Thanks for all the information - the main purpose of my website is to sell a product and I also try to provide useful information/instruction about the subject area. I ship all over the world but currently most of my business comes from English-speaking countries or countries where it is common for people to learn some English. I have had almost no business from Latin America and I'm thinking that I could get in there better if there was a Spanish version of the website. My other reason for choosing a Spanish translation over anything else is that I know Spanish fairly well. I would probably use one of the automatic translators but check/correct the results.

It sounds like the approach to go with is subdirectories.

I know that it would be a lot of work and maintenance. I could add a translate button from one of the services to my pages but that wouldn't help people find me in the first place. Most of my pages don't have tons of text so if I could translate enough so that I would come up in Spanish-language searches, a translate button might be OK on the really text-heavy pages.

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Scarlet Quince