[Cata]

Hello,

I am Cata and I am living in Romania. I am very interested in SEO for Google.nl but my experience stops at the Google.com / Google.ro algorithms. I have few years of experience in the SEO on Google.com / .ro but now I want to perform SEO (linkbuilding) for few websites located in the Netherlands and with the content in .nl

I want to ask you which are the most effective techniques for the Google.nl optimization. I've checked the links of few websites and I've found some interesting things:

- website directories (90% made on subdomains) - with a strange structure, very different by .ro / .com directories;
- a lot of link exchanges (no penalty for this thing ?);

I want to know if the directories are still a good method of linkbuilding. Are still effective ?
But the link exchange ? Is still powerful ? No penalty from Google ?

Thank you in advance !

I just hope you don't reject / ban my account because I am not able to write in your language. I am not a troll / spammer.

I will use Google translate to read your answers. Thank you in advance for your patience and answers.

[Gebruiker2500]

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!

[Cata]

Thank you for your answer @Gebruiker2500. It's very clear that the competition is not so powerful than on the Google.com but I was always interested to find the minimal efforts with the maximum of effects - methods.

In this moment it's really time consuming to test these methods and after 2 months of web directories submissions, for example, to see that this method has no effect in rankings.

This is the reason because I want to know from you if the directory submission has some effects in rankings.

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).

From your experience, the directories submissions are effective ?

But the link exchange ? But the blog comments / forum signatures ?

[Gebruiker2500]

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.

[Cata]

Thank you for your answer. I've checked some "startpaginas" and I've seen that here seems to be a lot of spam pages, automatically created. I am impressed because these subdomains are created totally automatically, from my point of view.

Google

The "startpagina" subdomains seems to be appreciated by Google.nl. They have PR too !?

I know that the Google Panda update is not related to links, is more related to the duplicate / scrapped content.

I agree that low quality links cannot add value to a website. Could you recommend me some quality startpaginas from Netherlands ? I have already a list with startpaginas but I am not very sure if the PR is a good metric to follow when I will decide to use them.

[Gebruiker2500]

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.

[SMEENK]

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...

[Gebruiker2500]

@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.

[SMEENK]

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!

[Gebruiker2500]

Top, jij ook bedankt. Tot dan!