SEO versus ASO
Semrush, a leading all-in-one marketing insight suite for improving online brand visibility, defines SEO or Search Engine Optimization as:
“the art and science of persuading search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo, to recommend your content to their users as the best solution to their problem.”
The most notable SEO benefit is boosting organic or “free” traffic, namely when a search engine shows specific content to its users in the organic part of a SERP (Search Engine Results Page), without having to pay for achieving a certain favourable ranking.
Alternatively, the IT engineers and data storytellers from Storemaven define ASO or App Store Optimization in their 5 Components of a Winning ASO Strategy (storemaven.com) blog post as “a strategy which is a subset of a broader app marketing, SEO and growth strategy, aiming to work together to increase an app's visibility in the app stores as well as improving its ability to convert app store visitors to installs and users.”
As a lot of potential customers absolutely love to consume content in their own language, specifically tailored to their wants and needs, the benefit of localizing a brand’s website is not only an increase in the overall SERP ranking, but also helping the brand hit the right target keywords and become increasingly more relevant than their competitors in the eyes of the consumer.
4. Cultural adaptation and appropriation
Sun Yifeng states in her article “Cultural Translation in the Context of Glocalization” (Cultural Translation in the Context of Glocalization | (researchgate.net)), that “localization is the adaptation and translation of a text (like a software program) to suit a particular reception situation. At the initial stage of selecting texts for translation, the suitability of a given text for the target reader is assessed, which constitutes part of a larger consideration of local consumption. Localization in relation to translation entails various forms of adaptation for different reasons or purposes, which means restrictiveness and exclusivity, resulting in the separation of the source text from the target text.”
High search engine rankings, as well as user retention, are inherently linked to the accuracy of the specific content to the audience cultural framework. While high bounce rates indicate weak SEO and limited keyword density, a high number of pages per session shows that accurate Keyword Translation and Localization can get any website content back in Google’s algorithm’s good graces.
