Breaking News: You can now cash in on Foreign SEO sites
May 2, 2023
Did you know that only 58% of sites are written in English?
We’ve sold thousands of sites on our marketplace, but we’ve yet to dip our toes into the 42% of the market represented by foreign SEO sites… until now.
We’re excited to announce that we are now selling non-English language sites!
This opens up a whole new avenue of opportunities for buyers and sellers.
English may be one of the most widely spoken languages, but only 13% of European citizens speak English as their native language.
This is a game changer when you consider that 65% of consumers are more likely to convert when reading content in their native language, and 40% of consumers avoid buying from websites in other languages.
The European market represents around one-sixth of the global economy with a GDP of over $16 trillion. If 86% of this economy is represented by non-English speakers, owning a foreign language site can be a lucrative business!
Let’s take a look at how you can benefit not only from the English market, but other top geos such as the German, Scandinavian, and French markets.
Why We’ve Decided to Sell Foreign Sites
One of the most common questions we get asked is, “Why don’t you sell foreign language sites?”
It’s a great question, and the fact that we get asked this question a lot indicates that there is clearly a demand for this service. We already sell foreign FBA businesses, so why not content sites?
Expanding into the sale of non-English language sites would open Empire Flippers up to new markets and give us a larger audience to tap into. Plus, our customers have asked for this many times over the years.
We previously steered clear of selling these sites because we believed our English-speaking team would have difficulty accurately vetting non-English sites. However, after looking into how foreign sites might be different to sell than English language sites, we found surprisingly few differences.
Two of the main criteria that our vetting team looks into are a site’s backlink profile and its Google Analytics data.
Turns out, the backlink profiles of foreign sites often contain a large number of English-language sites. This means our vetting team can assess the strength of these backlink profiles without having to hire translators. And the data and site analytics will read the same, no matter what language the site is in.
With so many ticks in the pros column, we couldn’t overlook this opportunity any longer.
As of May 2023, we’re officially adding non-English language content sites to our marketplace!
At this point, savvy entrepreneurs are probably asking themselves what’s in it for them. Let’s take a look at how you can cash in on this new venture…
The Big Opportunity for Sellers
Empire Flippers is the largest curated marketplace for online businesses. Marketplaces as large as ours don’t really exist outside of the US.
This presents a huge opportunity for foreign content site owners who were previously limited to marketing their site to a local audience. You are now able to tap into our large pool of buyers.
With more eyes on your business, sellers of non-English sites stand a much higher chance of making a profitable and speedy exit from their business.
In the past, there really wasn’t a great solution for you when it came to exiting your business. Now, if you’re operating in a non-English market you can still tap in our audience (one that is international by nature) to help get a deal done.
In the end, this provides you with a new opportunity to make a faster, more profitable exit when you decide to sell with us.
A Whole New Market For Buyers
Market saturation is a real concern for SEOs and for good reason.
There are over 31 million active bloggers in the United States posting at least once per month. And more than 3 billion blog posts are published every year worldwide.
If 58.8% of these blog posts are in English, why not escape this saturation by targeting the other 41.2% of the market?
The number of non-English web pages is growing rapidly.
A huge potential yet to be tapped by many buyers.
According to Internet World Stats, the use of foreign languages online has grown massively year-on-year since 2000.
- Portuguese has grown by 2,167.0 %.
- Spanish has climbed by 1,511.0 %
- French has increased by 1,164.6 %
In comparison, the use of English online has only increased by 742.9 % since 2000. This shows that the non-English internet population is growing, increasing the demand for non-English content.
Because the market is less saturated, non-English consumers are not bombarded with marketing messages in the same way that English-speaking audiences are. Because it’s less common for these consumers to find high-quality content in their native language, your content stands a better chance of standing out.
Another rewarding benefit of buying a foreign language site is your chances of SEO success are much higher.
Given that English is the most widely used language online, foreign Google search is far less competitive and easier to rank on versus its English counterpart.
