 Well, thank you for the lovely introduction, Karin. As she mentioned, I'm Anna-Lieke, and I work at Joost. And a couple of months ago, I've contributed to a new course we were creating that has a whole lot to do about multilingual SEO. And as I dove into this subject, I kind of realized that I wanted to tell more about it. And especially because we're here in Antwerp, in Belgium. And Belgium is a bilingual country. Or yesterday I heard it was actually a trilingual country because they speak Dutch, French, and German. So that was new to me. I learn every day. And so as I dove more into the subject, I just realized I want to tell more about it, and especially here in Belgium. So this one time, I was at a conference, a conversion conference. And I met these really cool people from AG Consult, and they're from Gent, Belgium. And we just had a good talk. And I laughed really hard because of the differences between the Dutch language and the Flemish dialect. So a refrigerator is called Kulkast in Dutch and Friego in Flemish. I laughed really hard when I heard what a dress was called in Flemish. It's called a kleetje. Not to mention the laugh I had when I heard what the word poepen meant in Flemish. Because it's really, really different than the Dutch poepen. So that makes you really think, what if I want to target both the Netherlands and Flanders? What do I need to do when it comes down to SEO? And that's where multilingual SEO comes in, or international SEO, how you like to call it. So it's optimizing your website for multiple locations and multiple languages. So what are the things you need to be considering when dealing with multilingual SEO? You need to think about the content, about your site structure, about HVAP lang. And of course, if you're using WordPress, which you are all doing here, there are a couple of multilingual plugins that can help you with it. And because it's a really large subject and it can be a bit technical, I was thinking, OK, how can I handle this talk? So in order for you all to understand it. And I thought, maybe the best way to do this is by doing a case study. So it's case study time. I want you all to meet Ellen. Perhaps you can say, hi, Ellen. Yes, lovely. And Ellen, just like me, loves food. And she absolutely adores french fries or chips, or how you like to call it. And she wants to enter the Dutch and Belgium market with her innovative fries. You know, she has fries in all different shapes and forms made from special kinds of potatoes. And she has mayonnaise, luxury mayonnaise with wasabi and chili. And perhaps she has mayonnaise with chocolate. I don't know. But she has it. She loves it, and she sells it online. And by the way, Ellen will probably look a bit different throughout the slides. She currently has this website called excitingfries.com. And she makes a reasonable living from the food she sells online, so worldwide. And excitingfries.com is in English. And she wants to target the countries that love fries the most. So she decides she wants to target the Netherlands and Belgium. So this one day she thinks about, OK, how should I handle this? What strategy do I need to have? So she googles online to see if she can find a multilingual SEO course. And she finds it. She takes the course. She finishes it with a lot of success. And then she sits down and starts putting the things she learned on the course into practice. And the first thing she really needs to think about is, OK, I'm dealing with multilingual SEO, but what is SEO exactly? What does a successful SEO strategy actually mean? How can you make sure that Google shows your pages in its search results? And in order to think about a good, successful SEO strategy, you need to think about Google's mission. And Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. And she lets this sink in, because what does this actually mean? It means that you have to be the best result. If Google wants to show her users the best results, you have to be the best result. And thus you need to optimize every aspect of your website. You need to be the best result. So a holistic SEO strategy is what you need. So she knows that her UX and UI needs to be in top shape. She needs to have an awesome PR and social media strategy. Her technical aspects of her website should be in top form. Her securities should be flawless. And of course, her content needs to be awesome. And not just the content she has in English, but also the content she'll be using when translating it. The content she'll be putting on her Dutch and Belgian website. So if you want to serve your user the best experience, you have to be the best result. So you need to build a great site for your user. So users will stay, probably link to your site. And Google algorithm thinks, hey, this is the cool website. This is a good result. And Google will rank you higher. So Ellen's conclusions are, I need to be the best result. And I can't use any tricks. I can't use keyword stuffing or buying backlinks. I can't do that. I need a sustainable SEO strategy. And also my multilingual SEO strategy needs to be holistic. So every aspect needs to be awesome in the best shape possible. And Ellen should always, always keep the user in mind. So she thinks about it. She sits down, grabs a Google Sheet, and starts doing a couple of Google searches to find out more information about the Netherlands and about Belgium. And Ellen herself is from New York. So she doesn't know