Guides · International SEO
Multilingual Keyword Research: How to Find Keywords That Work in Any Language
Multilingual keyword research is the process of finding out what people in other countries and languages actually type into search engines — not just translating the keywords you already have. Done right, it's the difference between ranking in a new market and publishing pages nobody finds. The short version of the method: pick your target markets, build a seed list in your home language, research each language natively instead of translating, validate search volume in the right country, and map every keyword to a page before you write.
The same intent, three different habits of speech — which is why each language gets researched on its own terms.
The core problem
Why You Can't Just Translate Your Keywords
Direct translation is the most common multilingual SEO mistake, and it quietly wastes budget. A keyword isn't a word — it's a habit of speech. People in different countries describe the same product in different ways, use different slang, and sometimes use a different search engine entirely.
A well-known CSA Research survey of 29 countries found that 76% of online shoppers prefer to buy products with information in their own language, and around 40% will never buy from a website in a foreign language (CSA Research, "Can't Read, Won't Buy," 2020). Translation alone doesn't get you that purchase — being findable in the language people search in does.
of online shoppers prefer to buy products with information in their own language.
will never buy from a website in a foreign language.
CSA Research, "Can't Read, Won't Buy," 2020 — survey of 29 countries.
Two practical examples of why translation fails:
The same language, different countries
Spanish speakers in Mexico and Argentina search differently — vocabulary, phrasing, and even which search terms they use at all can differ. Targeting "Spanish" as one market usually means doing none of them well.
Different engines, different behavior
Google dominates in the US and much of Europe, but Baidu is the main search engine in China, and Yahoo! Japan (powered by Google) holds a large share in Japan (Phrase, 2026). If your market runs on Baidu or Naver, keyword data from Google tools tells you very little.
- US / Europe → Google
- China → Baidu
- Korea → Naver
- Japan → Yahoo! Japan (powered by Google)
The short answer
How Multilingual Keyword Research Works: The Short Answer
The process has five steps:
- Pick one to three target markets where you actually have a chance to sell.
- Build a seed keyword list in your home language around your products and customer problems.
- Research each target language natively — using local autocomplete, local forums, and native speakers, not just a translation tool.
- Validate search volume, difficulty, and intent with the correct country set in your keyword tool.
- Map each validated keyword to a specific page, then build the site structure (URLs, hreflang) around it.
The rest of this guide walks through each step.
Step 1
Choose Your Target Markets (and Languages Separately)
Start narrow. Two or three markets is enough for a first pass — expanding later is easy, redoing a bad launch is not (ECC Innovaations, 2025).
Two things to check before committing:
Demand and competition vary by language, even within the same country
AS Marketing found that in Norway, local Norwegian keywords had lower search volume but converted better than English keywords, because ranking in Norwegian built trust (Weglot, International Marketing Summit 2024).
Your product has to be relevant in the market
As one localization agency puts it: there's little point targeting keywords for alcohol in a country where it's banned (LEaF Translations).
Step 2
Build Your Seed List in Your Home Language
Seed keywords are the starting points you'll expand from: your main products, services, customer problems, and the topics you want to be known for. If you sell running shoes, seeds look like "running shoes," "best running shoes," and "trail running shoes."
Get the seeds from three places:
Your own data
Google Search Console shows the queries that already bring clicks and impressions to your site.
Your customers
Support emails, sales calls, and reviews are full of the exact words people use.
Competitor pages
What your ranking competitors cover is what the market expects (see our guide to competitor keyword research).
Step 3
Research Each Language Natively — Don't Just Translate
This is the step that separates multilingual keyword research from keyword translation, and it's where most guides get lazy. The source keyword tells you what topic to investigate; it does not dictate the final keyword (Bayantech, 2026).
Ways to research in a language you don't speak:
Google autocomplete and "related searches"
Google autocomplete and "related searches" in the target language — set your location or use a tool to see the local SERP.
Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends
Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends, both of which let you filter by country and language for free.
Local forums and marketplaces
Local forums, marketplaces, and Reddit-style communities where real buyers describe things in their own words.
A native speaker
A translator, freelancer, or agency to review your final list. Most high-performing international SEO teams treat this as non-negotiable (VeraContent, 2024).
Step 4
Validate Search Volume, Difficulty, and Intent in the Right Country
Once you have local keyword candidates, run them through a keyword tool with the country set correctly — not "worldwide." Compare volume, keyword difficulty, and, most importantly, intent: what kind of pages actually rank, and do they match what you want to publish?
Illustrative example: the country selector is set to the market you're entering — never "worldwide."
Things to check for each keyword:
| Check | What good looks like |
|---|---|
| Search volume | Enough demand to matter in that market — some markets are simply smaller; low volume + low competition can still convert well |
| Keyword difficulty | Competitors you can realistically beat, based on their site authority and backlinks |
| Intent | The SERP type (guide, product page, comparison) matches the page you'd build |
| Language match | The SERP is actually in your target language — sometimes the market prefers English keywords |
Note that search volumes from any tool are indicative rather than exact — treat them as relative comparisons to decide where to focus (VeraContent, 2024).
This is also where you check whether the competition is beatable. Running a keyword gap analysis against the sites ranking in each market shows what they rank for that you don't — the same process we cover in our competitor keyword research guide, just per market.
The easy way
Automating Multilingual Keyword Research
Every step above — native-language research, validation, competitor gap analysis per market — is manual work, and it repeats for every language you add. For a small team, that's usually where international SEO stalls: the research gets done once, goes stale, and nobody rechecks it.
