International Link Building - France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Switzerland

[Point_It]

I've got a partner agency (non-SEO) in Europe who wants to send some additional SEO business our way, but I don't currently have a system in place geared specifically towards international, country specific link building.

Does anyone know of any resources (blogs, lists, tools) specifically geared towards getting links from country specific TLDs for France, Spain, Germany, Italy and Switzerland? (.fr, .es, .de, .it and .ch are the TLDs.) .co.uk sources would also be handy.

A list of potential link building sources in those countries would be most helpful. I fully understand the SEO elements in play for international SEO, I just don't have any decent resource lists for those specific countries.

Sites in those countries that accept guest blog posts, language specific infographic sites, foreign PR platforms, high-quality non-penalized directories...really anything would be awesome!

Thanks in advance folks!

[inkmedia]

Hey Jon - I appreciate you posted sometime ago but we have natives working successfully in all of the regions you mention, particularly Germany:

http://www.inkmedia.eu

Of course, there are no shortcuts here... One needs to be creating high value link-worthy content and building long-term relationships with audiences in these regions.

Its then a case of reaching out to the right publishers and demonstrating why your content or product offering is valuable to their audience.

Please get in touch if you'd like to learn more about how we could help.

All the best,
Charlotte.

[Point_It]

We never did find any great resources, and there would have been significant challenges and costs to hunt them down. We decided it didn't really make sense to build out a unique system for a single potential client, so we instead recommend a few SEO companies we trust that are based in Europe.

[lovealbatross]

Hi Jon - great discussion and was my question exactly (albeit Germany, Spain & France). This was over a year ago now and I'm wondering what sort of solution you settled on or found to be most effective. I think my difficulty is finding a solution that doesn't force the client's budget beyond their expectations in terms of engaging native speakers to create language specific content and the requisite research and outreach to get links hosted on country specific TLDs. Any good outcomes so far?

Cheers in advance of any advice!

James

[Point_It]

Thanks Micah! We're definitely considering looking for local resources to help, and we'd certainly consider partnering with an SEO (agency or individual) in any of those countries for the fulfillment. Not sure exactly how to go about finding a quality SEO in those countries (or who is at least familiar with them), but open to suggestions.

[Point_It]

Thanks Stephen! We'll definitely look for some native help, but we at least want to try and put together a decent list to have them work from. We'll share what we find!

[firstconversion]

Its a different world out there - the industries are not as developed, the site metrics are way lower that what you would expect from UK/US, in most cases. Generally, tactics, thinking and approach to SEO is way behind - remember not many of these sites would have felt panda or penguin - so many are happily buying low quality directory links still

Also US based crawlers don't do a very good job of picking up non-english sites so your potential investigative resources are a lot smaller

Trying to get SEOs in the under developed markets to understand that they cant buy links has been very challenging! If you do find any resources, please share

You definitely need someone native to help and I suggest trying a lot of different strategies in order to find something that works.

S

[MicahMMG]

I realize this is probably not the response that you're looking for, but hiring a native of that country is your best bet.  A native who isn't trained in SEO at all is still probably better than an SEO vet who is a non-native non-fluent speaker of the language.

A native who is tech savvy is going to be able to give you insights you would never have as a foreign SEO.  You just need to make sure you hire someone who is tech savvy and teachable.

I hired a French person because I deal with quite a few places in France.  She had no SEO experience at all before, but within her first week she was able to tell me things like "This website is like the TripAdvisor of France."  She's been a fast learner and a huge addition to our team.