Hi, I have a difficult question. I own a hardware website http://www.kande.beand I write my reviews in English and Dutch. I post my news in English. But since alot of people who know Dutch can also speak English , I thought it would be better to make my news and everything else also in English. Is this a good idea, or am i going to lose alot of visitors by doing this?
Having content in Dutch must help you get into Dutch search engines and in exchanging links with Dutch sites. Would you not lose a lot of backlinks or reduce your potential backlinks by cutting out that language?
yeah, I also thought of that, but can't I get more hits from google, when Google get's English results from my website?
If your site is bi-lingual and anyone searches for the dutch term, then they are going to get pages from your site, so that can't be bad. having it bilingual also increases the overall pagination of the site and can only help you. The only real question is 'is it a good use of your time translating'.
Do you have access to your stats detailing the % of Dutch users and/or Dutch search terms used as well as referrers? If it is not significant, I would consider an all-English version. Have you considered asking your users for an advice? Perhaps set up a poll on the main page with a) who'd prefer English only version or b) who speaks English, Dutch or both? Hope this helps