make a repeat purchase. Spicing up your post-purchase support can have tremendous consequences for your sales.

Research has proven that top performing ecommerce companies get a substantial part of their revenue from newly acquired customers in the beginning of their business life. Over time they shift towards earning the majority of their revenue through repeat customers. After three years of existence, the majority of the revenue of the top e-commerce company comes from repeat customers.

Post-purchase customer service examples

Personalized emails
There are many ways in which you can take care of your customers after they make a purchase. Let me start with some simple and easy to use examples. Think of a personalized e-mail with purchase confirmation. Later on send a personalized email with shipping confirmation. Two important steps to start off with your post-purchase support.
You might wonder why these emails are supposed to be personal instead of fully automatically generated. According to research of Experian, a personalized e-mail is on average 26 percent more likely to be opened than a regular email. Moreover, opening rates of post-purchase emails are twice as high compared to regular emails.

Packaging
Unboxing can also make a huge difference in the way customers perceive your product and your brand. Adding a small gift or a thank you card to your customer’s order may trigger reciprocity and increase the chances of getting repeat customers.

Feedback
By asking customers to leave feedback, you get an opportunity to receive useful information on how customers perceive your product or customer service. On the top of that receiving customer reviews helps you to encourage future customers to make a purchase and it is valuable for your SEO.

Cross-sells
The moment after purchase is a great opportunity for cross-selling. Cross-selling is a technique that entices a customer to supplement his or her initial purchase with products that complement it. Are there no products to complement? Send a personalized email with products other customers bought in combination with the item this customer has purchased.

Tailored offers
One of the most personal and effective ways to communicate with customers post-purchase is to send them emails with personalized offers. Think of an email with a discount code to stimulate a repeat purchase. Other options are exclusive offers or the possibility to earn points in order to receive a discount.

Start today

Summing it all up, you have a higher possibility to grow your revenue when you have a strategy to keep your customers with you. To encourage your customers to stay with you, you have to cultivate your relationship with them. You can strengthen this relationship by making your post-purchase customer service as personal as possible. Nowadays, it is even possible to create personalized emails in tools like MailChimp, which are sent on a specific moment in the customer journey.

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Leider ist der Eintrag nur auf English verfügbar.

Last Thursday was a special day for SEOshop, as well as for us as a partner. SEOshop announced to be acquired by Canadian player LightSpeed, the world’s largest supplier of POS systems. SEOshop will continue under the name Lightspeed eCom from January 2016. From that point on the market consists of the Benelux, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States.

What the acquisition means to us

The acquisition by Lightspeed means that Simply Translate will grow along. From January on Simply Translate will offer over 34,000 Lightspeed customers the opportunity to start a multilingual web shop in an easy way.

“From today www.simplytranslate.com is online and active in the countries where Lightspeed is located. We are also pleased to announce that our tool is launching in Germany and the United Kingdom today. Lightspeed eCom customers in the United States and Canada will also be able to become multilingual from January on. A huge opportunity for us to become the leading translation agency in the E-Commerce”, says Jeroen van Benten, CEO of Simply Translate.

SEOshop in the spotlight

“We are extremely thrilled by the acquisition by Lightspeed POS,” says Ruud Stelder, CEO of SEOshop. “Our customers will be able to tap into the possibilities of Lightspeed’s mobile POS and commerce platform and Lightspeed customers will have easy access to our eCommerce platform. This acquisition will enable retailers around the globe to reach out to customers wherever they are, both online and offline.”

Simply Translate joins in on this philosophy by offering web store owners a more easy method to advertise products worldwide. By offering high quality E-Commerce translations we make it possible to turn the world into your customer. The collaboration between Lightspeed eCom and Simply Translate provides an unparalleled complete solution for E-commerce.

Simple connections

In addition to launching in Germany and the United Kingdom, we have released a new version of our tool in the Netherlands. Both the Dutch SEOshop web store owners as the ones from the United Kingdom and Germany can manage all their shops in one account.

The new multishop feature allows the merchants more convenience for the administration of multiple online stores. By the end of this year it will even be possible to migrate hassle-free from a unilingual E-commerce platform to a multilingual and multifunctional platform as SEOshop, soon known as Lightspeed eCom.

We congratulate SEOshop on this amazing step into the bright colored future of (e)Commerce.

Curious about the new release and features? Download the tool from the SEOshop appstore for free: Simply Translate – Automated Human Translations.

As I discussed previously, the holiday season is a great time to bump up your sales. We have already gone over how to target your existing or email-based customers with various promotions and specials, as well as the ways to make sure you keep customers signed up and invested in your business; now we will take a step back into various methods behind the scenes that can help you determine what your holiday goals are, and how to meet them.

