Multi-language website - an SEO issue

[member22]

Hi,

I have a website in 2 languages where it seems that French is considered the main language instead of English , I did reference my website on keyword A and in French out of 15 million answers I appear on the 3 page of google when I do the same thing in English I never appear even though there is only 1 million answers I don't appear !

I use the same seo technique in French an English and don't understand why google doesn't take my english pages or if it does it only takes 1 in English for 10 in French !

Why is that , what should I do, should I delete my entire website with google webmaster tools and start from scratch or should I make sure the English is the main language ?

Does anyone know where this issue is coming from ?
I am thinking about 2 reasons

- either google is lost because I have uses 3 different techniques to reference my website and all the changes I made over the last 5 months got him lost ?
- or it is because of the language issue ?

Thanks for your help

[tedster]

One factor here is that the web has many more English pages than French pages. So it may take a lot more to compete well in English than in French.

For example, Proportionately, I would think your English pages will need more backlinks to rank as well as your French pages do. The language of your backlink anchor text will also play a role.

Some other ideas: Are the two languages each in a separate directory on your site? Do you have clear language information in the server headers, meta tags and lang= attribute?

[member22]

My french page is www.#*$!.com
my english page is www.#*$!.com/en

Could it be the issue wouldn't it be better to have the english as www.#*$!.com

Thanks

[ecmedia]

My understanding is that each page on the web has its own identity and it has little to do with the domain it sits on. I am exactly in your situation with Spanish and English and my experience is that as you get more links in English you will do better. And as Tedster said, we do much better in Spanish than English simply because the web is dominated by English language.