European SEO Services

Multilingual SEO in Europe

European SEO requires an advanced strategy and an understanding of different cultures, languages and specific SEO techniques.

At Indigoextra, we have spent 16 years refining our approach to SEO. As search engines evolve, we evolve. This ensures we always provide the most up-to-date advice, along with impactful content, thorough SEO audits and high authority backlinks.

Our multilingual SEO agency combines experienced copywriters, translators, link builders and web designers speaking 9 different languages. Get in touch for a free SEO consultation or to discover how our European SEO services can help boost your online presence.

SEO Strategy

Our SEO consultancy service allows you to make the most of our in-depth understanding of what Google is looking for in different countries across Europe. Services include SEO audits, content planning and strategy recommendations.

With native experts speaking a range of languages, our SEO strategy advice can identify marketing opportunities matched to your industry, countries and target audience. Our approach combines intelligent software with human expertise, giving you the best of both words.

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Web Translation Service

Having a professional translation of your site is paramount if you are seeking to break into new markets. Our multilingual translation team has a wealth of expertise translating websites from English into French, German, Spanish, Italian and Dutch.

These native speakers will ensure your website is translated perfectly, conveying your message professionally and eloquently, in your desired language. While online translation tools can be useful for getting the gist of something, they don't create fluent, flawless copy. Leave that to the experts, instead.

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Content Optimisation

You may be in a position where you've translated your website, but are finding it a challenge to rank high in other languages. This might be for a range of reasons - a poor translation, multi-language content not being optimised, or a lack of backlinks from other countries.

With our website optimisation service, we will complete all the essential on-page SEO, including adapting content to the local culture, incorporating semantically related keywords and writing or translating metatags, product descriptions and blogs.

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SEO Audit

An invaluable starting point for your company’s progression, our multilingual SEO team can carry out an in-depth analysis of your website. Taking into account aspects such as user experience, quality of content, navigation options and its overall design, we’ll make suggestions on how things can be improved.

We’ll also tweak those crucial (yet often overlooked) points, such as how efficient the checkout process is, and assess how easy it is for users to complete the outcome you intend. This might be signing up to a newsletter, engaging with your site, or completing a purchase. We can then implement any advice.

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Multilingual Link Building in Europe

Building bilingual or multilingual backlinks is a highly effective strategy for attracting traffic to your site – as long as it comes from reputable and relevant sites.

We have an extensive network of high-authority, trustworthy sites in France, Germany, Spain and other European countries, where we can arrange for content to be posted. These guest posts will be engaging and well-researched, and crucially will link back to your site. This allows Google to see that you are relevant in that country, and as such, boost where you rank locally, too.

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Multilingual Content Writing

We have a team of experienced, native writers in the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands. They can create content for you which is 100% unique, which will be draw in readers in your chosen market. Blog posts and product descriptions will also take into consideration cultural differences and expectations, many of which are not immediately obvious to a non-native.

We can also advise on your overall content strategy, identifying opportunities you may have overlooked, or pages that can be enhanced to attract substantially more traffic.

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The benefits of European SEO

Multilingual SEO is the most effective way to reach potential customers across the globe. A study by IAB Europe, a leading authority on internet marketing trends in various European countries, concluded that the average European spends 15 hours every week browsing the internet. It also found that 96% of all European internet users search online for purchases. Companies and organisations seeking to expand their customer base and visibility in European markets have a clear interest in boosting their ranking on local versions of Google and other search engines.

That’s easier said than done. SEO ranking factors are constantly being refined to prevent businesses from artificially boosting their search engine results. Any SEO marketing strategy requires state-of-the-art knowledge of how Google ranks websites. When looking to expand your online presence in Europe, make sure to keep the following in mind:

Develop a clear SEO strategy
Optimise your web design
Conduct localised keyword research
Translate and localise existing content
Create quality content
Write with the European culture in mind
Prioritise multilingual link building
Make use of images & infographics

Let’s run through each of those in-depth:

Ensure your website takes off effortlessly

Ensure your website
takes off effortlessly

You get the biggest piece of the pie

Develop a clear SEO strategy

Before adding keywords to your website or commissioning blog articles, you must first figure out where you stand and what you need. This helps you avoid inefficient work and allows you to use your budget where it matters most. It’s best to follow a clearly defined order:

1. Thoroughly analyse existing pages and content

Do you already have a website and content in one of your target languages? In that case, the first step is analysing your website’s performance. Where does it rank for your preferred keywords? How much traffic does it get? Are there pages that should be receiving traffic but aren’t? Is your website functioning properly, or are there elements that are harming its SEO ranking?