Two Crucial Goals

First, there are two goals to keep in mind:

1. Email acquisitions (for future promotions and updates)
2. Sale goals (how much do you want to make?)

Set a stretch goal for both of these that forces you to aim high and get creative! Some like to set a few goals – ‘Must reach’ goal, ‘Happy to achieve’ goal, and ‘Made it to the moon’. You can use these to reverse-engineer your sales and marketing techniques.

Planning is Everything

Secondly, I cannot stress this enough, plan ahead! Know your holidays: Black Friday, Cyber Monday, the last sat before Christmas, Christmas Eve and Day, Boxing Day, New Year’s Eve. Note that it is best to stagger your promotions throughout the season, rather than focus on one day. Think of this in terms of both being able to start small and ramp up – which is better for your bottom line – as well as the idea that it is easier to finally get your audience’s attention if you try several times, rather than throw everything at them on one day.

#1 Email Acquisition

Easy Ways to Increase Email Acquisition:

Update your email sign up form with text regarding upcoming sales, such as “Sign up now for Cyber Monday deal updates!”, as well as pepper your social media with hints about upcoming promotions that they can only receive via the email list. People love deals – they want to sign up.

Launch holiday retargeted banners. You lose click-troughs and conversions every month; this is a great time and way to turn those into customers.

Update your creative on the site and on the newsletter to attract new customers:

  • Use high quality images
  • Create a consistent story, from your promotional newsletters to your website
  • Keep item text short and clean

If you have not already, make sure any purchase automatically opts-in to your newsletter.

#2 Boosting Sales

Quick Ways to Increase Sales:

Bid on Cyber Monday terms in AdWords & Bing. People only know they want a deal, not necessarily what or where, so they will search for it.

Make sure your website is mobile friendly! Mobile traffic accounted for over 50 percent of all internet traffic during Black Friday and Cyber Monday in 2014, and mobile transactions counted for about 30 percent of all online orders. If you have an app, you may want to emphasize your iOS platforms: according to Apple Insider, Apple devices drove almost 78 percent of mobile e-commerce orders. Long story short, if your site does not function on a smartphone, you are losing business.

Keep an eye on your bestsellers; running out of popular items costs you money on the item, and might send customers searching for it elsewhere.

Streamline your online checkout. The less information they have to input, the better. One mistake commonly made by online retailers is requiring the customer to create an account before they check out. Always let them have the option to check out as a guest!

Theme your landing page to optimize your SEO. This will need to be planned out ahead of time, but it is worth it to create clean, well-designed pages that are as attractive as they are useful.

Lastly, do not forget follow up emails! How often have you bought an item simply because you received a coupon or discount from the online store after browsing? Follow up emails after a purchase encourage previous customers to come back and shop with you again.

Also, do not make the mistake of forgetting about abandoned cart customers, who may place items in their cart and then navigate away from the page. Follow up emails to them should compel customers to come back and complete their purchases. They should be sent within 24 hours of a cart being abandoned, and can offer things like free shipping, a small discount, or a free item with purchase. Do not forget to be creative!

It All Pays Off

This all may sound like a lot of work, but planning ahead and getting things ready will pay off in the long run. Above all, know your customers, or use this as an opportunity to get to know them better. The more you try and learn during this season, the better your marketing techniques will be all year round!

Holidays are a good time for online stores. During the holiday season, it is easy to make extra revenue – especially with well-planned and well-timed promotions. If you have already had a good season in the past, you can choose similar promotions that worked for you, but be sure to read on for some tips and tricks you might not have thought about – and if this is your first, I have got you covered!

#1 Plan It

Smart strategy is a well-planned strategy. Too often promotions and other extra marketing ideas get forgotten until later in the season, or worse, sent to the junk mail box with an unsubscribe. Think about what incentives you want to offer your clients, and plan well. Use a calendar to decide down to the day when you want to start and send each promotion.

#2 Use Promotions

Prepare varied promotions, for example:

Limited time offers
A limited time offer that gives customers extra incentive. (Supported by research.)

Early bird offers
Early bird offers encourage people to get items before they run out.

Freebies
Give away freebies when customers make a purchase on specific days, or purchases a certain amount or higher.

Contest
Run a contest in social media, where the prize is money to spend in your web shop or winning your products. Example: customers have to send pictures or videos related to holidays, or a holiday theme.

Theme up
Do not be afraid to get themed! Use tasteful and fun graphics or colours to make the email stand out in the inbox. Catch their eye.

#3 Keep Your Clients Up to Date

Inform clients about promotions long before you actually send them; you do not want to lose out to rival sites. Use e-mails and social media like Facebook, Instagram, etc.

