Exchanging Links with foreign sites

In English or in the language of the other site

[RobertS]

We have 2 domains, one in english and a fully translated German version sitting on its own .de domain.
When it comes to exchanging links on the German site, how crucial is the language of the link text of links from other sites pointing to it?

I'm assuming that if link partners sites are in german, then all links should be in that language too. But what about links from English sites pointing to the German Site?

[heini]

Interesting question. It depends on what theme/phrase you would like to strengthen through those links.

As far as I know none of the engines is able to detect a theme across languages.
There are phrases which in part work multilingual, like golf, hotel, brand names etc.
But in most cases you will have to decide to strengthen the phrases of one of your languages.

So in this case it would be preferable to have the links pointing to the german site in German. It's unlikely though that your linkpartners from english speaking countries like the idea of putting up german language links on their sites.

If the links pointing to the german site are in english, and the words are different between english and german, you would make your german site eventually rank for those english words.

All this is of course only related to the theming aspect of linkage. The sheer weight of the link is independant from languages.
In any case it would be a good idea to have the german phrase in some way in the url of the links.

[stever]

It could also be useful to have your German-language site showing up for English phrases. I think that a percentage of foreign language users search using English phrases anyway - but would be happy to see a German language site in the results.

E.g. "ferienwohnung", "holiday apartment" or "vacation rental"?

[vitaplease]

Just some thoughts:

you could have your english page have a link with:

"German blue wheels - information in German"

that link will lead to a German written page within the site with a German title/h1/text and the linktext "blaue Räder" linking to your all German site.
(ok - your link looses 0.15 of its Pagerank gift - but gains theme/language wise)

or

the english text in an image and the alt-text in the german phrase you want.

It could also be useful to have your German-language site showing up for English phrases. I think that a percentage of foreign language users search using English phrases anyway - but would be happy to see a German language site in the results.

I get quite some referals from German/English spelling:

"Carrental" type misspelling, but then thats not very competitive..