2. Conduct keyword research

How competitive are your keywords? How many searches do they receive each month from your target country? Which keywords are used in different languages?

To determine which keywords to focus on in your content and meta tags when targeting multiple European countries, you need to answer the above questions.

3. Draw up an SEO strategy

Once you’ve conducted your keyword research, draw up an SEO strategy. This strategy will depend on several factors, including budget, company size, target market, current performance, and performance targets. Ask yourself:

What kind of content will appeal to your target audience?
Where will you be most likely to find that audience?
What is the most effective way to increase traffic on a limited budget?
Which elements are essential, and which can be added later?

These are all questions that our lead SEO consultant can answer. With 16 years’ experience working with many different kinds of companies in Europe, from small organisations focused on a single country to large businesses with branches in multiple countries, we know what we’re talking about. Our unique insights into the SEO world and how it applies to your business will help the process run more smoothly. This could save you considerable time and money in the long run.

Conduct localised keyword research and competition analysis

SEO back the right horse

See our full guide on completing international keyword research.

A crucial step for any international SEO strategy is conducting thorough keyword research for each of your target languages. Keep in mind that keywords are culture- and dialect-specific. Many European target languages are spoken in several different countries, meaning you need to carry out country-specific keyword research. For example, in the UK, the term ‘mobile phone’ may be a priority keyword, while in the US, ‘cell phone’ would be the most searched term. European countries are no different. Spanish keywords in Spanish markets will differ from those in Spanish-speaking Latin American countries, Dutch keywords in the Netherlands won’t necessarily be the same as Dutch keywords in Belgium, and French keywords in France may not be the same as French keywords in Canada or Côte d’Ivoire.

Once you have a list of keywords, their search frequency and level of competitiveness, it’s time to make strategic decisions. If you have a new website, then it’s often best to target keywords with a low level of organic SEO competition and reasonable search volume. For established businesses with impressive websites, you can target keywords with more monthly searches - even if they have more SEO competition.

For small and new businesses wishing to target highly competitive keywords, one option is guest blogging in multiple languages. Write blog posts that include a backlink to your site and contact webmasters who own relevant, high-traffic sites to ask them to add the post to their site. This way you’ll benefit from their domain authority and established reputation, making it more likely that they will rank well in Google right away.

We offer extensive keyword and competition research across nine European languages, including English, French, German, Dutch, Spanish, and Italian. Click any flag below for information about SEO in that specific language.

English

German

French

Dutch

Italian

Spanish

Optimise your web design

A recent Semrush study of Google’s ranking factors shows that visitor experience is hugely important to search engine ranking - not to mention its impact on conversion rates. This study found that the amount of time visitors spend on a website and the number of pages viewed by each visitor are more important than how often a specific keyword is included on a page. A user-friendly website with a responsive design is essential for visitors and will also drive more traffic to your site by improving your search engine ranking.

Our web design service focus gives you everything you need to look great and rank well with search engines. As well as SEO, we design sites with a positive user-experience as this will help you convert more sales. Our design optimisation:

Gives visitors a positive first impression so they stay on your site longer.

Is centred on user-experience (UX), meaning visitors can find everything they need and are guided through the sales process intuitively.

Is adapted to look good and be responsive so that it can function correctly across mobile devices, tablets, and monitors.

Uses a colour scheme, font and layout that are appropriate for the product or service being offered.

Is optimised for aspects known to impact ranking on Google, including mobile-friendliness, page load speed, use of adverts, etc.
Translate and localise existing content

SEO for European markets by definition means multilingual SEO. Research has shown that internet users strongly prefer searching for products and services in their native language. For example, if you look at the top 20 keywords for amazon.de and compare the original German and English translation, there are over 40 times as many German searches as English searches.

