In summer your customers search in a language you do not publish.
In February the searches are Italian and practical. In July they are English, German and booked from somewhere else.
The year is really two markets
Out of season the searches come from people who live here, in Italian, about practical things. In season a second audience arrives from outside the country, searching in English or German, often before they have left home.
They want different things and they phrase them differently. One site written for the first audience is invisible to the second for the months that pay for the year.
A translated page and an Italian page are not equals
An English page run through a translator reads as one by the second line, and a visitor deciding where to spend a week notices before any search engine does. Written properly, in English, by somebody who read what you actually offer, it competes.
This site is published in three languages for the same reason, and none of them is a machine copy of another.
The searching happens before they travel
Somebody in Munich planning a week on the lake searches in March. Your listing, your photographs and your prices are being compared while the town is empty and while you are least likely to be thinking about any of it.
The work has to be finished before the season, which in practice means it has to start in the previous one.
Photographs carry more weight here than copy
For anywhere people choose to visit, the pictures decide. Real photographs of the actual place, taken in decent light, will move more bookings than any amount of rewriting, and we will tell you to spend money there first if that is what the audit finds.
What we would not do here
We would not sell you a fourth language because it is available. Every language you publish is a language somebody has to keep current, and a stale German page is worse than none.
Questions worth asking
Which languages actually pay here?
Italian for the resident trade, English as the common second language, German where the visitors come from. That order changes by business and the audit says which applies to yours rather than guessing.
Can we not just use an automatic translator?
You can, and for a menu it may be enough. For anything somebody is choosing between, it reads as unattended, and unattended is the one impression that costs a booking.
When should the work be done?
Autumn and winter, so it is finished and indexed before anybody starts planning. Work commissioned in June helps the following year, not this one.
Do you work with hotels and guesthouses?
Yes, and there is a longer piece on this site about how the booking sites changed where that search starts. The short version is that the front door moved and most owners are still painting the old one.
Is the map listing worth the effort for us?
Yes, and more than in most trades, because it carries the photographs and the reviews together in the place people look first.
Tell us which months pay for your year. We will tell you what has to be finished before they start. Get a free audit.
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