anything about the Netherlands or Belgium other than that they really love rides. And she finds out that in Belgium, they speak more than one language. And that in Flanders, they speak with a Flemish dialect, which is a bit different than just the Dutch language. And she highlights this fact because she needs to take this into consideration when optimizing her content. And also because in Belgium, they also speak French, she needs to decide, do I just want to target the Dutch language or do I want to target the French language as well? So after looking up if she has a lot of customers from Bologna and if those customers convert very well, she thinks, well, I'm just going to go for it. I'm going to target the people who live in Bologna as well. So her content needs to be in French as well. And she does a bit of research on cultural differences between countries and also within the country itself. And she starts doing keyword research. And she remembers this intelligent lady called Marike, that says, you should always start with keyword research. I don't know if you remember the Frye suit. Dave looked very good in it, by the way. So Ellen collects data about the user. Ellen looks at her current data. She has done a couple of surveys. She looks at the words people are using on her website, but also goes to other websites in Belgium and Dutch to see the words they are using. She also looks at social media, seeing just the words they are using, the words people are using. Because you can think about a word and think, OK, this is the word people are using in Google or in search engines. But sometimes people really get blind. So it's probably best just to use the data users are providing themselves. So check comments, check social media, just check the words users are actually using when doing keyword research. And Ellen Googles her keywords in an Incognito browser. And she wants to check, can I outrank my competition? Can I outrank the competition I have in the Netherlands? Can I outrank the competition I have in Belgium? Are my keywords, do I need to have more specific keywords or have less competition? These are all things Ellen needs to take into consideration when doing keyword research. And when doing keyword research, Ellen also notices a couple of things. She notices that in the Netherlands, there are two teams. You have team Tat and team Fried. And as you can see, team Fried is willing. And you can also see which part of Belgium speaks Dutch and which part speaks French. And she needs to really take this into consideration when optimizing her content. So if she's writing a page about Fried for the Netherlands, she also needs to put in the words Patat. And she grabs a Google Sheet and she lists her keyword and starts listing head-tail keywords and mid-tail keywords and long-tail keywords for both the Netherlands and Belgium. And she just wants to see which words suit which region best. And she highlights the keywords where she has doubts if they're the best fit. Because it's better to, when you're in doubt, just to check with a friend or a native speaker if the keywords you are using are the best keywords for that specific country or that specific region. So she has this Google Sheet with a master vocab tab that has just listed all the keywords she's ranking as she wants to rank for on her current website, so on excitingfries.com. And has a tab for every language and every region. And she just starts translating it. And the things where she has doubts, she'll check with her friend. Luckily, Ellen has a Dutch friend who lives in Belgium so that really comes in handy. And she also lists per country and per language. So the long-tail keywords, which are the more generic keywords, the mid-tail keywords who are getting a bit more specific, and long-tail keywords which are more specific. And she does this for every country and every language. Now, Ellen now knows the keywords she wants to rank for. So the next tab comes in. She needs to be writing content. So how do you write content in a non-native language? And she needs to start thinking about, okay, how can I do that? Well, what are my options here? And she can translate it, just fully translate it, word for word. That's probably the best and cheapest or not the best, but the cheapest option here. But it doesn't feel really right for Ellen because it leaves little room for the cultural differences or for the keywords she just listed because it's just a literal translation of her current copy of excitingfrights.com. She could also write new content. So she has this friend from Netherlands who lives in Belgium. And she could ask her if you can fully write new content. And it's probably a very good way because you have a lot of room for those cultural differences you found out. But you really need to be on the same level here. Ellen and her friend really need to be on the same page. Or she can transcreate. And that's a bit of a combination between literally translating it and writing new content. So with transcreating, you can adapt your text with the keywords you found out and the cultural differences. So what transcreation is, is the process of adapting an article from one language to another while maintaining the style and the tone of voice and the content. And that's something Ellen wants to do because she's pretty darn happy with her current content. So she wants to convince people to buy the product. So when she transcreates, that's