Do you wish other language readers could find your blog? It’s not that hard. I’ll show you how.

Anyone who’s acquainted with me knows that I’m usually pretty low-key, but as I took my seat for a flight several years ago, I was actually jumping up and down on the inside; an Israeli woman next to me was reading a paperback in Hebrew script. I couldn’t wait to get a conversation started and then to let her know about my blog, The Sovereign. I had started The Sovereign a few years prior to that (it’s written for a post-Rapture audience). Topics include Creation, the Flood, prophecy, worship, doctrine, and also topics that relate to countries and events in the Middle East. I was thrilled to have a chance to actually tell someone from Israel about my blog, written with her in mind.

As we talked, I was going to write down the URL for her, but she stopped me short: “It sounds interesting, but, my keyboard is different from yours.”

Whoa (and notice the correct spelling of this word)! This thought hadn’t crossed my mind.

How would I get some of my target audience to even find my blog? I needed an answer to help them search for and find The Sovereign. Once they find the blog, it’s helpful for my readers to know English; however, if they need to, the translating feature of their browser will give them a less-than-perfect look at my content.  First, though, how could I help them find my blog when the characters on their keyboards are different than mine?

Tagging Your Blog for Other Language Readers

The solution is using Google Translate to create tags for your blog posts, using the actual characters your readers would be typing in. See the next image for an example. I entered “write” in English and then I could copy and paste the Hebrew word to create a tag for a post.

You don’t want to use transliteration for your tags because your reader would need an English keyboard. For instance, the transliteration for the Hebrew word for write is Yikhtevu. Use the actual Hebrew word (יכתוב) as typed on a Hebrew keyboard for your tag.

How to Tag Your WordPress Blog for Other Language Readers

To research for this post, I looked at the top four posts for this week, which are really the top four posts for many years. The second post, about Punjabi worship, caught my eye. I wondered how my foreign language tags were working for this post.  You can see the top searches included “jesus punjabi” and “jesus punjabi song mp3.” This top-performing post only had English tags because I had no way of knowing how popular it would be when I published.

This post consistently receives visitors and is even increasing in the number of visitors. I decided that I needed to give this post even greater visibility. Here’s what I did and what you would do. I decided on four key words: Jesus Christ, God, worship, and Psalms. Google Translate gave me the Punjabi words to use for tags. Since I don’t know Punjabi, I also did a reverse translation to make sure these were accurate before using them, pasting the Punjabi script in Google Translate to double-check for the correct English word.

Next, I made the tags in WordPress under Posts / Tags. I created a new tag and put something in the description so I would remember what it was. As I created each new tag, then I also added it as a tag into a new or existing post. (I had two browser tabs open as I worked with creating tags and then adding them to a post.) You’ll see in the next image how it’s useful to have something in the description field in order to easily use the tag again. You’ll notice I have tags in Bengali, Urdu, and Punjabi, which would all be found in India.

Last year, The Sovereign had over 10,000 visitors. Most are English speakers, like the 9,900+ from the United States. This next image shows the countries in order. India is the sixth with over 300 visitors.

You should try this, too. Check some of your top posts and consider whether a foreign language tag would attract more readers. The post on The Sovereign has a Punjabi worship video, so if a new reader finds this post and can’t read my words, they would at least be able to listen to the video of Punjabi worship of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

NOTES:

• Click on any of the images to be able to read them, if you need to.
• I hope this tutorial will work in some fashion for other blogging platforms. WordPress is what I use. Please comment to let eQuipping for eMinistry readers know if this concept will work for Wix, Blogspot, and other platforms.
• I’m using the Hebrew word, “write” for this post’s featured image.