#4 Do Not Forget About Hashtags

Prepare a strong, visible call to action. Hashtags are perfect for this: try to make one that blends your business with a holiday-related thought, phrase, or item. You can link it to an Instagram contest as well, with followers taking photos and tagging them with your hashtag. Best one wins!

#5 Share the Holiday Spirit

Do not forget about social media. If it is related to your business and your brand, you can post content related to holidays. Things like recipes, links to songs classic or new, gift guides from various places on the web – all of these get your followers in a holiday mood as well as paying more attention to future posts.

#6 Focus on Retaining Customers

Make sure you try to keep the customers! Around 70% of companies says it is cheaper to retain a customer than to acquire a new one. There is no perfect way to hang on to customers, but there are a few things you can do to make it easy for them to want to stick around:

Limit your e-mail marketing
Do not send email promotions too often. No one likes an email a day all week from the same site – and offering too many discounts makes it look like you are not doing well as a site. Space the offers, and any communication, out long enough that people are excited for your next email.

Upgrade your customer service
During holidays your customer service should be 100%! Make sure you or a colleague are available to respond, either by phone, chat, or e-mail during all of these busy days.

Be creative
Think about other ways to entice and reward return customers. Newsletters, promotional discounts for returning customers, or reward programs based on money spent are all good ways to keep customers happy, and coming back for more.

If some of these do not exactly fit your site model, modify them! The most important thing is that you are communicating effectively with your customer, as well as taking advantage of the holiday season. Happy holidays, and be sure to let me know in the comments what has worked for you!

Customer and client: two words that are often mistaken, and cause problems for both non-natives and English speakers. Although the words are frequently used as synonyms, they do not have exactly the same meaning. There has been already a lot of discussion when the word client or customer should be used; the answer is not always easy. The choice of the right word depends on the context. The distinction between the two terms in question is of special importance for business owners and for translators.

As a business owner (including online business owners), you want to be sure that you address your customers/clients correctly in order to gain future business. The distinction is also relevant for translators – not only for the sake of precise translation, but also to help address the customers/clients better.
By the end of this article you will be sure whether to use client or customer in your communication. I have prepared for you the ultimate rules that will help you make this decision.

#1 Know the Meaning

According to Oxford Dictionary, a customer is a person or organization that buys something from a store or business. A manager of a supermarket would call a person who buys a lot in his store a good customer.

A client is defined by the same dictionary as a person that uses the services or advice of a professional person or organization. An example is a lawyer or a translator who has clients, not customers.

Thus the difference between the two words is quite big. Customers buy goods like cookies, books or clothes, and clients pay for services like accounting or legal services.

#2 Think of Continuity

The distinction between selling products and services is not enough. The other thing that will help you decide whether to use word customer or client is continuity. This simple rule tells that a person who comes to your shop only once to buy a product is a customer. However, when this person comes to you every week to buy a product(s) and a relationship is built based on that, that person is a client.

So John, who bought butter one month ago from you but has not been seen since, can be called your customer. On the other hand, Peter, who buys groceries at your shop every week, can be called both: a regular customer or a client. If you want to put an emphasis on the fact that Peter buys products or services from you regularly and is loyal to you, then you call him a client.

#3 Recognize Different Businesses

Businesses have two main focuses: gaining customers, or gaining clients. Those focused on customers rather than clients are interested in significant numbers of one time purchases – a volume game. Businesses aiming to gain clients are looking for creation of long time relationships with an emphasis on loyalty.

You should take this information into account when creating communication for your business. Want to focus on long term relationships with people who buy services? Call them clients. For the reverse, use the word customer. Use the right word in order not to mislead your audience.

#4 Know for Whom You Translate

The distinction between a customer and a client is important for the quality of a translation, especially in English. In some languages there is only one word used for both terms – such as the Dutch “klant”, the Polish “klient”, or the Spanish “cliente”. Know that in these languages, you won’t have to differentiate in your translation.

However, as a translator you are offering services, for which you had like repeat business. Remember to communicate with your audience as clients, not customers, when applicable, to ensure growing feelings of loyalty.

Remember to use the correct word in your communication, as one word can often make a big difference!

You have all the technical aspects of your website in order. There is however one more thing left to do: adjustment of your content in a way that will make it optimally findable in Google. But how can you make your website easier findable with the help of keywords? That is one of the questions concerning SEO that clients often ask me. That is why in this blog post you will find information on how to use SEO keywords effectively in order to help positioning your website.

When you are surfing the internet for usage of keywords you will find that the opinions of SEO experts are divided. That is why I would like to share my experience in what works best for online shops. The mission is easy: to make your website findable! Organic findability usually means a huge boost in your sales and it also saves you a lot on marketing expenses.

Keyword density

Keyword density is being displayed by almost all website analyzers. Website analyzers are companies or websites responsible for in-depth analysis of your webpage(s). What does the keyword density actually tell you? It gives you the information on how often a specific keyword appears on your page.