the same message. And she also wants to make people laugh because who doesn't like French fries? And she has innovative French fries in a lot of ways, a lot of options and forms. So, Ellen thinks transcreating is my way to go. So what's her current status? She has found out the keyword she wants to rank for in both Dutch, Flemish and French. She knows she wants to transcreate her content. But now the only thing, or not the only thing, but something she now needs to determine is the domain structure she'll be using. And there are a couple of options here. You can go for a CCTLD, so she could create a website that .nl and .be. But she, you know, Ellen runs this business all by herself. And she knows if I'm using a CCTLD, so a .nl or .be, there will be more maintenance costs. And she needs to create the SEO value of those websites from scratch. So that takes a lot, a lot of time. So a lot of time, a lot of costs, and Ellen is just by herself. So she decides not to go for this option. Or she can use subdomains. And she also knows there's a bit of a debate going on if subdomains pass on less value than subdirectories or not. But the majority thinks that subdirectories are better than subdomains. So a subdomain is the nl.excitingfries.com part, or the fr.excitingfries.com. So she thinks I'm not doing the subdomains. I'm doing a sub directory in combination with a CCTLD. So a CCTLD is like .com or .info or .org or .net. And by using a sub directory is after the slash. So in this case, nl-nl, nl-be or fr-be. So because she's all by herself and doesn't have enough funds to go for the CCTLD option, she's going for the subdirectories. And here are some general guidelines for domain structure. Don't use subdomains because the subdirectories is always a bit better than the subdomains. So now Anna's current status is I have my keywords. I know how to handle my content. I know how to handle the domain structure of my website. So what's left to do? She needs to make sure that the Dutch people land on the Dutch pages and the Dutch-Belgian people land on the Dutch-Belgian pages and the French-speaking people land on the French pages of the Belgium site without causing any duplicate content. Because you can imagine if you write a piece, an article about fleet and patat for the Netherlands or just the fleet, and you do that for Belgium as well. These texts might look very similar and thus you have duplicate content. So how can you do this without causing any duplicate content? How can you make sure that the right page or the right version of a page ranks for both language and location? And she remembers from her multilingual SEO course that she needs something called HREFLANG. Now what is HREFLANG? HREFLANG is a piece of code. It's markup. And she knows that HREFLANG makes sure that the right language and the right region is served for the page. So HREFLANG specifies the language of the page and the region the page is meant for. And with HREFLANG you're also preventing duplicate content. So Ellen is fierce. Ellen knows she can tackle this technical piece of multilingual SEO. And she also knows that she must figure out how she wants to implement HREFLANG because there's not just one way. There are more than one ways to implement HREFLANG. So what are her options? She can do it in the HTML's head or she can do it in the HTTP header or in XML site maps. And I'm not going to dive into this subject. But because she has a fairly small website she decides to do it in the HTML's head. Now what are some general guidelines for implementing HREFLANG? So you can go for implementation in the HTML's head. We recommend not to do it in the HTTP header. And if you want to, if you have a very large website you can probably go for the implementation in the XML site map. Now just for Ellen to make sense out of it all to have a good visualization of HREFLANG. She makes this flow chart. So she thinks, okay, I want the Dutch to land on the Dutch site. So NL-NL HREFLANG and Flemish people on the Dutch site for Belgium and balloon people on the French site. So when she thinks about more about HREFLANG she also wants to know how it exactly works because if something breaks on our website she needs to know what causes it. And if you look at the HREFLANG piece of code if you implement it in the head it has a couple of elements. It has an HREFLANG canonical. It has a self link, a return link and optionally an x default link. I don't know if you can see the colors. I've added colors. So the top one is green. The second one is blue. And the third one is purple. No, you can't really see it, right? Well, in here it looks really good, but... So, okay, so how is this all? How does this all look on the page, on the HTML page? So here you have the page excitingfries.com and you can see on this page, so the homepage of excitingfries.com, the English version, you can see that the canonical links to excitingfries.com and here is the part of the HREFLANG. And you see here, okay, the link rels alternate also links to the canonical and has the language en, so English. Then she has it for nlnl, which a for the lang nlnl, nllb, here's hreflang nl dash b e and French and French. So this is how it looks on the... And when you look at the source code on our excitingfries.com page. So if you were to go to the homepage of our Dutch version, you see that the canonical changes. The canonical is nl dash nl. And this pretty much, well, this just