Most VPN brands start link building in English, and most stay there. That leaves German- and French-speaking markets — large, privacy-conscious and commercially valuable — served by fewer, less competitive comparison pages. For brands willing to build links locally, that’s an opportunity.

Why local links matter

A German user searching for a VPN sees German results. The pages that rank there are earned by links from German publications, read by German readers. An English link pointed at your German page helps far less than a link from a site whose audience actually lives in Germany, Austria or Switzerland.

The same is true in France, Belgium, French-speaking Switzerland and Québec. Building per market — not per language, and certainly not from English alone — is what moves local rankings.

Sourcing is different

Local publications are often run by small editorial teams with loyal readerships. Many have never sold a link and don’t want to be treated like a marketplace listing. Finding them means looking past the obvious lists of “sites that accept guest posts” and into the publications people in that country actually read: tech magazines, consumer advice sites, travel blogs, streaming and gaming communities.

The upside is that these sites tend to have cleaner link profiles than their English counterparts. The downside is that there are fewer of them, which makes each relationship more valuable.

Pitching and content

  • Pitch in the editor’s language. An English pitch to a German editor signals “mass outreach” before they’ve read a word.
  • Write for local readers. Translated English content reads as translated. Angles should be local too: streaming rights, public Wi-Fi habits, data protection debates and travel patterns differ by country.
  • Expect editorial standards. Many publications in these markets apply their own policies to partner content, including how it is labelled. Know them before you buy.

Vetting outside English

The checks don’t change, but reading the results does. Traffic estimates from SEO tools can be less precise in smaller markets, so we lean more on trends and country shares than on absolute numbers. And because farms exist in every language, the same footprints — high authority without readers, unrelated topics, toxic outbound links — still rule a site out.

German and French are two of our core markets, alongside English, and we work in any other language on request. Every site, in every market, goes through the same six checks.

Building in DE or FR? Get a free vetted site list for your target markets.