In order to have global reach you may have to translate your website into multiple languages and perhaps host the translated copy of your site in the country where your target audience is located.

That’s a tall order but a new article by Bill Hartzer in Search Engine Guide is one of the best resources I’ve seen on Translating Web Sites.  Here’s some excerpts

"If you are going to translate an existing web site into another language or several languages, the recommended method is to use only one language per domain name. I suggest that you host the site in the appropriate country, as well (for example, use a .fr TLD for French and host it in France). If you can also set up a local office in that country, that would be ideal. When you set up a web site and domain name, you are setting up a business—and by establishing a presence in the country using that country’s native tongue is much more powerful than simply adding a few web pages to your existing web site".

"When doing the actual translating of your current web site, it’s best to use translators located in the country you’re targeting—they know the language best. If at all possible, if your company employs local salespeople or marketing staff in that country then you might consider having them write or translate the copy on the web site—they know the product and any important selling points and local "slang" that is important to include. Also, they will know the major web portals in their country (where the web site should be listed) as well as the major keywords that the site should target—translators from other countries might be able to translate the web site’s copy, but they may not be as familiar with the keywords that are important to include. Although computer-generated translation tools are available, do not use them to translate a web site from one language to another—the copy will not read well and visitors to the site will be turned off when they visit the site".

There’s actually more to this translation business – most pages when translated into another language are not optimized for search engines.  Along will all the other considerations, including local phone numbers, local, country specific domain, the SEO part is almost always overlooked.

What I’ve noticed is that sites in different countries and other languages get a fraction of the traffic that US sites of those same companies regularly get.  Internal search use also tends to be much lower in the translated sites because it’s difficult to translate both the language and functionality of a site.