Why Should You Care about Internet in Foreign Languages? (Part 1)

(A quick reminder: In one of the recent posts about the structure of SECRETS OF SELLING REL ESTATE TO FOREIGN BUYERS we defined the difference between Active (your own advertising costs, no commission to pay) and Passive (through foreign realtors, no advertising costs, but paying sales commission) marketing in foreign languages and stated that the next part would be dedicated to the active approach in marketing to the foreign buyers.)

So, why should you care about the internet presence in the foreign languages?

According to Wikipedia that cites various sources, English only occupies about half of the internet nowadays and what is even more important, the number of websites in other languages is growing rapidly. From the beginning of this century the use of English online increased by around 300%, a lower rate of growth than that of Spanish (700%), Chinese (1,300%) or Russian (1,800%).

The number of internet users by language (in millions of people) is estimated as: 800 in English, 650 in Chinese, 200 in Spanish, around 100 each in Japanese, Portuguese and Russian.

Google is now available in more than 200 countries in more than 50 languages. For other than English chunks of the world’s internet their own search engines have come into existence in various foreign languages: For example, Baidu in Chinese, Yandex in Russian.

The above information confirms that if you want to be visible with your properties for sale to the foreign real estate buyers, you have to have the internet presence in their languages. Otherwise, you will not be able to compete with many more other real estate sellers who already have done that and are being searched and found every day on the internet of the countries you are going to target with your properties for sale.

Do you remember that internet searchers open their browsers and search engines in their own language? And the browsers and search engines are customized (localized) to their country? And the potential foreign buyers for your properties search the properties on the internet using their customized search engines nowadays first of all? You do not want to stay behind your competitors who present their properties on the foreign internet in the target languages, do you?

Happy blog reading,
Olga Kellen,
The Amazon Author
International Marketing Consultant and English-Russian Translator

Copyright © 2017 by Olga Kellen
All Rights Reserved

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