Web design in East Flanders, made in Ghent

Each town with a page of its own has its own story there:

• Ghentwhat must legally sit at the bottom of every Belgian company site, and the city's support desk for your permits; read web design in Ghent.
• Deinzea starter grant that pays back up to 60 percent of the website of a new shop or restaurant, capped at 1,000 euros; read web design in Deinze.
• Lokerenan address that may no longer be right after the merger with Moerbeke, and a free starter pack from the city; read web design in Lokeren.
• Aalstthe care city, with a hub and a test bed for care entrepreneurs; read web design in Aalst.
• Oudenaardethe rules for letting a holiday home in the Flemish Ardennes, and what direct booking brings; read web design in Oudenaarde.
• Merelbeke-Mellea municipality of service providers next to Ghent, with its own voucher for local shops; read web design in Merelbeke.

Ghent alone has almost a fifth of all companies in the province. Outside it you see two kinds of municipality: towns with their own centre and their own shops, such as Aalst, Sint-Niklaas and Lokeren, and municipalities where many self-employed people and professionals live and work, such as Deinze and Merelbeke-Melle. For the first, being found in town counts; for the second, mostly trust.

East Flanders buys in Dutch. If you run your business in English, that is the first thing to plan for: your customers, suppliers and staff mostly work in Dutch, and the expats and international firms around Ghent and its port in English.

No law requires Dutch on a private business site, but a site that is only in English misses most local buyers. Two versions on one domain, each with its own address and titles, is the work of multilingual website development. Every Belgian business site, in any language, shows the company number (company number on your website).

In the province most people work in small businesses: of the 38,433 sites with employees in East Flanders, 36,361 have fewer than fifty staff. Industry employs 79,403 people, transport and storage 30,657. If you are hiring, you often need a vacancy page too, not just a page for clients, and in an international firm often in English and Dutch.

Sint-Niklaas, Dendermonde, Zottegem and Ninove have a page of their own now too, as does the neighbouring province on web design in West Flanders and the rest of the region on web design in Flanders.

A site is the base. If you want to be found in the province, you often need more: pages on the towns you work in, a Google Business Profile that is right, and pictures that show your business. For Business Centrum we wrote pages for thirteen towns in the region, each with its own content on the sectors and employers there, and their site was shown 46 times as often in Google within five weeks. How that works is at local SEO and in the Business Centrum case.

We also do social media management, corporate video and Google Ads, with a team that comes to your site or your shop. If you are in Ghent itself, read SEO agency in Ghent too.

Many businesses in the province work within half an hour of their premises. Their clients type the name of their town: 'aannemer lokeren' (contractor), 'boekhouder deinze' (accountant), 'kapper wetteren' (hairdresser). So your site has to say where you work, not just what you do. But a page per town where only the place name changes is punished by Google as a doorway page. A town page only works when it has something of its own to say: a project in that town, what is going on there, why you work there. That is how SN Group has a service area with its own content per town, and how we build it for you: only the towns where you really have clients.

1. A first conversation at your place. We come to your shop, your site or your office, or you come to the Sint-Baafsplein. We want to see what you do and hear how clients find you today. In English or Dutch.
2. A term map for your region. What people in your towns type for what you do, in each language you sell in, and which page each search term gets.
3. A fixed price per part. Pages, languages, features, copy, pictures. No hourly rate that keeps climbing.
4. A shoot day on site. Your team, your premises and your work instead of stock photos.
5. Building on a test link. You follow everything online and steer, without having to come to Ghent.
6. Live and follow-up. Your Google Business Profile and your site say the same, and we follow in Search Console which pages bring enquiries.

A web designer in your own town has one advantage: you can drop in. Choose an agency from Ghent if your site has to do more than look good: be found in several towns, work in two or more languages, have a calculator or a client portal, or measure which page brings clients. To compare quotes fairly, read compare website quotes and freelancer or agency.

Search your own service plus your town on your phone and see who is at the top, on the map and below it. Put the towns you work in into your Google Business Profile and ask three happy clients for a review. Check whether your site has a page for every service you sell, with your town in the title. And note the questions clients asked this month: those are your next pages.

We build your custom website, write down what your clients in your town type and make you findable with SEO. For those who want to go further: custom software like the transport platform of DA Logistics, or a client portal. A first estimate for your own site you make with the website cost calculator; after that comes a fixed price. Plan a meeting where it suits you.