[Image Source: Statista]
With foreign language sites, there will be less competition for both “short tail” and “long tail” keywords. You’ll also need fewer inbound links to boost your rankings – which of course translates into fewer business expenses
The benefits don’t stop there.
Advertising on global search engines like Google and Yahoo using foreign language keywords will likely cost less.
With less competition, you stand a much higher chance of ranking on the first page of Google, and it won’t cost you an arm and a leg.
Finally, this addition to our marketplace gives our referral partners even more businesses to refer to us! With a wider range of buyers and sellers to tap into, it’s now that much easier to earn 20% of our commission on each successful referral.
The Challenges of Running a Non-English Site
Buying a foreign-language content site opens you up to a world of opportunity, but it’s not without its challenges.
You can’t operate a foreign-language site in exactly the same way as you would an English-language site – at least if you don’t speak the language yourself
Every language has its nuances, with unique sayings and turns of phrase.
This means that direct translations can often miss the mark, and may even land you in hot water. At the very least, it can lead to a bit of a “weird” reading experience for the native speaker.
A good example of this is an infamous translation fail by Pepsi.
They created a campaign with the slogan “Come alive with the Pepsi Generation”. Unfortunately, when translated into Chinese, this was understood as “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave.
[Image Source: Giphy]
This is important to keep in mind, not only in your content but also in your keywords. Keywords will need to be tailored to your target market, with careful consideration of the search terms that your target consumers may use.
You can use tools like Google Trends to help you identify potential keywords and see what’s trending in the different countries where your target language may be spoken.
How Not to Get Tongue-Tied Buying a Foreign Language Site
Many site owners hire writers and editors to produce content for them.
This allows the business owner to focus on scaling the business, ensures the content is produced by skilled professionals, and should be a familiar type of work for anyone running a successful content business
In these cases, the business owner rarely reads the content that is published, trusting their writers and editors to produce high-quality content.
This process doesn’t need to change with foreign-language sites.
In fact, once you have the editor vetted, the process is almost the exact same. You are removed from being able to do a final check, though Google Translate can still come in clutch to make sure you aren’t talking about bringing people’s dead ancestors back to life on your pet supplements blog.
It doesn’t matter if you speak the language or not.
You can hire writers and editors who do.
With the help of a bilingual team, you can scale your site just as you would with an English-language site.
First on your to-do list should be hiring a bilingual content manager who speaks the language of the site to manage the content and ensure it is of high quality. They can also communicate with writers and translators, monitor the site’s performance, and provide feedback. You may also need a translator to help you with the initial hiring process.
All of this could be found in a similar fashion as what you’re probably already doing – marketplaces like Upwork and Fiverr for example.
A bilingual content manager who is familiar with local culture and customs is a great source of knowledge. If you’re not familiar with the language of the site, you’re likely not familiar with the culture and habits of your audience either.
With that in mind, it’s worthwhile doing research into your target audience and gathering customer feedback so you can understand how best to serve them.
Keyword research can also be taught to your content editor. Or you can use keyword clustering tools that can take a list of foreign keywords and group them through algorithmic magic to get the base of your topic clusters created.
It is likely a mixture of the two strategies will come out on top as most efficient.
Buying a site that operates in a language you don’t speak comes with a learning curve no doubt.
But that learning curve isn’t a steep mountain.
It is a familiar hill with slightly different terrain than you’re used to.
As with most great business opportunities, if you put in the hard work upfront, you can reap incredible benefits long term.
Not to mention much lower competition.
The Opportunity is Yours
Whether you’re an online business buyer or seller, the inclusion of non-English language sites on our marketplace offers you an exciting opportunity.
As with all such opportunities, it comes down to what you decide to do with it.
You can become our first 7-figure seller in the Dutch market, or some other market, and at last make the exit of your dreams.
Or you can become that empire-building mogul, spreading your media empire across markets you never initially considered but can be just as profitable (or even more profitable) than the old familiar English SERPs.
No matter which way you decide to go, we’ll be there as always, to help you hit that dream.
You can register an account today to look at buying businesses, or click here to sell your business.