If you have a well-established site with hundreds of blog pages, you may not need to translate all of them. We can help narrow down which blogs will give you the best return on investment in terms of traffic and likely conversions. When doing a website translation, it's also essential to translate the small elements. For example, having your checkout page available in each language you target is a must. Customers are uncomfortable entering sensitive financial information on a page they cannot fully understand.

Google treats automatically translated content as spam. They try to either not index it at all or rank it far worse than professionally translated content. Automatic translations also often contain hilarious, yet embarrassing mistakes.

Indigoextra has a team of translators who are native speakers of nine European languages. This team works with our SEO consultant and link building team to translate, localise and optimise content to perfectly target European markets.
Create quality content

Solid keyword research does little good if not backed up by high-quality content. On one hand, low-quality content can hurt your SEO ranking and leave a negative impression on your visitors. For example, ‘keyword stuffing’ - excessive and unnatural use of keywords - will negatively impact your ranking on Google. On the other hand, quality content with carefully integrated keywords on your website and third-party blogs will positively boost your website’s performance in several ways:

A well-written website homepage and informative internal pages will draw in visitors and encourage them to stay on your website longer.

On-site blogs increase the amount of time visitors spend on your website and present a key opportunity to outline the benefits and potential use of your service or product. They must be relevant and useful. Research has shown that writing a small number of longer blogs is likely to give you far more traffic and SEO benefit. See how to write blog posts for companies for a detailed guide.

Guest blogs on high-authority third-party sites will boost your credibility and SEO while drawing readers of these sites to your own.

Our approach to SEO content creation comprises two key elements:
Analytical (Left Brain Approach)

This element involves strategically removing any content that negatively impacts your search engine ranking - duplicate content, error links, overly heavy images - and adding elements needed to improve it like missing meta titles, correctly formatted images, improved page speed, etc. Keyword research and competition analysis are used to examine the keyword balance in meta tag titles and descriptions, URLs, h1 titles, on-page content, etc. We provide reports and write new content as required to optimise your site, create a healthy keyword balance, and fix any common structural problems.

Creating Quality Content (Right Brain Approach)

Google’s RankBrain algorithm uses artificial intelligence to measure how good the content of a website is. The longer visitors stay, the more pages they visit and the more they share your content, the better. A key component of our SEO services in multiple languages involves our creative writing team, which is composed of native speakers from France, the Netherlands, the UK, Germany, Spain, Portugal and Italy. They are guaranteed to research and write compelling content to suit your target market.
Domain extensions in Europe
Write for the European culture

Keeping cultural differences in mind is key to reaching your target European audience, whether you’re writing new content or localising translated content. There are substantial cultural differences between European countries to consider while writing content:

French, German and Dutch have both formal and informal equivalents for the English ‘you’. However, what ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ signify varies widely. In France, the formal ‘vous’ is very common, and the use of the informal ‘tu’ will make your French readers feel the text is written for young children. In the Netherlands, the formal ‘u’ is much less frequently used, and the informal ‘jij’ will be appropriate in many settings.

The UK tends to be more reserved than continental Europe. Expressions of enthusiasm written for a UK audience will likely fall flat in the more emotionally driven cultures of Spain or Italy.

Writing style also differs substantially between European countries. Readers in Germany or the Netherlands prefer clear, structured articles that outline the points to be covered in the first sentences. Southern European audiences in Spain or Italy, on the other hand, would find that incredibly dry and boring. A more narrative-heavy writing style would better appeal to these markets.

Sensitivity to data security is another key difference between the UK and other European countries. Research carried out by Symantec shows that concerns over data security are much higher in Spain (78% of respondents) and Germany (62%) than in the UK (49%). For Spanish or German versions of your website, it’s key to make sure that the Terms & Conditions page is easy to find and very readable. Adding a logo of any firms that helps protect bank transactions through your website is likely to increase sales.

All of these nuances fall under the category of ‘localisation’, which requires skilful writers who are not only native speakers of the target language but who also fully understand the cultural setting for which they are writing or translating. Our writing team includes native speakers born and raised in nine different European countries. They know their specific cultures like the back of their hand and write for them with extraordinary ease.
Multilingual Link Building

The on-site SEO described in the preceding sections is just one part of the picture.

