Living la Vida Loca! Top Tips for Online Success in the Spanish-speaking World

by Gemma Birch

With 153 million users, Spanish is the 3rd most used language online, trailing only English and Chinese. However, the variations of this language, along with the cultural diversity of those using it are vast, making the job of the search marketer all the more challenging.

Ani Lopez, a native Spaniard working as an SEO Manager at Cardinal Path in Canada, will be speaking on the topic of keyword research for Spanish speaking markets at the International Search Summit @ SMX West on February 27th in San Jose. Here Ani shares important insights and tips for marketers targeting a Spanish speaking audience anywhere in the world.

Does the Spanish language create any particular difficulties for search marketers?
Sure! All languages evolve over time, but some are more diverse than others. Spanish is one of these that, growing richer, make it more difficult to manage when targeting multiple markets.

Its distribution is pretty blurry and jumps across continents, cultures and media. For instance, Spanish is the official language in 21 countries and an unofficial but widely spoken language in many others: There is the same number of Hispanophones in the US as the population of Spain and Spanish  is the 3rd most used language online (153M users) after English and Chinese.

With types of Spanish, like formal or colloquial, plus regional dialects and varieties, the idea of just using ‘standard Spanish’ is something that I don’t to buy into. Even grouping them – trying to make it simpler – leaves us with too many variants: Caribbean, South American Pacific, Central American, Highland American and more.

You can read the rest of the article here.

Today, January 6th, is a holiday in many countries.   It marks the end of the Christmas season (and the Twelve Days of Christmas) and celebrates the arrival of the Three Kings or Magis with their gifts.   The three kings leave gifts for children in many countries who awaken on the 6th to enjoy their bounty.

• In Spain, "Reyes" (Kings) is the traditional day to exchange gifts, although December 25th is making inroads.
• Celebrations include a "rosca de Reyes", a cake with a small figure hidden in the dough. 
• Whoever finds the figure in their slice of "roscón de Reyes" in Spain will have good luck for the entire year.
• The "lucky" recepient in Mexico provides tamales on February 2nd, the celebration of Candlemas.
• Residents of New Orleans enjoy a "King's cake" or "Gateau de Roi".  The person who finds the figure in the cake not only receives luck for a year, he or she must host the following year's King Cake celebration.
• January 6th also kicks off the Mardi Gras season in Louisiana.

Do you know of any other ways people celebrate the twelfth and last day of Christmas?

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