Why being a Dutch SEO is different

SEO

Search Engine Optimization in the Netherlands is definitely different from SEO in the US or the UK. First of all there is offcourse the language. A search engine determines the language of a webpage mainly on the links to, and from, other webpages. This can easily become a problem If you link out a lot to (or gain links from) English sites, before you know it the search engine thinks that your site is in English causing bad rankings in your local language.

Then there’s marketshare, talking about search engines over here means talking about Google. Google has a whopping 96 percent marketshare. Yahoo is pretty much non-existent and MSN/Live is only used by kids and people who don’t know how to change Vista’s default search engine. There are a couple of other, local engines but I don’t know any SEO paying attention to them.

Another issue is Belgium, about half of the Belgians speak Dutch and thus making it an interesting audience. But ranking in the Netherlands doesn’t mean ranking in Belgium as well… That said, because of the Dutch’ international orientation a lot of Dutch people search for English terms. So you’re pretty much obligated to handle a multi-country/language strategy.

Ranking for competitive search terms in the Netherlands is a lot easier. Even though more then 80% of the Dutch population uses the internet there’s still only about 17 million of us. And accordingly a lot less webpages to compete with.

But most of all being a Dutch SEO is fun. Because of our experience in local optimization and our international orientation we not only get to work with Dutch, German, French, Polish and Spanish clients, but many US clients as well. To me it almost feels like having the best of both worlds :-)

July 21, 2007 - RSS for Comments