Over the course of the past few years, I have been approached by hotels that want to attract more international traffic to their websites. They were looking for the easiest way to optimize their sites for each country. Some may think it is simply a matter of translating the site and traffic will come. International SEO is not that easy. Here are a few challenges that companies with an international Web presence face, and some tips for creating an optimal Web presence that can perform well in international search engines. How Many Languages?

In this metrics focused world, most people would like to be able to forecast the results: "How about if I add Chinese? How much traffic can I expect? We do advise that you launch an international site with multiple languages. For instance, if you were to launch with two languages this week, add another, and then add another later, this approach would never yield the same results as if you were to launch a site with five languages simultaneously. In fact, Google and other major crawlers consider sites "global players" if they include five languages or more. This can deliver search engine ranking leverage which is just not ...