Website SEO and AI search for the Dutch market
Search work aimed at buyers in the Netherlands, for companies selling there from anywhere. English fluency here is close to universal, which is exactly why so many companies skip the market by mistake: people who speak English perfectly still type their searches in Dutch.
100
+Completed projects
Websites, landing pages and SEO projects for businesses in different niches and markets.
15
Years of experience
Hands-on experience in SEO, website development and digital strategy.
17
+Industries covered
From local services and startups to real estate, e-commerce and B2B projects.
3
Working languages
English, Polish and Russian — with content and structure adapted to each market.
What website SEO for the Dutch market involves
Query research in Dutch, whatever language your site is in
The list is built from how buyers here actually search, which is in Dutch for almost all commercial intent — including buyers who would happily read your English pages if they ever found them.
A judgement on where English genuinely still works
Parts of this market do run in English: international B2B, technology, sectors staffed largely by expatriates. Establishing which side of that line your category sits on comes before the work, because it changes the whole plan.
Prices stated, because this market expects them
Not a copywriting preference — a market characteristic. Figures or ranges, and an explanation of what moves them. The alternative is being filtered out by buyers who never tell you they did.
Specifics where competitors have adjectives
Numbers, named clients where permitted, described outcomes, stated limitations. In a market this comparison-friendly, being concrete is a competitive position rather than a stylistic choice.
AI visibility in Dutch, measured separately
Assistants answer in the language of the question from sources in that language. A company well described in English can be entirely absent from Dutch answers — and Dutch has a smaller source pool, which makes being clearly described count for more.
Reporting that separates Dutch buyers from the rest
Non-branded clicks from the Netherlands, positions on an agreed Dutch query list, and AI answer presence measured with a fixed prompt set. Branded traffic reported separately, because counting it as market entry is how a year without progress gets presented as progress.
Why English fluency doesn't mean English search in the Netherlands
Almost everyone you deal with here will speak English well enough that the language never comes up. Meetings happen in English, emails happen in English, and it is entirely possible to run a commercial relationship with a Dutch company without a word of Dutch being needed.
From that, companies draw a reasonable conclusion and lose the market on it. Speaking a language and searching in it are different behaviours. A buyer types their query in the language they think in, and for the overwhelming majority of commercial intent here, that's Dutch. Your English site may be perfectly readable to them — but readability only matters after they've found you, and they were never going to.
This is the quiet version of missing a market. Nothing fails visibly. There's no language barrier to hit, no competitor obviously outranking you, no signal that anything is wrong. There's simply a set of searches happening every day that your site isn't part of.
Where English does still work here
Not everywhere is Dutch-first, and pretending otherwise would be as wrong as the assumption it corrects.
International B2B frequently runs in English, particularly where the buyer is themselves part of an international organisation. Technology sectors often do. Categories serving the large expatriate population in and around Amsterdam do, sometimes exclusively. In those segments an English site isn't a shortcut — it's the correct choice.
Which side of that line your category sits on isn't a guess. It's visible in what actually gets searched, and establishing it is the first thing the work does — because building Dutch content for a segment that searches in English is the same waste as the reverse, just less common.
Directness as a market characteristic, not a style preference
The second thing that separates this market: buyers here are unusually intolerant of vagueness, and it shows up in search behaviour and conversion alike.
Prices are the clearest example. A page that talks around cost and invites an enquiry is read as evasion rather than as flexibility, and the buyer moves to a competitor who published a figure. This is not a market where withholding price creates a conversation.
Beyond price: claims without numbers land poorly, capability described in adjectives lands poorly, and stated limitations land unexpectedly well. A supplier who says plainly what they don't do reads as more credible than one who implies they do everything — which is true everywhere, and unusually decisive here.
The practical consequence for the work is that content built for this market is shorter, more concrete and more numerical than content built for markets that reward warmth. That's a structural difference, not a matter of taste.
The Dutch AI answer layer is smaller than the English one
Dutch-language sources are a fraction of the English-language pool, and assistants can only assemble answers from what exists.
That works in favour of a company entering deliberately. In English an assistant chooses between a great many well-described competitors; in Dutch there is considerably less to choose between, which means clear facts, consistent details and corroboration from outside your own site count for proportionally more.
The mistake is assuming visibility in English carries over. It doesn't — an assistant answering a Dutch question draws on Dutch sources, and a company invisible in those is simply absent regardless of how well it does elsewhere. This has to be measured separately, with a fixed set of Dutch prompts run monthly, because a blended number across languages hides exactly this gap.
What gets checked before anything ships
The part that's hard to advertise and easy to verify. Every language version is opened and read rather than assumed to work because the first one did. Layouts are checked in each script the site actually carries, on mobile conditions rather than on a fast connection at a desk. Structured data is validated against what the page actually says instead of being copied from a template. Every claim on the page is one that can be checked, because a claim that can't be is a liability the first time someone tries.
None of that is remarkable individually. What makes the difference is that it's done every time rather than when there's room in the schedule.
How website SEO work on the Dutch market starts
Establishing which language your buyers actually search in
Not which language they speak. For most categories the answer is Dutch, for some it's English, and building for the wrong one is the most expensive mistake available here.
Query research in the language that came back
The list built from real Dutch search behaviour rather than translated from an existing site, with intent judged rather than assumed.
Content and structure the market reads well
Pages built for those queries, prices stated, specifics where competitors have adjectives, and structured data declaring what you do and where.
Measurement in both layers
Non-branded clicks from the Netherlands, positions on the agreed list, and presence in Dutch AI answers measured with a fixed prompt set — recorded from month one.
