#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
THE STATE OF SEO AND CONTENT MARKETING IN EUROPEDifferences, similarities, specifics, pitfalls, tips and tricks for working the “old continent”
Andre Alpar – Nov. 9th, 2016
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
1. Introduction
2. Comparing European countries
3. Examples for European country specifics
4. Results of exclusive mini survey
EXAMPLE AGENDA
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
1 INTRODUCTION
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
Andre Alpar is a serial enterpreneur that is active as a digital marketer since 1998
Andre Alpar• First online business in 1998• 30+ business angel investments• 3+ years leading role at Rocket Internet• Conference host, podcaster, book author …
Performics Berlin• Founded late 2009• Part of Publicis since late 2014• Berlin office: 170 ppl - Native speakers of 15
languages• Performics since Sept. 2015• Agencynetwork: 250 ppl in total in Germany.
2200 ppl worldwide.
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
2 COMPARING EUROPEAN COUNTRIES
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
The internet speed across Europe doesn't correlate with the countries‘ wealth
Pos. Country Speed
1 Romania 55.67 Mbps
2 Netherlands 46.88 Mbps
3 Sweden 45.59 Mbps
4 Lithuania 45.51 Mbps
5 Latvia 39.15 Mbps
… … …
23 Ireland 19.75 Mpbs
24 Cyprus 9.85 Mpbs
25 Greek 8.87 Mpbs
26 Italy 8.73 Mpbs
27 Croatia 7.30 Mpbs
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
There are strong differences in social media usage depending on educational level
Biggest correlation gap between social media usage and educational level:• Turkey• Greece• Portugal
No gap between social media usage and educational level:• Luxembourg• Denmark• Switzerland
Germany only country with „upside down“ conditions
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
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In Europe social media plays a much smaller role in everyday digital livescompared to the US
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
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“Inbound marketing” is a large topic in the EU as well but strong country differences
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#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
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“Content marketing” is a large topic in the EU as well but strong country differences
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Content MarketingInbound Marketing
IE, PO, FR, ES doesn't correlate to the other countriesMost of the countries are more interested in Content Marketing
Relationship SV / per 100.000 Inhabitants
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
How about competitiveness in SEO / the SERPs? No Data - No Comparison! We have something!
• A representative set of 250.000 keywords
• Top 100 positions captured
• Aggregation on Domain-level
• (First data set provided in Q4/2012 for countries: USA, UK, FR, DE, AT, CH, IT and ES
• (New / exclusive) data set provided in September 2016 for countries: USA, UK, FR, DE, AT, CH, IT, ES and (now new) BRA, TR, NL and PL
• Data kindly provided by
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
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Number of Domains in Top 100 positions in millions
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Number of domains successfully competing for top 100 positions in test set shows German and English markets as similarly competitive
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
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Number of keywords ranking per domain in Top 100
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Inspecting the average number of keyword an exemplary domain ranks for paints a similar picture
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
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The number of different URLs in the top 10 paints a similar picture but showing different nuances
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
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When looking only at top 10 position (those who matter most traffic wise) the picture changes slightly: Germany is significantly most competitive
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
3 EXAMPLES FOR EUROPEAN COUNTRY SPECIFICS
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
While Onpage SEO works pretty similar for all countries, Offpage SEO can be astonishingly different
• In international SEO there is often an emphasis on Offpage SEO because it differs strongly from country to country
• Technological part of Onpage SEO should be international from the start and content / translations are relatively easy to get
• Successful international Offpage SEO campaigns result from good processes - which is not something every SEO likes
International CM & SEO
Onpage!
Offpage!
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
The Netherlands (Holland) have their “own” very country-specific types of pages: the Startpaginas
• Ranking very well
• Used for navigation! “an entry point to a specific topical space”
• Most popular Startpagina provider has significant type in traffic
• Different providers of Startpaginas
• Needed in the “natural” Dutch link-mix
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
Offpage SEO in Poland is dominated by automated link-exchange systems that violate
• Many (!) providers of automated link-exchange systems (comparable to Linkvault popular around 2002)
• „Rotating“ link exchange systems
• Awareness of violation of Google guidelines
• Huge „penalty waves“ in 2012 Slow change process
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
In Russia, everything is different when doing Offpage SEO
• Yandex dominates – Google only second
• Yandex reacts less / slower to links
• Important ranking factor: listing in Yandex web directory
• Huge link buying / selling networks
• Russian SEOs favorite links: “Rotators”
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
Germans are SEO Nerds & Nuts!
• “Reengineering something unknown” seems to go really well with the German engineering DNA
• Much information in German available (little mingling with English SEO world) / Little “interference” from other countries in SERPs
• Some really good SEO Tools are from Germany (May not have fancy UIs but more and more accurate data)
• My tools: SeeRobots, LinkParser, WP youtube activator, WP SEO image renamer, RatingSpy
• Lots of measuring, experimenting and testing! Sharing in closed circles e.g. Skype exclusive chats.
