New market without Google Ads

In a new market, you get found without Google Ads by building pages on the questions local buyers ask, in their own language. Every language version gets its own URL with hreflang. Rewrite per country, do not just translate. Assess after eight weeks and until then keep a small ad budget on your brand and best keywords. That is international SEO as a market entry strategy.

Next quarter you are entering the Netherlands, the UK or Germany, and nobody there knows your name. This playbook belongs to our guide on becoming less dependent on Google Ads. It is also what we build with content marketing for B2B software companies.

We are entering the Netherlands but nobody knows us there: how do we get leads?

Nobody searches for your brand, so you get found on what buyers do search for: their problem, their rules and your category. Our approach for the first 90 days:

Week	What you do	Why
1 to 2	Collect local search questions: keyword data per country, People Also Ask, questions from sales and partners	What ranks in Belgium is not what people type in Utrecht or Manchester
2 to 4	First 15 to 30 pages on those questions, in the buyer’s language	New pages get found first on long, precise questions
3 to 6	Small ad budget on brand and keywords with buying intent	A bridge, not an engine
9 and later	Assess, expand what works	Only then do you see what a page really does

Why this way? In our Search Console data, new pages draw a larger share of their impressions from long questions of 7 words or more. At Hedgehog Company that was 19% against 10% for older pages, at Kaizo 16% against 10%. An unknown brand therefore comes in first through precise questions, not through the broad head term.

Which market to pick first is covered in entering new markets and our international marketing strategy.

Where do you start when expanding to Germany or the UK: ads or content?

With content on the questions, and ads as a temporary bridge. Clicks are expensive in software categories. Across 106 Benelux search terms for software, a click costs a median of about 22 dollars (Google Ads data, September 2026). A click on “helpdesk software” costs 146 dollars in the Netherlands, “HR software” 58 dollars.

	Google Ads	Content and SEO
First visitors	The same week	After a few weeks
Cost per extra visitor	Every click again	Falls as the page earns more clicks
If you stop paying	Visitors stop immediately	Page stays findable
Strong at	Testing a message quickly	Building a pipeline you own

Ads are useful for quickly testing which promise lands: see international Google Ads.

We want to enter the UK. Is Google Ads even more expensive there?

We do not know that for every category. Our own data covers Belgium and the Netherlands: you will find those figures in the CPC benchmarks by industry. For the UK we have one example: a click on “carbon accounting software” costs about 72 dollars there. So check the CPC per country in the Google Ads Keyword Planner before you choose. Then put that price into the click-or-article calculator next to the price of an article.

Should a Belgian SaaS write in English or in Dutch?

In the language your buyer searches in, so often both. For the UK you write English. For the Netherlands you write Dutch, but Netherlands Dutch: buyers there sometimes use different words than in Flanders. We list those differences in SEO in Belgium vs. the Netherlands.

English works for an international category term. Dutch wins on the questions a business owner types in their own words. Which languages your site really needs is covered in multilingual B2B website strategy.

Hedgehog Company, software for carbon accounting, does it in two languages. We first tested 18 articles in English and Dutch: 2,314 impressions and 24 clicks in 19 days. A month later, 77 articles were online. That gave 6,701 impressions and 42 clicks, and 77 of the 153 URLs ranked in the top 10 on average.

Is translating enough or do you need to rewrite content per country?

Rewrite per country. A translation carries over your Belgian keywords, examples and rules, and those are often wrong in another market. According to its own documentation, Google looks at local addresses, phone numbers, language and currency, among other things, to determine which audience a page is for.

Element	Translating is enough	Rewrite per country
Product specifications, manuals	Yes
Keywords and titles		Yes, check local search data
Examples, customers, prices, currency		Yes
Regulation and deadlines		Yes, different legislation per country
Questions in your FAQ		Yes, ask local sales what they hear

How do you keep your Dutch translation from sounding like translated English?

Write from the local search question, not from your English source text. Have a native speaker from that market proofread every text. Use the word buyers type, even if your product uses an English term. And cut long English sentences into short ones. Read more about the choice between translating and localising in translating content for multiple markets.

How do you set up hreflang correctly for a site in NL, FR and EN?

Give every language version its own URL that, according to Google, refers to itself and to all other versions. An x-default catches visitors whose language does not match.

Version	Example URL	hreflang
Dutch, Belgium	/nl-be/	nl-BE
Dutch, Netherlands	/nl-nl/	nl-NL
French, Belgium	/fr/	fr-BE
English	/en/	en
Default for the rest	/en/	x-default

The choice between a country domain and a subfolder is explained in international SEO, and you track down errors with hreflang tags explained.

How quickly does a new market produce leads?

Count on eight weeks before you assess. That is what we see in Search Console across six sites: new pages peak in week 1, dip in weeks 2 to 8 and then break through. On customerimpact.be, the level from week 9 onwards was about three times higher than in weeks 2 to 8. Not every site shows this: one of the six stayed flat.

At Hedgehog we saw new pages show up quickly in AI Overviews. On 28 September 2026, Google showed an AI Overview on the article’s own question for 31 of the 41 new Hedgehog articles. Hedgehog was listed as a source 23 times. On the broader head term, it was only 1 in 18 times. How that plays out in the Netherlands is covered in GEO in the Netherlands vs. Belgium.

It can be fast, too. At YouPower, 552 pages went live in three languages in 11 days. The first enquiry came in on day one via Stewie, our AI chatbot.

When we are not the right choice

If you need meetings within six weeks, outbound and Google Ads are faster than content. And if you do not yet have anyone in sales to follow up the new market, build that team first.

Frequently asked questions

How do you approach SEO if you want to enter the Dutch market from Belgium?

Start with Dutch search data and give your Dutch pages their own URL with hreflang nl-NL. Read the full SEO step-by-step plan in SEO in Belgium vs. the Netherlands.

What does it cost to build a knowledge base in two languages?

With us, content costs 950 euros per month for 5 articles, 2,450 euros for 15 articles or 4,500 euros for 30 articles. The 4,500 euro package is the one with Dutch, French and English. If you are targeting Germany, we also write in German, for the German market. There is a three-month minimum, with no setup fee. Your media budget for any bridge campaign comes on top of that separately.

Which agency helps a Belgian software company get found in the Netherlands and the UK?

Choose a partner that writes in the language of each market, uses local search data and reports on leads, not on page counts. We build knowledge bases like that for B2B software, as at Hedgehog in English and Dutch.