Want to be really successful when it comes to Internet marketing? Go Dutch. I'm serious. In order to gain hundreds of incoming links to your website, you actually may need to learn to read and write Dutch or hire someone who can. This wil give your search engine ranking a major boost.
The reason is this.
The Dutch and Flemish Internet has something currently no other country has. The phenomenon is called "startpage" or "starter page". These are personal (usually relatively small) Internet directories, maintained by individual surfers and visible to everyone. Not only are these start pages becoming increasingly popular (especially by less experienced Internet users and those looking for subcultures or niches), they offer webmasters a change to create hundreds of incoming links to their webpage in a matter of days.
And, as we all know, incoming links is what you need. And the good thing is, not all of these require a reciprocal link, so not every link placed is considered a link-exchange.
Startpages are available almost exclusively in Dutch, although they are gaining some ground in the UK as well. It probably will not be long before they will become popular elsewhere as well – most likely in non-native English countries, since there is a wellknown (yet not catered very well) market for search facilities and directories in local languages. And since most of these markets are too small for the big guys such as Google, Yahoo or Lycos – these niches are the number one spots for startpages.
For companies and organizations, active in the alternative lifestyle markets for example, knowing how to use these Starter pages is becoming a must. "Adult" is increasingly becoming a problem area. DMOZ for example severely allows any adult websites into their directory and since this is a major "feeder" for other engines such as Google and MSN for example, getting any reasonable ranking in the Big Ones is becoming increasingly difficult for such websites.
Incoming links through startpages compensates for this problem.