If there is one thing that your website can always use plenty of, it’s  more visitors. Website administrators and search engine optimization (SEO) experts live to see the day when their website attracts such a huge number of visitors that it eventually ends up “breaking the internet.”

Whatever the content of your site may be, you will always (at least if you are good at what you do, you will) aspire and strive to ensure that your site’s message or services reach as many people across the world as possible.

Although English, for now, is the most widely used language on the internet (in terms of the language that websites are written in), it wouldn’t be wise to limit your audiences by ignoring the rest of the non-English speaking world. Therefore, whenever possible, you should make sure that you design your website with a global audience in mind. While the best time to go about it would be during the initial designing phase, you shouldn’t think that just because your website is up and running, there isn’t anything you can do about increasing your global viewership.

On the contrary, with a little extra effort, you can make it work. Here are 10 points to get you on your way:

1. Multi-Language Capability: today, you can find templates that will allow you to switch languages at the click of a button – that should be your building block. Although it might be tough to migrate to such kind of a template from a single-language one, it can be done and will be worth the effort. Once the pages have been sorted out, you will need to get down to writing everything in the additional languages. You will also need to install a new dictionary and watch how you spell every single word.

English spelling in the US is different than in the UK; the same thing goes for the French language in Canada and France.

2. Multi-Domain Extensions: another way to go about it would be to purchase domain names with extensions that are indicative of the countries of origin of the additional languages. While your main site may have a .com extension, you can add another one with the same exact content, but in French, and host it on a domain name with an .fr extension.

3. Professional Translation: if you think that writing the content for a website in your native language is tough, just imagine how much tougher it is going to be when you have to do it in a language you don’t even understand – the simplest way out: don’t do it. Hire professional writing services and let them do it for you.

Don’t ever think that the automatic language translators will do a well enough job for you. All you have to do to  find out how horrible they are is enter a sentence in one language and see the result after translating it back and forth a couple of times – chances are, it won’t make sense. Your audience will recognize that the content was done using such tools and think you are a little too lazy and unprofessional or simply won’t be able to understand what you are trying to say and move on.

4. Google Translate – if you must: if you decide that you would rather let the auto-translate feature of search engine results do the work for you, try to write your content so that it translates as well as possible. You should realize that trying to make a page legible while at the same trying to make it translate well is one huge task to juggle so much so that you would be better off going for tip 3 above; but you can still try, and who knows? You might just pull it off, especially if you stick to short precise sentences that have no abbreviations, slang, acronyms and idioms.

5. Being Conscious about Cultures/Languages: just like any tourist visiting a foreign country has to make sure that they do not offend the local population, you too should make sure that you do not trigger any taboos when you cross over to another language. Words that may seem innocent to you might have totally different and maybe even offensive meanings when they are translated.

Even the colors and background images might portray messages contrary to what you are trying to convey – while white maybe the color of purity in the United Sates, for example, if you were to head out to Japan it is the color of mourning. Images that wouldn’t raise eyebrows in the west could pose a major problem in the Middle East, for example – so make sure that you sort your image gallery out before publishing your website.

6. Keep an Eye on the Dot: mathematics, to most of us mortals, at least, is a tough subject as it is. Do not add to the confusion by mixing up when you should use decimals and commas. In Europe there are countries where the comma is used instead of the decimal point, especially when it comes to currency. What you would write as € 2.50 would be, in France for example, correctly written as €2,50. If your site is an ecommerce site, make sure that you have all the necessary currencies (and their exchange rates) sorted out.

7. Don’t Forget Video and Audio: a costly mistake to make would be to spend so much time making your videos in English and then host them on a multi-lingual site. It would be a total loss if all your video and/or audio files are in English and expect your German audiences to sit back and enjoy them. Use subtitles when creating files. If you already have the videos out there then consider having SRT files made for them so that they can be downloaded together.

8. Sign Language – There’s More Than One: some websites go out of their way and develop videos that incorporate sign language translation in them. If you decide to do the same thing, it will be a noble consideration. Just make sure that you don’t make one simple mistake: American Sign Language (ASL) isn’t the only sign language, so if you plan to host your videos on sites that are other than English ones make sure that you have the right sign language included in them.

9. Social Media Needs Translation too: you will be using your social media accounts to share your content and increase traffic. This means that all the content on them too should be taken into consideration, come translation time.

10. Keywords are Important: at some point in time you will need to promote your website and you will need to implement an SEO campaign. Don’t forget to select your keywords according to language and region.