Content Localization Process: 101 Guide with Examples

While content is king, content localization is queen.

Content localization holds the royal status because it's essential to your company's global success.

You already know it's true, but let me show you this illuminating G2 grid, just in case. 

Here you can see the most popular machine translation solutions. Just look at how packed the market is. And for a very good reason—almost all businesses use automated content translation.

Those that don't? They rarely stay in business for long.

Naturally, you're here because you don't want to be one of the holdouts. You're looking to adopt a solid content localization strategy. Preferably, one that revolves around automation.

Good news: that's exactly what you are going to learn below.

Let's get to it!

What is content localization?

Content localization is the process of content adaptation to a target locale. Localization starts with translation and is usually followed by cultural adaptation, design adjustment, local SEO (for web), compliance review, and quality assurance.

If you have valuable content to share, localize it to help your customers understand you.

The result?

Way more:

• revenue
• engagement 
• trust and loyalty

Win, win, win 🍾

Content translation vs content localization

Before we go any further, let's set this straight:

Translation is just the first step of the localization process.

It's a huge step, covering around 90% of the job. But it's still only the first step.

Google's Search Relations Team Lead, John Mueller weighs in:

💬 "Ultimately, a good localization is much more than just a translation of words and sentences, so I would definitely encourage you to go beyond the minimal bar if you want users in other regions to cherish your site"

The bottom line: to succeed abroad, you need both content translation and localization.

What content requires localization?

Here at Centus, we believe in complete content localization. Every piece of customer-facing content requires localization. Every. Single. Piece.

Other companies concur.

For example, Meta goes so far as to translate over a million words a day.

Unless you are Meta, you likely have more words than dollars. In that case, still localize all customer-facing content, but be strategic about what you show to your audience. 

The best approach is to localize content that benefits your customers most while also driving your objectives.

For example, you can start by localizing content at the top of your sales funnel. Without it, customers will never arrive at the "awareness" stage.

Customer-facing content 

The table below shows the types of customer-facing content requiring localization. Focus on those that will have the most impact on you and your company 👇

Internal content 

In addition to customer-facing content, you might also have internal content. Ideally, it also requires localization. But the decision is up to you, your budget, or your manager—whichever has the final say 😀

Now that you know the "what" and "why" of digital content localization, let's dive into the "how."

Content localization process

"How does localization work?" you ask. Well, the process differs widely depending on the company and the type of content.

In small companies, the content localization process looks like this:

But you didn't need my article to figure that out, right? You need it to navigate more complex localization processes. Like this one:

Based on your company's hierarchical structure and the types of content you localize, the process can either become simpler or even more convoluted. 

How to localize content 

Now let's see how to localize your content, step-by-step. 

Step 1: Set content localization goals and objectives

First things first—understand why you are localizing content. Setting clear goals and objectives will help you get leadership buy-in and justify the investment (prove ROI) later.

📘 Relevant reading: I'd love you to keep reading, but let me refer you to this localization strategy guide. There, you'll find the most detailed breakdown of localization goals and objectives.

Back here? Let's continue.

Step 2: Select content for localization

Based on your objectives, select content for localization.

The biggest mistake you can make here is to engage in opinion-based content selection. While it's unavoidable for some types of content, like user guides, stick to quantitative data for everything else.

To find the best-performing types of content, follow these steps 👇

1. Create a content inventory
2. Audit your content 
3. Analyze competitors 

1. Create a content inventory

Learn where the source content lives and who's responsible for its creation and updates.

Approximately 20% of the content for localization cannot be found on your website. It's scattered across departments and includes presentations, customer support scripts, marketing collateral, and training materials among others.

Collaborate across departments to collect it all.

"Can I automate the process?" you ask.

Because of content fragmentation, neither fully manual nor fully automatic content inventory generation is feasible. You'll need to combine both approaches to cover all the bases.

💡 Pro tip: Scrape your website with web crawlers, like Screaming Frog. Then, review the inventory and add missing information manually.

Your content inventory might look like this:

2. Audit your content

Now it's time to audit and prune your content.

Here at Centus, I use a tiered approach to determine which content gets localized first.

Product pages and service pages are localized first. Users don't frequent the Security and Policy pages, but they still should be localized. No brainer, right?

Blog content, though, is a bit trickier.

Here's how I prioritize blog posts for localization:

1. Scrape the website with Screaming Frog
2. Use Screaming Frog's custom extraction feature to pull the published date, update date, and type of post
3. Use Screaming Frog API to add Google Search Console (GSC) and Google Analytics (GA) data to Screaming Frog data
4. Clean up and consolidate data in Excel

The data gives me a bird's eye view of blog content. To determine the tiers for localization, I use the following metrics for 3-months' worth of data:

• First visits (GA)
• Clicks (GSC)
• Backlinks (Ahrefs)
• Conversion rate (GA)

You can brew your own ungodly concoction of metrics, but those should suffice to determine if pages should be localized or not.

Then, I assign each tier a metric range 👇

Finally, I select posts that perform strongly across multiplier metrics. Those are my prime candidates for localization.

