One website with two languages or two websites with one language

In 80% of the cases I chose one big websites, but sometimes I split them. It depends of how "clean" are you going to optimize it.

Advantage of 1 bigger website: more easy to mantain
Advantage of 2 smaller websites: if one gets penalized, the other one might still be "clean".

It's your choice!

Hey!

In my view, you should build two sites, one for English and one for French.

Although use two languages on same site will save you much time and energy, and you may get a result in shorter time, in long terms, I think you should separate them.

Our company has 5 sites in 5 languages, English, Japanese, French, Spain, German. We do SEO for every site. After all, every market has own characteristics, and you should use different methods.