Did you know that the US has over 28 million people who speak Spanish? We’re the sixth largest Spanish-speaking county in the world. That’s about the same as the population of New York City… Three times over.
Now, the important question is, what are you doing to reach this population? Nothing?!?! I just heard someone think “Nothing!” If you were marketing nationally in the United States would you want to miss the populations of the Top 10 largest cities? No! You’d find someone to help you hit this market! Well, it’s time to start doing something about your missed Spanish SEO opportunity in the US!
A recent Ipsos Omnibus study showed the many US Hispanics use English media and can easily switch between English and Spanish. Relating directly to online usage, here is what Ipsos found:
English is the leading language of preference for the internet among all Hispanic age groups, as over half of all Hispanics (55%) say their language preference for the internet is English. However, nearly forty-percent (39%) of Hispanics ages 18-34 prefer Spanish language internet sites, demonstrating that many younger Hispanics are closely tied to Spanish while online, Ipsos found. Moreover, 42% of Hispanic women prefer Spanish when surfing the web. This compares with just 29% of men.
Then I read this part:
More than four in ten Hispanics (44%) also read Spanish newspapers that cover news in their US community. This is most common among those with annual household incomes less than $50K (57%).
So what does this scream to me? Content networks!
While it appears that many Spanish-speaking Americans are comfortable conducting search and browsing the web in English, they follow up on information in Spanish and relate it back to their community. Many of the sites that US Hispanics are reading are displaying Google ads.
Take advantage of this.
Do some phrase research, write some ads and don’t hesitate to ask for help! If you want to seriously try and reach out to this market, you have to do it right. Hunt down a native speaker and make sure you are using the words people understand and not just what a free online translator offers you as a translation of your current phrases and ads.
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