But what is a good keyword density? Whenever you ask this question to SEO experts, again you will receive many different opinions. It is striking that most of the experts say not to calculate keyword density at all.

Personally, I stick to one rule: put the keyword combination in at least 3 important places. This can be for example in the URL, page title and the header. I try to use one keyword per approximately 100 words on a webpage. This method helps to make our website findable.

Long texts are being preferred

In a previous blog it is explained why you should not overload your text with keywords. In short: Google has a preference for longer texts that go more into depth.

The research from SERPIQ shows really clearly that pages with long texts rank higher in search machines. Thus, if you want to be found on a keyword that has a high competition rate, you should make sure that your page has more than 1500 words. This will significantly increase your chances of a higher rank in the search machines.

Less competition with a long-tail

Approximately 70 percent of all search queries are performed on so-called long tail keywords. Long-tail means that the search query consists of at least 4 words.

The number of search queries on specific long-tail combination is however lower. As a result the competition is also lower. With a low competition keyword there are fewer regulations concerning the keyword density. Thus, you do not have to write long texts to be found organically if your product is very unique or specific.

Who sticks to it, wins

Making your website findable has often to do with being very persistent. Obtaining a high organic ranking in a search engine often takes a lot of time. Of course it depends more factors than only writing texts. Nonetheless, if the technical aspects of your websites are in order, you can continue to improve the textual elements in order to leave your competitors far behind.

Are you going to write a new page, product description or a blog post? I would advise you not to pay too much attention to the number of keywords. Rather pay more attention to the content of the texts and make sure your readers are not being bothered by excessive use of keywords.

In this ever more digitalized and automated world it sounds almost archaic when you tell someone that you would like to become a writer or a translator. The creation of content and its editing is however more relevant than ever. After all, the internet exists because we create words which we feel are worth sharing with others. The digital world exists of zeroes and ones, and words. Our words.

Since Simply Translate was founded, it has been on the lookout for new talent. New translators, new brilliant writers, but also professionals who like to work with languages besides their daytime job. Although each freelancer is different, there is a set of characteristics to be found among good translators and writers.

Because most of the team members at the office have either been active as a translator or have a great passion for language, it is not hard to distinguish these characteristics.

1.Passion

Whereas one translator will never say it out loud and the other indicate it in every e-mail they send, we recognize the passion for language in almost all our translators. Whereas some of them have learned a second or even a third language out of interest, others are raised bilingually and can easily switch between languages. They are working with language and shape their words until the text sounds appealing and reads pleasantly, something that will make every client proud.

2. Client Orientation

Obviously every translator has his or her own writing style. Whereas one will be poetic, the other one will be more direct. As soon as a translator takes on a project from a specific customer the service reaches beyond nicely phrased sentences and translations without spelling and grammar mistakes. The translator puts him- or herself in the shoes of the client; What does the client need? What does he or she want to achieve? Who is being addressed? This is the process during which great translators distinguish themselves. A text can be written very poetically, if it is not aimed at the right audience, the text will not serve its purpose.

3. Confidence

It is logical that a translator is uncertain or in doubt sometimes. Especially when they have to provide a text for a new client. That is called a healthy dose of tension. That is also what keeps translators sharp. The challenge is to constantly develop, grow and improve as a translator. This stimulates the translator to keep on going. The confidence of a translator increases during the cooperation with a client. In time, the translator and client will become well-attuned to each other.

4. Practice

You do not become a professional translator just like that. It is not like a translator can call him- or herself an all-rounder after translating a text. Creating strong content and commanding different writing techniques comes from practice. When worked with multiple types of texts, the translator learns what clients want and his or her own ‘art’ is. As a translator it is important to keep within your own abilities and strengths.

5. Discipline

The translation industry is characterized by tight deadlines. As a translator, you should not only be able to respond quickly to translation requests, it is also of importance that you maintain a certain pace in your work without jeopardizing the quality. As goes for commanding different writing techniques, practice makes perfect when it comes to developing and strengthening these skills.

6. Dare to ask

As a translator you have to deal with a wide variety of topics. From advertisement leaflets about telecom products to the latest fashion items of online stores. Logically it happens that a translator comes across a topic he or she is not comfortable with. Precisely then it is admirable that the translator dares to ask. Often the client is able to explain the meaning of a word or phrase within a short amount of time. The short lines of communication between a translator and a client make sure that the communication does not become a barrier or an obstacle.

In addition to the characteristics mentioned above, there are obviously still many features that are unique to every translator, writer or copywriter. Based on the needs of our customer Simply Translate always matches the most suitable translator to that translation job. An unique matching system that has brought our company where we are now: Proud of our services and proud of our translators.