Search engine marketing

Ranking well in search engines in the markets where a company operates matters to almost every company. Search engine marketing plays an increasingly important role in creating visibility online. People mainly use Google to find information, and in the search results they now also encounter AI-generated answers. The same factors that give a website organic visibility also apply to those answers.

A common reason for using search engines is to find facts that support a purchasing decision. We see people buying furniture, travel or entertainment gather facts in different places before they decide and choose a supplier.

We work step by step and in close collaboration with the client, making the changes the website needs to rank as well as possible in search engines, organically and on its own merits. At the same time, we draw up a plan for buying ads, as an interim solution or as a complement.

In the long run, the aim is for the site to reach the organic results in search engines on its own merits. That means Google has found the website and values it highly enough to give it a high ranking. A parallel strategy in search engine marketing is to advertise in search engines, for example with Google Ads. The company can then gradually reduce or change its advertising as its own pages start to rank high in the organic results.

The foundation for lasting visibility in search engines is laid on the website itself. Putting all your effort into external measures, known as off-site optimisation, is not a long-term solution. Links that are not rooted in the company’s communication create a vulnerability, because the company becomes dependent on them. In addition, a lot of searchable information on the company’s website may be overlooked entirely.

Search engine optimisation should also take communication into account. Making the layout of a website clearer so that Google can find information often also improves its communication. A clear site structure that makes it easy to move between relevant areas helps both visitors and Google.

A fundamental insight is that the home page is rarely the page that most needs optimising. Its main purpose is to be an entry point for visitors who go directly to the website, or to be visible to people who search for the company’s name. Instead, many of the other pages on the company’s site should be optimised for their own topics. Because searches in Google, for example, are often specific and narrowly defined, the pages that cover a particular topic need to be designed to be found. The closer we can get to the searches made by the desired target audience, the better.

In our view, most of the ongoing maintenance a website needs to rank well for relevant terms and phrases can be handled by the company’s own staff. To get this work started, we may need to teach the organisation the basics of search engine marketing and carry out an initial round of fundamental changes.

Through workshops in several stages, we define the changes that need to be made on the website. This work results in a concrete plan and a proposal for technical and communication changes.

The work has five stages:

1) Defining words and phrases

• Find relevant phrases and combinations of words. It is important not to get stuck on the concepts or core values that matter to the company. You have to try to imagine what the desired target audience might search for in different areas. Companies often have insight into their customers, and we gather that insight at this stage.
• We audit the website’s rankings, how it generates visits today and how competitors rank (and why).

2) Technical layout

• We review the website’s page structure.
• We review the technical layout of the site (titles, headings etc.).

3) Editorial content

• We go through the texts and make sure the content matches what each page is about.

4) Internal links

• Among other things, we look at the possibility of creating relevant text links.
• This includes revising the surrounding text and looking at how the links relate to the editorial content as a whole.

5) External links

• Do the existing external links point to the right website?
• Do they point to the right page?
• Can we attract new external links that are relevant and come from genuine relationships with the company?

We also run training for small and medium-sized companies, so that they can improve their own rankings in search engines.