Electrifying Europe with SEO and keywords
At Elaway we do things we love. Two of those things are great content optimized for SEO and as much insight and data as possible. Why walk around blindfolded when you can actually know where you’re going? Our combination of creativity and data is something we’re proud of, and it will play an important part in the expansion of the company. This is how we think and how we work with long term SEO strategy in a company where speed is fundamental.
What can a keyword analysis tell you about a new market?
We’re entering new countries in 2022. It’s a mission that started in 2021 and continues with added strength this year. Insight into these new markets is essential. We wanted to do a keyword analysis, wondering if and how that would provide us with valuable insight in Germany and Sweden.
What kind of answers can you get? Search words and volume mirrors the thoughts and actions in a society. Most importantly — it’s a sign of things to come. If you want to be Nostradamus we recommend delving into the world of words given to Google every day.
- Is your type of product or service popular
- Who are your competitors
- What are your competitors strengths
- Is the market ready right now or does it need time
Is the expert position available? That’s also something we wanted to know. In Norway we’re experts on charging facilities. Not electric cars. Just charging facilities. In a new market the role may be a little bit more open, and we can get some attention by broadening our content. Not just load balancing and articles for the decision maker. Do some fun, helpful and interesting stuff for the young family of three who wants to do their part for the environment and buy an electric car.
We found more words related to electric cars than the more boring part — building the charging facilities. You have to admit it, it’s not a very sexy part of the “electrifying the future” vision. Cool cars, future concepts and brands like Tesla and Rivian are more engaging. Using these words is still an option, but we would be breaking a golden rule of SEO — expectation and intent. Trying to be experts on electric cars is not what we want to do. It takes too much time and the audience is surely not the decision makers we’re looking for. That’s why we need to focus on the boring part of charging. But there’s still a lot to work with and the competition is far easier to overcome.
Find and define the words that matter
Do you have the correct keywords? Some of the words we use are actually made up — by us. We use the word “ladeanlegg” in Norwegian when we talk about charging facilities. If you try to write that, autocorrect changes it to “badeanlegg”. Swimming facility. This means that finding the right words in a relatively unestablished and fresh market can be difficult.
But there’s also an opportunity there. A chance to occupy that small spot in your brain that thinks about the environment, charging and electricity.
If we’re really good at SEO and visibility, we can be the ones who define how people talk about charging.
Establish a presence on Google using the phrases and keywords related to charging and start teaching people how they really should talk about charging facilities. If you’re perceived as serious and an expert, people will follow your lead.
The German market is a tiny bit quirky here. A charging station — the small box everyone needs to have — is often referred to as “wallbox” when Germans google for information about charging stations. And Wallbox is a brand. That’s impressive. It feels almost like one bakery having “bread” and everyone else is just copying it with some doughy stuff that doesn’t have it’s own name. Or “google it” versus every other search engines.
- Know your target audience
- Know the problems they face and want to solve
- Know the phrases and keywords they use when searching
Our main goal is to find the keywords that are important for each segment. Examples are residential buildings and hotels. They may have different problems that need to be solved, and our articles have to reflect this. So far we’ve done a good job at this. It’s going to be extremely exciting to have a go at other countries.
Remember — we’re experts on charging facilities. Not electric cars. Not charging in general. Just charging facilities. Maybe that’ll change in the future, but that’s who we are now.
Long term SEO vs Lean and fast
SEO is like having a dog. Or a cat. It’s a commitment and you need to stick with it once you’ve started. Believe that all that training is going to end up with someone well behaved that doesn’t poop all over the floor while you’re sleeping.
If you want something to happen tomorrow — sorry, SEO can’t help you. Thinking long term and slowly building a strong presence that just keeps growing and growing is how you need to think.
Isn’t that contradictory to everything a startup is about?
Speed. Testing. Everything. Yes, in a way it is. You’ll have to add “Wait” to the Lean methodology. Strong SEO results will take some time, but the process to get there needs to be founded on the same principles as the rest of the company. The way we work.
For us that meant fixing the publishing part. Coding every single article page is not fast, not easy and not scalable. We landed on Sanity and React. I’m not going into details on how we built it. I’m not a developer. I can develop film, but that’s probably not the same thing.
Content production and an SEO strategy is almost pointless if you don’t have a CMS with the correct technical capabilities. Pointless is harsh. But it makes success less likely and you may be wasting your time.
Our strategy is to strengthen our main pages for each segment with content and expert articles. It’s a well known method that just works — the topic cluster. I’ve had success with it previously, increasing organic traffic by a few hundred percent in 18 months for a large Norwegian e-commerce. Main segment pages will naturally be optimized for SEO too, but those more or less static pages are not our main focus. Being able to quickly add more articles in the topic cluster — the satellites — is essential to reach our goal. The page builder in Sanity/React looks to be working well for this so far.
Getting a keyword analysis from experts at a media agency like Try also helps speed things up. If you’re not ready for Search Console, Semrush and all that other stuff — just hire an expert. Try gave us great analysis on the Swedish and German markets.
Our SEO position in Norway is strong. We rank on stuff we want to and we’ve got the featured snippets to prove it. This has established us as an expert on charging facilities, both with Google and our target audience. But how important is it to bring small numbers and a good SEO-reputation from Norway to a German market where to volumes are potentially enormous? That remains to be seen, but we know that our new Sanity CMS works. It’s easy to use, has the technical properties needed for SEO and it’s easy to scale when we enter new countries. It’s up to us to fill it with the right keywords and phrases in all the right places.
By the way — video may have killed the radio star, but text is still extremely important. Videos on YouTube is a future project for us. Of course SEO optimized.
