SEO Germany
Tadeusz Szewczyk
Suchmaschinenoptimierer & SEO Berater
Bürozeiten: Mo. - Fr. 9 - 17 Uhr
030/ 40 98 45 76
0176/ 21 94 63 63
Skype: onreact.com
Mail:
SEO Germany - The Trip Back in Time
In Germany SEO is still an underdeveloped part of Internet marketing.
SEO for the German market is like a trip back in time.German advertisers and agencies mostly don't get SEO yet. There are several lively SEO forums around plus a dozen good SEO blogs but that's almost all.
The German SEO industry as a whole on the other hand is years behind the global market.Search engine optimization was the great unknown until lately. Nonetheless in case you take a look at most of the websites seemingly professional SEO companies have, you might think that they don't practice real SEO at all. They buy links instead to artificially inflate their Google rankings. You're not familiar with paid links? They are prohibited by the Google Webmaster Guidelines.
Search Marketing companies sometimes appear professional but in their case studies or portfolio they show results, if any, I could top within days as a freelance SEO, although they have at least 20 employees. In Germany they can get away with it. Most programmers around here think they can do SEO themselves.
Many agencies offer optimization services like back in the days where PageRank and rankings was everything you had to take care of.That's even more outrageous when you take into account that the German speaking population of approx. 100 million spreads over 4 nations
- Germany
- Austria
- Switzerland
Many SEO specialists won't tell you anything about things like Conversions or ROI (Return on Investment). They won't speak about local SEO and when referring to social media optimization they will talk about submitting to dozens of social bookmarking sites for "free links".
There are many reasons for that poor state of German SEO. One of them is:
There's no real social news or discovery in Germany in the sense of Digg, Reddit or StumbleUpon you can write killer content for to get links.So webmasters often are forced to stick with old school ways of optimization.
You Do What?
When people ask me what I do for a living they first chuckle a little or do not understand, than they try to pronounce the German word for SEO. After that they start to wonder if I tell the truth. "Manipulating" search engine results appears to be magic to most of them.
Even Internet specialists like web designers often never heard of such a profession. On the other hand most of the blogosphere in Germany assumes that SEO has something to do with spamming, especially with blog spam.
I always attempt to bring up the most easily understandable explanation saying sth. like,
"I'm the guy that makes your website show up on the first page of the Google results".So either I am a magician or a spammer, but as I sad before, that's no wonder. SEO in Germany is still largely in the phase the Internet was before the emergence of the Web 2.0. There are successful social media projects in Germany though:
- Facebook-clones have millions of users
- at least one social bookmarking site have reached critical mass.
- a LinkedIn rival is also strong.
- Q&A sites have gained some footing
- The blogosphere is small but lively
- Delicious is wide spread in Germany so you can get popular there with German language sites too
Difficulties In Finding A White Hat In Germany
There really is a problem with so called black hat SEO in Germany. Most people, even most clients believe that SEO is about "manipulating" results and not
- improving website usability
- writing fresh, quality content
- making it readable for readers and spiders
This misinterpretation goes so far that I sometimes have to disappoint potential clients when they ask me to use tricks. Many of them do not even think of real SEO before asking me for black hat techniques. Of course I refuse. I want to stay in this business for a few years more (I do since 2004) so I work on my image as the German specialist for white hat SEO.
I attempt to optimize fully compliant with Google's guidelines. It's sometimes difficult because Google never fully clarifies what's OK and what not, the guidelines remain very fuzzy and the criteria change unexpectedly without being declared as such. Some common sense allows you to predict or assess the outcome yourself though.
When you look for the German term for white hat SEO (ethische Suchmaschinenoptimierung) at Google.de you will me at #1 for years now. That's funny because I didn't really optimize for it. Does it mean that I am the only white hat SEO around here?
Indeed German SEO service providers themselves are much quicker to employ unethical black hat tactics that breach Google's guidelines.
Respectable clients new to this business often are unable to distinguish the black and the white hats because the line is even blurry for the experts themselves. Many even fall for services offering search engine submission to over 1000 search engines. They ignore one crucial fact:
On the German market only three search engines have a substantial market share. Google is almost a monopoly with more than 90% market share in organic search.
Where Do You Come From?
You probably visit me by way of one publications I write for or contributed in the past, most notably weblogs like
- SEO 2.0
- SEOptimise
- Hubspot Internet Marketing Blog
- Collective Thoughts
- Google Blogoscoped
I'm also active on several international social media sites like
- StumbleUpon
- Sphinn
Multilingual SEO Specialized on the German and Polish Market
In case you live in the US, you probably don't realize how different and disconnected the two neighboring countries Germany and Poland are. These two European nations are very distinct although from afar they might be perceived as more or less the same. In some cases it's true, Polish and German food for instance is very similar.
When it comes to the search engine market Germany and Poland differ substantially
In case you want to enter the European market I most probably can assist you. Do you need a multilingual SEO specialized at SEO for the German and Polish market?
I'd be happy to assist your SEO for Germany or Poland.Moreover, I also learned Spanish and French. It's maybe not enough to be a SEO copywriter but at least I can find one for you. Hasta la vista!
Sincerely, Tadeusz Szewczyk
Last updated May, 15th 2009.