stays the same. Or if you go to a more specific site or page about mayonnaise, you see that the only thing changes is the canonical. Now, for hreflang to work, every page that links to another page need to have return links in between them. So page a needs to link to page b and page b needs to link to page a. And every page needs to have a link to itself. And all of those links need to equal their individual canonicals. Now, for hreflang to break, there are a couple of ways in which it can break. So if you use a broken link, a link that just doesn't work anymore or a relative link, so you don't have the www.excitingfries.com but only after the slash, it will break. Or if you're missing the return link. Or if you use the wrong country or regional code. So we've seen that people, instead of using en-gb, they're using en-uk. And that's not something Google recognizes. So if you have that wrong, your hreflang implementation breaks. It's also possible that you have the wrong canonical or that you're implementing hreflang in both the HTTP header and the head or in external sitemaps. Now, luckily, you're using WordPress. And luckily, WordPress has plugins. And when dealing with multilingual SEO, you really need to think about the strategy you're using. So that also will give you information about which plugin will fit your site's need. So in general, we thought polylang for smaller websites, WPML for mid-sites websites, and multilingual press for larger websites. That is really something that differs per website. So you need to think about how do I want to implement the hreflang? What do I need? And check which plugin just fits your site's need. Now, Ellen just completed her whole journey. She knows what she has learned or what do we have learned. And there are a couple of conclusions. Creating a successful multilingual keyword research is hard work. You really need to do your research. You can't think lightly about it. If you use the wrong words, you might insult people. You don't know. You need to really look into this. And you need to do proper research on the terms people are using in every specific region. As you should have a different keyword strategy for the different regions or languages or countries. And you need to be very careful when translating terms. Don't just rely on Google Translate. That leaves no room for cultural differences. And if you don't master the language good enough, consult a native speaker. Just ask for feedback and trans-create content. And also think about the domain structure you'll be using. What are your funds? What suits your website's best? And how do you want to implement each reflection? Which plug-in suits you best? Now, I hope you've learned a bit about Ellen's journey. And that wraps up my presentation. Thank you. I have some questions. Well, I'm here. That would be nice. But I'm just here, you know, I'll also be at the after-chat and after-party. So if you want to ask more about how to deal with multilingual SEO. Ah, I see two questions over there. So you recommend multilingual press or large website. We usually use the WPML. But that usually gets us into trouble with really large websites or recommendations about that. Can you repeat the question? So if I understand the question correct, I said that you should use WPML for mid-size websites and multilingual press for larger websites. And you had... Now, my question is, do you recommend the multilingual press for the big websites are more performing? Yeah, there are more features to deal with. Because if you have a multisite, the multilingual press provides the best features, in our opinion. I saw a question from David. It's curious, based on what information, performance, or speed of features, you guys said that I tried that polylang for small sites and then multilingual press for larger sites. I'm not even going to start about WPML. Well, yeah, the main reason is that polylang is free. And so if you have a smaller website, you know what, you have a bit less funds, probably. So because polylang is free, it's the best option for a smaller website. But you know, if you want to have more features, then you need to pay for extra features in polylang. And then if you look at those features and the features WPML has, we think WPML has more options for you there. Well, that just differs per website, of course, but that would be my plug-in to go. Yeah. Anybody else? Well, there are people who say, well, my users translate automatically in Chrome, but why wouldn't I have automatic translation myself in my site? Because I don't know if you've ever read a text that's translated by Google. Korean site works fantastic. Yeah? Well, the couple of ones I've read are just horrible. And it's not, you know, you're doing this for yourself because it's a very cheap option and an easy option and it doesn't take a lot of time. But if you think from a user's point of view, it's not the best option because you have probably a text that's not very easy to read. But if it's your only option, it's better than nothing. Yeah. But I would still try to consult a native speaker and try to just translate it. Yeah. But if you want to provide your website in Korean, I mean, yeah. The people can also, you know, translate it themselves in Chrome, right? You see this recommendation. If you, do you want to translate it in the language the browser is set in? Any more questions? Oh, wait. If not, let's give her a warm applause. Thanks.