When designing a website for a specific country, a few parameters do matter:
1. Domain name and use of ccTLDs
2. The I.P. Address of the site’s web server
3. The language used in the domain name and file names of pages
4. The language used in the text of the site itself and defined in the relevant META tag
5. The language used by and location of sites linking to the web site.
View the full report: The influence of server location on an international web site’s search engine ranking
If you want to design a multilingual website using WordPress, qTranslate is a great plugin because it enables you to manage the translated versions of a web page using one interface. It’s therefore easy to produce and manage a homogeneous layout, from one version to another.
The only downside is that every version of a page will have the same URL.
Example:
I reckon that site.com/fr/comment-cuisiner-un-risotto would be better.
You can install the All in one SEO pack plugin and use language tags in the header fields, so that every version has its own header tags.
Example:
English <!--:FR-->Recette de risotto<!--:--><!--en-->Recette de risotto<!--:-->