I was fortunate to meet up with one SEO in Vienna, Austria while I was travelling round Europe. I met up with an Aussie called Bruce Jackson founder of SEO Coach who had been living in Austria for 15 years. As his office is just outside of Vienna, we met up in an Aussie pub in Vienna.
SEO Coach’s services
SEO Coach prides itself of bringing value to local businesses such as doctors and dentists in Vienna. Bruce works with these local businesses to help them have greater visibility in the SERPs. Bruce brings with him more than 15 years experience in internet to his organisation. He also helps clients with their website design and how to improve it for the user.
Search market in Austria
It is much easier to get a client ranking as there is little competition, there are only 8 million people in Austria meaning the market is very small. For many people, they do nto know the value of Google or the significance of SEO.
As the market is small in Austria, there is just one conference a year, SEOKomm in Salzburg. It is the best way to meet other SEOs in Austria. The SEO community here is very spread out and is tied in with online marketing.
Google Updates
Bruce has not been affected by Penguin and Panda but he has been affected by Google+ Local update a few weeks ago. It means that not just anyone can leave an honest review for a local business’s site. They need to have a Google+ account and many people in Austria do not know what Google+ is. This means many of Bruce’s clients will miss out on many reviews in the future.
What is link building like in Austria?
As the market is very small in Austria, Bruce uses directories as a form of link building. He also puts a few links in forum posts and sometimes works with link exchanges. It is much easier and quicker to see results from these types of link building in Austria than elsewhere.
SEO Tools in Austria
It was interesting to find out about the tools and reports that Bruce used. As he worked with smaller and local businesses, he used Xovi, a link analysis and ranking tool which is mainly for the German market (Austria, Germany and Switzerland). He included reports for all his clients which covered rankings and a report to show their position against competitors.
Future of SEO
I asked Bruce about the future of SEO to which he replied that it will never disappear. As many of mentioned, it will become harder, which is dependent on the market you are working in. I love SEO and I know Google introduces a lot of updates but we have to find a way to work around these updates.