Andrey Lipattsev, the Senior Search Quality Strategist at Google, has confirmed a long-known fact by SEO experts that on-site content and backlinks weigh equally when it comes to determining those precious top positions on a search page. That’s why link building is a crucial component of any SEO-strategy. On one hand, links in blog articles and directories help direct those potentially interested in your product or services to your website. On the other, backlinks are a key component for determining how ‘relevant’ Google considers your website to be.

Our multilingual link building services include:

Guest blogs

Guest blogging improves your search engine ranking directly in two ways: A) having links placed on high-authority blogs that rank well factors into Google’s algorithm to improve your ranking and B) these links draw interested visitors to your website, thereby increasing your web traffic and further improving your ranking on Google. We offer SEO guest blogging in English, French, German, Dutch, Italian and Spanish, and we reach out to relevant niche sites on which to place these.

Social media

No online marketing strategy can afford to ignore social media. It’s one of the easiest ways to connect with your target audience in multiple countries. We create and manage country-specific social media profiles on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest. We can also run Facebook advertising campaigns and provide image and infographic sharing services.

Directory submissions

Like blogs, directories help to direct more traffic to your page while boosting your ranking on Google. Many people actually use directories to find the product or service they’re looking for. At the same time, industry-specific directories generate high-quality, organic links to your site. Most directories require unique content and have a strict word limit, meaning you cannot simply copy and paste the ‘about us’ section from your website. We write short, unique descriptions of your company and submit these to relevant directories in your target country.
Images & Infographics

While SEO mostly focuses on written content, images can be a powerful tool if used properly. There are several different ways in which images combined with written text can be leveraged to generate more visibility and traffic to your website. Unique images and graphics that are funny, educative or informative tend to rake in far more ‘likes’ than ordinary images.

Indigoextra’s in-house graphic design team works with our writers to provide a variety of image-based content to share on your website, third-party blogs and social media:

Image shares

Image sharing websites allow you to share a unique image with a short description and a link to your website. It’s a great, easy way to generate extra traffic.

Quotagraphics

We find funny or inspiring quotes from well-known authors, scientists, actors and other famous personalities that are relevant to your company. We combine these with an image of the person in question or another entertaining image, alongside a short description of your company and a link to your website. This is the kind of content that people love to share on social media. It generates tons of traffic with hardly any effort.

Infographics

Infographics combine graphic design and images with informative and entertaining written content. It’s a perfect way to attract the attention of people who may be interested in your products, but who may also be put off by heavy-handed sales pitches. Our team of talented designers work alongside our writers to create tailor-made infographics that offer useful and entertaining information related to the products and services you provide.

FAQ

What qualifications do your SEO team have?

At Indigoextra, our multilingual copywriters and SEO experts are all qualified to degree level or above. What’s more, they are experienced planning multilingual SEO campaigns across a variety of industries and sectors, and understand the nuances and subtleties of all the countries and cultures they deal with. And it goes without saying, that they all have great references too.

While copywriters only work in their mother tongue, they are all bilingual, allowing us to deliver bilingual SEO services with ease and to a high standard.

Which industries do you cover?

Over the years, we have worked with a diverse range of B2B and B2C companies, supporting them with their SEO needs. We have generated outstanding results regardless of the industry. All that we stipulate is that your industry lies within our ethical policy, which you can read here.

Is keyword research included?

Absolutely. An important part of SEO is ensuring the right keywords are targeted. We carry out analytical research so that your company targets the most relevant and beneficial terms. As a European SEO agency, we specialise in multilingual keyword research, looking at works best in your target country. And, in accordance with the best SEO practice, we never stuff your site or content with keywords for the sake of it.

What is multilingual link building?

The term “link building” refers to the process of having other websites place links to yours. It is a big help in terms of SEO, as Google places significant weight on links from other sites. Multilingual link building takes into consideration the way people use the internet in different countries.

Is there a discount for multilingual SEO campaigns?

Yes, we offer a 10% discount for multi-language SEO campaigns.

What other factors affect European SEO?

Each country in Europe has its own culture and way of doing things. We use native experts who understand the cultural expectations and traditions that govern how each country’s inhabitants use the internet and shop online. This allows us to tailor your campaign to maximise its effect. You can read more about how culture affects marketing in Europe.

Get in touch for a free SEO consultation.

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