• Personal guess: a good part of real spam in the Google.com index is “made in Germany”
• Supposedly Germans use the Google Spam Report form most - Examplary effect: Criteria others may not even look at: crawlers that evaluate anchor text of all external links – also monitor after link is acquired
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
No European country is like another - Europe stands for diversity in SEO and content marketing as well (as in politics)
• More search volume for competitive generic phrases e.g. “hotels new york” in English than native language in Turkey and Greece
• RU: Large link rental networks and rotators -Yandex is more defensive when it comes to links
• TR: Almost no .com.tr domains. Almost all are CNO domains
• GR: Are searching for valuable transactional keywords in English
• FR: No Translation - Different wording• South America: Almost always hosted in the USA• Exotic writings: Internal workflow/management
systems like…• .fi and .no domains can only be owned by
companies• In RO web directories are still a thing see
https://twitter.com/cognitiveseo/status/781904686655889408
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
4 RESULTS OF EXCLUSIVE MINI SURVEY
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
1. How do you think SEO differs between the US and your
country?
2. How do you think content marketing differs between the
US and your country?
3. Does your country a) take similar “but a little later” paths
when it comes to developments in digital marketing as in
the US or b) are there always specifics in your country?
4. What percentage of digital marketing budgets are
invested into SEO?
5. What percentage of digital marketing budgets are
invested into content marketing?
15 industry (one per European country) experts were asked:
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
“The language and population number is a huge challenge, We are 6 million people in Denmark, which is equivalent to the population of Massachusetts (Boston state) only.”
“I do not think there are big differences in the methods of Denmark and the United States.”
“In the US you can make niche business of selling "footballs to people without feet's", it will not work in Denmark because the niche is not big enough.”
Søren Riisager from Denmark – SEO boss and partner at WebJuice.dk
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
Luke Fitzgerald from Ireland – Head of SEO at Wolfgang Digital
“The US SEO community is a lot more open and transparent in its activities than the average Irish agency. “
“There's still a big gap to bridge and I guess workplace culture plays a prominent role in these key differences also.”
“It's clear to see the age-old poetic wisdom of Irish storytelling has a prominent role to play within modern content marketing initiatives.”
“We definitely a lead from the US if we're honest about it.”
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
Slavisa Gacic from Norway – Co-Founder Nettrafikk – @SlavisaGacic
“The biggest diffrence between Norway and US and other countries is that RankBrain and machine learning/artificial intelligence have not influenced the Norwegian SERP as much as they have in other countries.“
“Old-school marketers as well as marketing budgets have begun to focus more on digital/content marketing and SEO.“
“In the past two years there has been a big shift and the split is now around 60% traditional and 40% digital.“
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
AJ Huisman from the Netherlands – Founder of Y Content – @AJHuisman
“The biggest difference in timing is that in NL most marketers are still building the business case for Content Marketing.“
“In the US the marketing automation and content planning/collaboration tools as part of Content Marketing is further developed then in the Netherlands.”
“The Netherlands we are a at least one maturity stage behind the US, where the US is a adolescent, here in NL we are still young - about 12-18 months behind.“
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
Cosmin Negrescu from Romania– Founder SEOMonitor.com – @ncosmin
„In Romania we can even count agencies that offer SEO services on the fingers of one hand.“
„The competition is generally lower and, consequently, it’s easier toconquer the SERP real estate.”
“Marketers have too little experience with content marketing. But I’mnot complaining, since this is an opportunity for us.“
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
Andrea Pernici from Italy – CTO Search On Media Group – @andreapernici
“The only great difference is that usually US based companies have more global opportunities and less "legal" limitations.”
“On the contrary Digital Marketing Agencies are very fast to adapt in Italy, but customer are not rapid the same.”
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
Balazs Gandera from Hungary – CEO INTREN Kft. – @gandibp
“We mostly use multi-lingual SEO, most of the cases English or German next to Hungarian.”
“It is relatively easier to gain positions in the local market.”
“As I see, there is a low-level of independence for example in TV or ATL campaigns and a high level of independence in digital activities.”
“To put it an other way, it is often a task to manage this and still not think in "silos", to stay relevant and close to customers in a market far from the US.”
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
Andraž Štalec from Slovenia – CEO Red Orbit – @andrazstalec
“One thing is for sure. All the major Google updates are implemented much latter than in US.“
“Market is not saturated and more "soft" SEO techniques still work.“
“Local SEO is still not a big thing. It's like living in the bubble :)“
„US consumers are used to more direct and "pushy" approach as Slovenian users are more conservative.“
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
Alexandra Tachalova from Russia – Founder digitalolympus – @AlexTachalova
“SEO in Russia is nothing like SEO in the US.“
“In Russia, SEO is a more technical practice. People here love to automate processes to make them scalable.“
“It is quite upsetting for me to admit that purchasing links is still a hot topic here“
“The US that the Russian search market belongs to Yandex.“
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
Philippe YONNET from France – Director search-foresight – @Cariboo_seo
“They are less focused on marketing stuff, and they're very interested in black hat techniques, even if they don't use it on their websites.“
“In the past, buying links and manipulating pagerank was limited to competitive sectors“
“White hat SEO may work better in France than in the US.“
“French SEO love to take part at SEO contests.“
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
Neil Mccarthy from France – Agency Owner – @goodnessneil
“The dominance of Google (95% to 97% market share) in France must make a big difference to how SEOs work. Bing France recently refuted claims that “Google” is the most popular search query.“
“Unfortunately the increasing importance of written content and the decreasing success of backlink spam has led to a lot of French SEOs being responsible for a lot of bad content!”
