http which language.?

replace top level language by English?

[bolognese]

Hello webmasters,

I need some advise.

For quite some years now I own a small private website in my native language Dutch, on which I give some tips and information about interesting events, cheap ways to plan and book a holiday or city trip, etcetera.
Since 18 months I translate the main menu subjects (pages) into German and English. Depending on the subject the German pages attract quite some more visitors from Germany and other German speaking counties. The English pages less than 5 a daily base.
Could this be caused by the fact that entering the domain name of my site takes you to the Dutch page first and from there there is a flag which takes you to the German or English version? In others words, should my website be primary English, with links from there to Dutch and German?

Thanks for any help.

Jos

[Leosghost]

In others words, should my website be primary English, with links from there to Dutch and German?

yes

[Excellira]

What is your primary target audience? Focus on it. It's good to have the I18N but hosting location, language, and other factors will effect rankings.

[bolognese]

What target audience do you mean?

I want to reach anybody that wants to enjoy life and make the right choices as far as it comes to booking a holiday or city trip the cheapest way, or attend an interesting event. My location is the Netherlands.
Some years ago my page was only in Dutch language, but meanwhile I know that there are English speaking visitors that want to benefit from our experiences. People that want to plan a trip to London or Berlin or a holiday on the Balkans without going to a tour operator. It's still a hobby, but since I got some Euros on my bank account from Google for advertising...
Now I wonder how I can reach higher positions in search engines, in particular with my pages in English language.

Jos