An automated SEO agent like Votrix AI handles this cycle for you. It does keyword research and competitor analysis (with backlink and authority data from DataForSEO), writes and publishes the pages for the keywords it finds, and rewrites pages that aren't ranking. Connect Google Search Console and you can see the real rankings, clicks, and impressions coming from each market — so you can tell whether your international keywords are actually working. It's free within the free quota and pay-as-you-go after that.
If you want to keep it manual, that's fine too — the process above stands on its own. Automation mostly buys you the ongoing half of the work that manual teams skip.
Step 5
Map Keywords to Pages and Fix Your Site Structure
A validated keyword list isn't a strategy until each keyword maps to one page. Build a keyword mapping document per market: keyword, intent, target page, funnel stage (Bayantech, 2026). This prevents the classic multilingual failure of five pages accidentally competing with each other.
Then make sure search engines can serve the right version to the right person:
- Use a language or country indicator in your URLs, like
yoursite.com/it/for Italian (VeraContent, 2024). - Implement hreflang tags so Google knows which language version to show which user.
- Keep one language per page — mixing languages on a page confuses both readers and search engines (GlobalLink).
Structure decisions matter more broadly for international sites; our guide to international keyword research covers the country-versus-language side in depth. If you're selling online specifically, see our ecommerce keyword research guide; for city- and region-level targeting, see local keyword research.
What's changing
Beyond Google: How AI Search Changes Multilingual Keyword Research
AI-powered search — ChatGPT, Claude, Google AI Overviews — now answers questions directly, and it does so in whatever language the user asks. That means your keywords and topics need to be clearly associated with your brand in every language, not just English.
Practical implications:
Local precision matters even more
AI systems rely on how clearly your brand, products, and topics are understood across languages, so local precision matters even more than it did for classic rankings (Sitebulb, 2026).
Track whether AI tools actually mention you
Once your localized pages are live, track whether AI tools actually mention you. Votrix AI monitors ChatGPT, Claude, and Google AI Overviews for mentions of your brand, and checks whether Google and AI crawlers can even read your site — two things that are invisible in a traditional rank tracker.
Avoid these
Common Multilingual Keyword Research Mistakes to Avoid
Translating instead of researching
The #1 failure mode. Literal translations miss slang, dialects, and what people actually search (Bayantech, 2026).
Ignoring search engines other than Google
Baidu in China, Naver in Korea, Yahoo! Japan in Japan (Phrase, 2026).
One keyword list for "Spanish"
Validate per country; Mexico, Spain, and Argentina are different searches.
Treating the research as one-off
Search behavior shifts; review your keyword set at least quarterly (Bayantech, 2026).
Skipping the competitor check in each market
The sites ranking locally are often not the global brands you expect.
Zero-volume assumptions
Some valuable local terms show little volume in global tools but convert well — check real customer language before discarding them (VeraContent, 2024).
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
What is multilingual keyword research?
It's the process of finding which keywords people search for in other languages and countries, by researching each market natively and validating demand locally — rather than translating your existing keywords.
How is multilingual keyword research different from international keyword research?
Multilingual keyword research focuses on language: how people search in each language. International keyword research also covers country-level factors like search engines, currency, and site structure. Most guides use the terms interchangeably; our international keyword research guide covers the country side.
Can I do multilingual keyword research for free?
Yes. Google Keyword Planner, Google Trends, Google autocomplete, and "related searches" are all free and support country and language filters. Pair them with a native speaker to review your final list, since free tools won't catch local nuances.
Do I need to speak the language to do keyword research for it?
No, but you need access to one. Native speakers, local forums, and in-market autocomplete data replace the knowledge you don't have. Researching purely from translated keyword lists is the most reliable way to miss the market.
Which tools are best for multilingual keyword research?
Ahrefs Keywords Explorer supports keyword data in many languages including Spanish, German, French, Japanese, and Chinese; Google Keyword Planner and Trends work per country for free (VeraContent, 2024; Phrase, 2026). Automated SEO agents like Votrix AI can run the research, competitor analysis, and content publishing cycle for you.
How long does multilingual keyword research take?
For a small site entering one new market, expect a focused week of work for a manual first pass — and the same again each time you add a market, since each language needs its own native research and validation.
Pick a market. Research it natively. Ship the pages.
Votrix AI runs the research, writes the pages, and tracks the rankings — free within the free quota, pay-as-you-go after that.
Sources
- Phrase — https://phrase.com/blog/posts/multilingual-keyword-research/ (2026)
- Bayantech — https://bayan-tech.com/blog/multilingual-keyword-research/ (2026)
- Sitebulb — https://sitebulb.com/resources/guides/multilingual-seo-keyword-research-for-search-and-ai-discovery/ (2026)
- VeraContent — https://veracontent.com/mix/international-seo-keyword-research/ (August 2024)
- ECC Innovaations — https://www.ecinnovations.com/blog/international-seo-keyword-research/ (August 2025)
- Weglot — https://www.weglot.com/blog/international-seo-keyword-research (checked 2026-10)
- LEaF Translations — https://leaftranslations.com/expertise/multilingual-keyword-research-seo-translation/ (checked 2026-10)
- GlobalLink / TransPerfect — https://globallink.transperfect.com/blog/international-seo-for-your-multilingual-website-a-checklist (checked 2026-10)
- CSA Research, "Can't Read, Won't Buy" — 76% and ~40% shopper-preference figures (2020)