Which SEO methods are effective on Google.nl ?

Hello Cata,

Nice to have you here on the SEO forum, Cata.

Sorry, but my English is not very good 😀

I think that SEO for Google.nl is nothing else than SEO for Google.com.

You are right. Lot of the backlinks are made by webmasters who do submit a link to a “startpagina” or “directory” as you call it. There is a lot less competition here in the Netherlands, so if a site would be banned by Google or penalized, it won’t have a big impact in search results. Ranking on Google.nl is a lot easier than it is in Google.com, at least, that is my opinon.

Pretty interesting question. I would love to talk a bit more on this in-depth.

Sorry, for the bad English!

It depends on different factors. Here in the Netherlands we use the “startpagina’s” in particular. Those sites can be seen as “directories” as we know them on USA sites.

Is it effective? Mostly not very effective, but it depends how much trust Google has in a specific startpagina. What I do first is use the open site explorer tool and check for Page Authority and those kind of interesting metrics.

If I see that the number is low, that’s a good signal to say that
site is banned of penalized by Google.

Futhermore, I check on rankings. Is the site ranking well in the SERPS?
If so, you probably get a backlink with some value in return, but that’s not always the case.

Fact is that Google don’t like those kind of link exchanges / submissions or low quality links in general. And with the Google Panda Update which will hit the Netherlands soon,
I would look for better ways to build links.

For example, try writing a few good, quality articles and ask webmasters who write about the same topic if they would vote for it by placing a link to it. Those type of links are of much higher value.

You should read this article about the Google Panda Update before making any decisions!

I was always interested to find the minimal efforts with the maximum of effects – methods.

Those links are not always the one that Google will love, certainly not with Google Panda.

For example, on Google.ro, if I submit the website to 300 directories, the website can obtain the 11-20 position. If I submit the website to 300 directories on Google.com, the effect will be minimal (almost no effect = time consuming).

This will cause a ban or penalty when Google rolls out Panda in the Netherlands.

From your experience, the directories submissions are effective ?

Yes, sometimes. It depends on the quality of the site. However, there is a good chance that Google will penalize sites with lots of low quality backlinks when the new update is rolling out.

Dear Cata,

The subdomains on the domain “startpagina.nl” are not automatically created. 😀
If I was from outside the Netherlands, I would think the same too 🙂

The subdomains are manually created by people who want to create their own page,
to manage a website with lots of links about the same topic. I think it’s some kind of “hub”?
Either way, lots of people link to those pages and those pages link to different website who all write of have information about the same relevant topic.

Startpagina.nl itself is a (very) populair website here in the Netherlands.
It’s like a page where you start surfing when you come online, such as yahoo.com or that kind of pages. It is for many people to very first page when they start surfing, a “start page”.

Please, make no mistake, Panda is a mainly designed to hit the duplicate sites or low quality sites, but there are a whole lot of things that can be negatively affected by this big algorithmic change.

If you want to do linkbuilding with startpagina’s, despite my advice 🙂 –
then you should look at metrics like Page Authority en Page Trust etc,
at least, that are some ways to determine if it is worth it do spend your time on submitting your URL to startpaginas. (mostly they ask a link in return!)

Could you recommend me some quality startpaginas from Netherlands

What kind of niche are you in? You can also see where the competitor is getting their links from.

Ik doe het maar gewoon in het Nederlands, aangezien de beste man met Google Translate werkt, zoals die zei;)

Hoe zal de nieuwe Panda-functie bij Google omgaan met landingpages die voor een bepaalde actie zijn gemaakt….
Waarvoor dus een bepaald domein is geregistreerd?
Als men naar deze pagina’s gaat, zullen het aantal pagina’s dat wordt bekeken, aanzienlijk minder zijn dan op een “normale site”
Ik heb al wel veel gelezen dat Google, webshops/informatiesites/etc allemaal anders benaderd, maar ben erg benieuwd hoe en waar de scheiding dan gaat liggen…

@smeenk

In het artikel waar ik aan refereer staan een aantal vragen die je als webmaster aan jezelf zou kunnen stellen om een beeld te krijgen van de denkwijze van Google zoals die is na de uitrol van Panda. Zodoende kun je een inschatting maken hoe Google zal omgaan met bepaalde sites. In principe krijgen low-quality sites gewoon een flinke trap van Google, wat inhoud dat ze lager gaan ranken, maar niet helemaal verdwijnen. Misschien is het een goed idee om een topic te openen over Google’s Panda Update.

