SEO and AI search for Belgian businesses

One country, three search audiences

Belgium is not one keyword list. A shopper in Antwerp searches in Dutch, a shopper in Liège searches in French, and Brussels uses both. A small German-speaking community lives in the east. A site that offers one language only is invisible to a large share of buyers, and a machine-translated copy of a Dutch page from the Netherlands often misses Belgian wording.

We start from real queries in your Search Console and from Belgian SERPs, then decide which languages earn a full version and which only need key pages.

Domains, structure and hreflang

The .be extension is run by DNS Belgium and tells Belgian users and Google which market you serve. A .com can also rank if the signals are clean. What matters is that each language version points to its siblings.

• Use hreflang values nl-BE and fr-BE, plus de-BE if you publish German, and an x-default for the language chooser.
• Keep one canonical URL per language version. Do not canonicalize the French page to the Dutch one.
• Do not redirect visitors by browser language alone. Let them switch, and let Googlebot crawl every version.
• If you also sell in the Netherlands or France, keep nl-NL and fr-FR as separate sections with their own prices and delivery terms.

Our hreflang generator produces the tags, and international SEO covers the wider structure.

What an SEO programme covers

We split the work by what your site is and who buys from it. Each Belgian service page below explains the scope in detail.

Rules that touch an SEO programme

• GDPR. The Belgian Data Protection Authority (APD in French, GBA in Dutch) enforces it. Analytics, forms and remarketing tags need a lawful basis and a clear privacy notice.
• Cookies. Non-essential cookies need consent before they fire, and the banner should offer a plain refuse option. This affects how Search Console data compares with analytics data, because declined sessions go unmeasured.
• European Accessibility Act. It has applied since 28 June 2025 to many online shops and consumer services in the EU. A WCAG 2.2 AA build target also helps search, because clean markup is easier to crawl.
• Online sales. EU rules give consumers a 14-day right of withdrawal on most distance sales, and that information must be easy to find on product and checkout pages.

These are checks to run with your lawyer, not legal advice. Our GDPR website checklist is a starting point.

Brussels, public affairs and B2B search

Brussels is an EU hub, and many Belgian B2B companies sell advisory, legal, consulting or lobbying services to other firms. Their buyers search in English as often as in French or Dutch. A public-affairs consultancy may need English pages for policy topics, French pages for local clients and a clear author page for every expert, because trust signals matter in these results. Our B2B work plans that language mix page by page.

How we work from Pune

Belgium runs on CET, or CEST in summer. Pune is 3.5 hours ahead of Brussels in summer and 4.5 hours ahead in winter. A 10:00 call in Brussels is 13:30 or 14:30 in India, so morning calls are easy to book. The work is remote. You get one project lead, a written update after each phase and monthly reporting from your own Search Console. For context on timing, see how long SEO takes.

What it costs

Projects start at $1,500 and our rate is $30 an hour. The price moves with the number of language versions, the size of the site and how much content needs writing. You get a fixed quote within one working day of a short call. Our SEO cost guide explains the drivers. All figures are in US dollars.

For a Belgian VAT-registered business buying services from India, VAT is usually handled by reverse charge at 21%. Confirm that with your accountant.