“But France had a separate path into the web at the beginning with the Minitel and a lot of multimedia development (interactive CDROMs remember) in the late 90s.”
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
Yiğit Konur from Turkey – CEO of SEOZEO – @YigitKonur
“In Turkey, brands prefer to promote their current pages and don't have a tendency to create 10X content to attract more links.”
“We still have a long way to go for content marketing! “
“In technical-side, Turkish SEOs are really powerful!”
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
Cezary Lech from Poland – MaxROY.com
“In Poland SEO is still more about acquiring links than technical SEO and developing great on-site content.”
“Content Marketing is a new gold rush word, but a the end it's more about buying sponsored articles than developing own content and giving value to the readers.”
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
Magnus Bråth from Sweden – CEO of Brath AB – @AlfaMagnus
“We did a small study that showed 7-9 times harder competition in the US compared to Sweden.”
“Content marketing is less evolved in Sweden and done with much smaller budgets in a lot of cases.”
“Sweden has produced more SEO's with experience of these highly competitive segments than any other country.”
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
Will Critchlow from UK - founder and CEO at Distilled – @willcritchlow
“In general, most things are very similar between the US and the UK these days.”
“The biggest difference is that the UK audience reads US media much more than vice versa.”
“UK content marketing can often target general English-speaking audiences and get amplified by the US and UK markets.”
“For its size, a surprising amount of world-leading thinkers come out of the UK - in SEO specifically (and especially technical SEO) there's never been much gap in my experience.”
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
Andre Alpar from Germany – CEO at Performics
I‘m right here in front of you! Will
tell you what I think „live“ ;-)
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
SEO 15%
Content marketing8%
Rest of digital marketing
77%
SEO expenditure higher than Content Marketing expenditure
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
66%
17%
17%
similar but delayedcountry specificmix of both
Most countries take similar but delayed paths when it comes to developments in digital marketing compared to the US
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
The US is the leader in Digital Marketing – European countries lag
several month / years delayed
Country Month
HU 6-12
DE 12
NL 12-18
PL 12-24
FR 24
TR 24
RU 36-48
RO 24-36
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
• Don‘t ever think of Europe as „one“
• The opportunity in Europe is huge!
• Use available information on market specifics to prioritize well
• Always work with native speakers and marketers with local knowhow
• Adapt your strategies to local characteristics
• Have fun
Summary
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
Thank you for listening! Let’s stay in touch!
• www.performics.de
• Paul-Lincke-Ufer 39/4010999 Berlin
• Follow us: TwitterGoogle+Facebook
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
THANK YOU.
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
BACKUP
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
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Highest social media usage rate in USA
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
Miscellaneous
• RU: große Linkvermiet-netzwerke und „Rotatoren“, Yandexdefensiver mit Links
• TR: fast keine .com.tr Domains. Fast alles CNO Domains• GR: suchen kostbare transaktionale Keys auf Englisch• Südamerika: fast immer in USA gehostet• Exotischen Schriften: interne Workflow-
Managementsysteme wie
• RU: Large link rental networks and rotators• RU: Yandex is more defensive when it comes to links• TR: almost no .com.tr domains. Almost all are CNO domains• GR: are searching for valuable transactional keywords in English• South America: almost always hosted in the USA• Exotic writings: internal workflow/management systems like…
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
Why do German companies internationalize for so many countries?
• A lot of competitors in Germany• Good performance in Germany good performance in each
country internationalized• Good trading conditions e-commerce in FR no retour quote
• GER in US?• Pfade:• AT / CH dann UK dann EN / NL • PL / IT / ES• Was lohnt noch? IT in CH? NL in BE? ES
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
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In Europe there are more people interested in inbound marketing
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Number of Domains in Top 100 positions in millions
In France, Spain and Italy a lot less Domains are competing for 100 positions in test set – US seams to be most competitive
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
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Inspecting the average number of keyword an exemplary domain ranks for paints a similar picture
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
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Number of Domains in Top 10 positions in Millions
When looking only at top 10 position (those who matter most traffic wise) the picture changes: UK & Germany are even more competitive than the US
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
In France, Spain and Italy a lot less Domains are competing for 100 positions in test set – US seams to be most competitive
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#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
Inspecting the average number of keyword an exemplary domain ranks for paints a similar picture
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#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
When looking only at top 10 position (those who matter most traffic wise) the picture changes: UK & Germany are even more competitive than the US
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#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
Bekomme aktuelle kein SV für Twitter gezogen
SV Twitter FB
#INBOUND16Andre Alpar – @andrealpar
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