Hey,

Probably been covered before but we'll see...

If a site has really good front page rankings (organic) based on all the factors neccesary to achieve this but are solely UK based, will just having the site/site's individual pages translated into say... German, give the the same rankings but on google.de as opposed to google.co.uk for the same keywords?

It can't be as simple as this can it?

Does an SEO have to pay attention to cultural language difference's as far as keywords and search terms is concerned too?

Cheers for any help

It won't be as easy as that, but you have a leg up. If the site is already popular for English words, that means link popularity should be sufficient to take on the .DE market.

It's not that simple.

You first have to look at your domain and where the server is. The first thing Google looks at is your domain.

If you're a .de then you'll be able to list, in Google, as "A page in Germany". If you're a .se then you'll be able to list as "A page in Sweden", etc.

If you're a .com or a .net or something geographically neutral Google tries to work out where your server is.

If you're a .com and you're hosted in the UK then you'll never list as "A page in Germany".

If you have German language content on the site then these pages can list as "Pages in German."

You have to watch your meta and alt content too. If this is in English then you're less likely to get picked up for the language search option (Pages in German, etc).
If you look at the European Googles you do have these three options; the web, the language, the country.

Then there's a difference in where your links come from. If you're aiming to do well in Germany then it helps to have German links (and links from pages in German).

You do have to pay attention to cultural differences too. We always use native translators. You should be aware of slang expressions, innuendo, etc. You also have to watch out for literal translation. I saw someone translate "Bluetooth" into otherLanguage (tm) 'blue teeth'. Oops.