SEO in Germany – Juan Gabriel Andino
Juan Gabriel Andino is the CEO of Redictos, a Spanish-German marketing agency that works in both markets. Juan Gabriel began to get interested in this sector when he observed that their own websites had no traffic.
He ended up stuck in it “by accident” when one of the projects of his company caught the attention of a Spanish cars brand and hired them to improve their positioning.
He talks about the peculiarities of SEO in Germany and Spain, the differences that can be found in these two markets and how to propose a marketing plan for each country
How do you first get interested in marketing?
I started to get interested in online marketing when I found out that my own projects had no traffic. This happened in the 90s with webs in html, and in a “more serious” way in 2005 with an online store in oscommerce irrigation systems.
When and why did you decided to create a SEO agency?
It was more like an “accident”. We had created Redictos with the aim of setting up our own projects in generic domains. The first project was coche.es in 2010. In this project we did everything by ourselves: my former partner Florian did the development and I did the rest; from SEO to commercial issues. The success of its positioning called attention to a Spanish car brands and contacted us. So we started to offer online marketing services as well.
Why did you choose german and spanish?
I am German-Spanish, with German mother and Spanish father, and I have been raised 100% in Germany in a city near Bremen. There, I started with BBS projects, then HTML websites. Fun Fact: My friend, neighbor and future partner created the first Seo department in an agency in the late 90s.
My current partner, Mathias, is German and is located in the Berlin office, which allows us to react to trends and news of online marketing, affiliate and startups immediately. I think we can offer the most complete knowledge of both markets.
What is your opinion of international linkbuilding? Does each country use different strategies?
No. I believe that linkbuilding is divided into organic, content marketing, and link marketing (purchased links) in all countries.
The only part 100% controllable and scalable is usually the last. 100% transactional websites usually have problems with the first two.
How is SEO done in Germany? Could you give us some advice to focus one of our campaigns in this country?
Logically it is done in a similar way: Technical SEO, Content, Linkbuilding. The algorithm is the same in all countries. What happens is that the competition has raised the top level. The Spanish phrase “SEO can be done without links” that always reappears seems to me a myth, at least for a market as competitive as the German one.
What can you tell me about the SEM? Do Germans and Spaniards trust this type of strategy? Who is betting more on them?
Of course. In fact I think Germany is the “world champion” of performance marketing and its analytics. What also fits the cliché of the German mentality.
I remember that already in 2006 we started with first experiments of attribution models and similar things. The budgets and CPCs are usually different but the conversion, like I explained to you with the premium / freemium, too.
What similarities and differents can be found between the German and Spanish market?
The German market is perhaps one of the most mature in the world, which makes it more demanding, much more competitive and expensive. In the e-commerce sector, the German customer requires a 24-hour shipment and also, the customer does a lot of returns (Zalando did a lot of “damage” because they were the first to offer free returns).
Logistics is usually the biggest problem. In general, the necessary budgets in Germany are much higher.
In addition, they look at many legal things, and complaining is the national sport. The Spanish client and user forgive smaller failures and delays, which makes it easier to start and “bootstrap”.
How much does the language influence the creation of a marketing plan?
Obviously the language is important, but rather the mentality is what matters. We have seen, for example, that business models such as freemium / premium tend to work much more in Germany.
I mean, is more common that the German contracts the paid version after a free phase.
Which advice would you like to give to someone that has just started doing marketing?
Read less theory, start a project (even a blog) and try things. They have to work but they have not been discovered yet. Oh, and to listen to podcasts (especially mine).
I do not know why, but it has always given me the feeling that people have more practical and “actionable” things in that Audio format.
