The World Wide Web was originally mostly a tool for the Western world and English speaking people. That’s been rapidly changing in recent years; English will soon no longer be the predominant primary language of Internet users and web page translation is becoming a increasingly important strategy in web site marketing.

While over 350 million people speak English as their first language and it’s estimated somewhere around the same have English as a second language (and to varying degrees of proficiency); given that the global Internet population is now over 1 billion and rapidly climbing in Non-English speaking regions; that’s a huge number of people and potential customers who may not be able to read your site. It’s interesting to note that as of the end of 2006; Asia had more Internet users than the USA!

Here’s something you might not have considered and perhaps a very important motivator for having your web site translated into different languages. If you translate a page into a different language; search engines see it as a totally separate page; so it’s another ticket in the search engine lottery. Your 20 page site translated into 7 languages suddenly becomes a 140 page site casting a net to a broader audience.

So, a multi language site will not only bring more visitors to your sites, but the number of pages that show up in the SERPs will increase as well.