Die had ik even over het hoofd gezien….
Gezien de grootte en de beperkte tijd nu, stel ik het lezen even uit tot vanavond/vannacht…
Zal dan wel weer reageren…

Bedankt in ieder geval!

Top, jij ook bedankt. Tot dan! 🙂

Ik heb de Panda-update gelezen, ik heb echter ook al wel soortgelijke artikelen gelezen…

Wellicht is de onderstaande iets minder uitgebreid in bepaalde zaken, ik vind hem verder echter erg duidelijk (en ook nog eens Nederlands;-))

Verder staan er een tweetal filmpjes bij, die ook alles duidelijk weergeven…
Kende je deze pagina’s al?

Google Panda Update

@smeenk,

Ja, die pagina heb ik toevallig al gespot. In dat filmpje gaat Matt Cutts er vrij beknopt op in. Gelukkig doet SEOmoz dat beter.
Blijkbaar gaat Website Usability nu dus ook een grote rol spelen in SEO met die aankomende Panda.

Hi Cata,

If you don’t agree with the linkbuilding via “startpaginas”, which methods are the most effective ? Related articles on different web blogs ?

– Showing up in the community

– Building good, quality content that people will love and would like to link to

– Also, indeed, writing good articles, placing them on other websites or blogs with,
of course, a good backlink to your own site (good anchor text, but not spammy, different anchortexts)

– Forum marketing

– Maybe Social Media Markt

And another thing. If I want to obtain a link on a website (in an article) which is the most effective procedure for that ? The article (written by me) must be paid ? Which are the normal prices for a link in an article (written by me) on a website / blog with PR4, for example ?

Please, do not pay for a link. Google will penalize that. Kindly ask the site owner if you
can place an article on his site or blog. Maybe you can write an article first and e-mail them with an example so they can get an impression of the quality of your content.
You have to convince them, and sometimes, it’s not that hard to do. If they don’t have to write content by themselves, they would be more than happy to accept yours and place it on their blog/website.

I’ve just tried to create a new subdomain on the startpagina.nl website. I’ve made the account but I didn’t find how to create the effective subdomain. The only things I’ve can control is the startpagina.nl links but these are available just for me. How to create a subdomain here, related to my business ?

LE: I’ve find how to create the subdomains.

Great. I would make a good, quality startpagina which is designed for users, not for search engines.

Just to remember, be careful:

Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”

Bron

Dear Cata,

Startpagina’s are a phenomenon unique to The Netherlands and even acknowledged by Google (Matt Cutts uses it as example sometimes). They are very topic centered (subdomain name) mini hubpages created by enthousiastic people that are administrators of those pages. All links (except the nofollowed ad links) are manually added to the page by the administrators. Startpagina gets about 1 million visitors per DAY. So it’s not just about getting ‘juicy links’ but also about getting targeted visitors.

The strength of the pages depends on the quality of links on it. Some people create very high quality link pages that get very high search engine rankings (for example: geografie (geography), look for geografie.startpagina.nl).

Other options for promoting:
– guest post blogging (for example: your experiences with optimizing for Romanian sites)
– forum comments
– finding more directories and startpages like startpagina. You could use https://www.linkbuildingtool.nl to find those, but the tool is only available in Dutch for now (will take a couple of months before the English version is launched)
– press releases
– tools and widgets
– Google Maps (if you have an office here)
– launching a Dutch site (.nl domain) with your primary (Dutch) keywords
– blogposts and promotion through social bookmarking sites (Nujij.nl for example)
– Dutch Facebook page, Twitter page, Hyves page, YouTube page
– find business partners, suppliers etc. that are willing to exchange links
– Marktplaats.nl ads (sort of Craigslist)
– Optimizing pictures for image search

Basically, the same as you were doing in other countries 🙂
For the rest, your oppertunities depend on the niche you are working in

Your greatest barrier is the Dutch language itself. It probably takes you 5 times longer to find a good linkpage. Apart from Korean, there isn’t any other language that is so inconsistent and has so many grammatical exceptions, that every ‘Google translated’ article you publish will probably become a joke (no offense, we’re just… complicated people :)). So if you want to do internet marketing in The Netherlands, you probably gonna need some help.