Crunching all this data doesn't make for the most engaging of afternoons, but the payoff is worth every minute.

You might discover that 10% or more of your pages receive zero page views. Is there really a demand for such content in your target market?

3. Analyze your competitors

For competitor analysis, use tools like Ahrefs or Moz.

Examine the number of visitors in each location, organic keywords, paid keywords, and other SEO metrics. Each data point tells a story.

For example, it might tell you that the German market prefers distilled technical content, whereas the Italian market responds better to visually engaging blog posts.

💡 Pro tip: Don't analyze just your biggest competitor. Analyze several competitors, both large and small, to identify emerging patterns. 

Step 3: Translate content 

The easiest way to translate your content is with the help of the translation management platform Centus.

Hard stop. You won't get decent results by juggling machine translation solutions, spreadsheets, and lengthy email threads. Improvisation won't cut it.

Instead, use Centus to translate your content collaboratively with a team of localization experts. Your translators, editors, designers, and managers can work side-by-side, sharing screenshots and feedback to keep the project moving.

Let me show you how simple it is:

1. Sign up to Centus and create a new project

2. Navigate to the Imports section and upload content files. Centus supports dozens of file types, such as HTML, DOCX, and XLSX.

3. In the Editor, review automatically segmented content

4. Choose among translations created by Google Translate, DeepL, or Microsoft Translate

5. Click Save

When translations are automatically generated, assign them to your translators for manual review:

1. In the Contributors section, click Add people to add an editor
2. Enter the editor's name, email, and other details 
3. Choose the reviewer role from the dropdown menu

4. Click Add project contributor

Similarly, you can add editors and managers to the project who can leave comments and approve translations.

See how simple it is?

If you think translating all customer-facing content is expensive, you are right. It absolutely is. But you can cut your costs by 90% if you use machine translation post-editing.

Most of your content can be translated automatically and edited lightly. Other types of content require a more white-gloved approach. Think sales text messages or other marketing materials.

But no matter what you are translating, Centus makes the process seamless and cost-effective.

💡 Pro tip: Your ads, email campaigns, and similar materials should be translated by humans to ensure they keep working in the local market. 

Step 4: Localize images

Your product pages, blog posts, presentations, reports, and ads all contain images. To localize them, your designers need to be steeped in local cultures.

Localization Program Lead at Canva, Michael Levot, explains:

💬 "There are different cultural and religious attitudes towards things like alcohol, consumption of animals, and clothing modesty. You have to strike a balance between potentially alienating part of your audience, which is something that we would never want to do and on the other hand, depriving part of our audience of content that they would find useful."

Make sure your designers understand how images in your localized content will be perceived by target audiences. Then, arrange image localization.

Naturally, your image localization workflow will differ from your content localization workflow.

Here's what it might look like:

I would be lying if I told you that image localization is simple. You'd need to adjust the images themselves and combine them with translated inscriptions.

A localization solution for designers isn't just a nice-to-have here. Centus should be at the core of your image localization workflow.

Using Centus, your designers can quickly adjust visuals using the Centus-Figma integration.

With a single click, the designers can pull translated content into images. There, they can preview and adjust their designs in other languages to avoid text overlap or overflow.

If it sounds too simple, it's only because it is. Hold on. Let me try that again.

Image localization is simple...if your design team uses Centus, of course.

Want to learn more about image and brand localization?

Here you go:

📘 Relevant reading: Brand localization guide

Next up: the not-so-exciting part of content localization. 

Step 5: Localize numbers

Decimal points, thousand separators, currency symbols, date formats, and phone number formats among others need to be adjusted to properly localize content.

For example, here's how decimals and number grouping differ across countries:

As much as I'd love you to keep reading, it's better if you check out our complete guide to localized numbers:

📘 Relevant reading: How to localize numbers

Step 6: Localize SEO

Your content travels abroad. Help it make new friends by making it... well, SEO-friendly.

Conduct thorough SEO research to optimize your content, including meta titles, descriptions, and headers, with locally-searched keywords.

To boost your content's SEO performance, invest in local link-building. Centus' SEO Strategist, Andriy Gurtovoy puts it this way:

💬 "To increase your content's visibility in local search results, invest in quality backlinks from authoritative local sources. You can get relevant links by sponsoring local events, joining local business associations, getting listed in local directories, and guest posting."

📘 Relevant reading: A guide to international SEO

Step 7: Ensure legal and regulatory compliance

The last step in your content localization strategy is legal review. Run the content by your legal experts to ensure that it complies with local legal and regulatory requirements.

At the very least, check compliance with these legal and regulatory requirements:

• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
• Copyright laws
• Trademark laws 
• Patent laws
• Advertising and marketing regulations
• Product labeling requirements
• E-commerce regulations
• Employment contract translation

📘 Relevant reading: A guide to legal translation

Parting thoughts

Customers crave convenience. So give them content in the right language.

That's what content localization is all about. Hopefully, by now, you know how to perform it.

So sign up for Centus and start localizing content like a pro!