Sales Success for Viking | SEO Case Study

The brief

Search Laboratory worked with Viking, the leading global supplier of office supplies, stationery, and furniture, to help drive their multi-channel marketing programme across Europe.

Key priorities were to:

Increase online sales and digital market share
Use localised SEO techniques to drive website visibility and organic sales
Drive website traffic and brand awareness through building local social media communities.

The following markets were targeted:

UK, Ireland, Germany, The Netherlands, Austria, France, Italy

107%

of organic revenue target

147%

of link target

82%

increase in European social media community size

The solution

The strategy was to use SEO and social media to target both new business customers and new individual customers (B2B and B2C).

We built an in-house team of 28 to deliver the campaign, including a team of 14 digital marketing specialists with mother-tongue language skills covering each target market, to ensure that each campaign was fully localised to account for linguistic and cultural nuances.

Our proprietary software was used to plan, deliver, and manage the campaigns.

Plan:

Create a product-focused content strategy
Plan and execute creative campaigns around key commercial focus areas
Mother-tongue digital marketers conducted market research to identify the areas which had the most opportunity for growth in each territory
Earn high-quality external links and brand exposure through SEO and social media activity.

Approach:

Using Search Laboratory’s SEOLab software suite, which includes a Keyword Planner, SERPLab competitor analysis tool, and an HTML Monitor that provides an audit trail for web page changes, a keyword strategy was built for each market
In each market, the team created quality content around each product to influence ‘authority’ ranking factors with link earning and social signals
The team then used Search Laboratory’s LinkLab media relations software to outreach content to their global media relations database, target publications and key influencers in each market.

Search Laboratory’s team planned and executed 50 campaigns across all seven territories in 2016.

Some campaigns were designed to be delivered across all the target markets, and were localised for each market by in-house mother-tongue linguists with a deep understanding of the search habits and cultural nuances of their native country.

The team also delivered country-specific campaigns, tailored to specific opportunities in each target market, such as King’s Day in the Netherlands.

The following two examples demonstrate our ongoing content marketing and technical SEO work.

Content marketing: Office Etiquette campaign

A screenshot from Viking office supplies blog showing a digital PR campaign about international office etiquette. The campaign was created and run by Search Laboratory digital marketing agency.

The Office Etiquette campaign demonstrates our international approach and illustrates the fantastic results that have been achieved for Viking.

Concept

A unique and well-designed infographic highlighting best-practice business etiquette between colleagues in different countries, which was translated and localised for each market.

Why did we do it?

The SEO focus areas in the stationery category are related to organisation products. This campaign ties in with offices being tidy and well organised, and provides links to the category pages for products used in the campaigns.

International approach

Search Laboratory’s team of international mother-tongue linguists and marketing specialists researched, collated and compared data alongside best practice business customs across ten different countries. This also included interesting facts related to each of these markets.

Implementation

The infographic was story-boarded and designed then translated and localised along with a blog post specific to each of Viking’s country website blogs. LinkLab was used to gather a list of target publications and promote the campaign in each market.

Results

The campaign achieved coverage on multiple authoritative news sites and other publications including Business Insider, Yahoo, Design Taxi, Bild.de, Sprout.nl, Cadremploi.fr. The original target was 60 links.

234

Total coverage and links

38.2

Average domain authority

390%

Link target

Technical SEO

The campaign also included extensive technical SEO work, including executing a site migration and comprehensive technical SEO changes for Viking Austria.

After the migration, Viking Austria now has more than triple the amount of target keywords on page 1 of Google:

A screenshot of the top ranking keywords for Viking office supplies following technical SEO work. This was carried out by Search Laboratory digital marketing agency.

Strategy results

Visibility (examples)

Austria organic visibility increased by 140% France organic visibility increased by 60%

A screenshot of a graph taken from Search Metrics showing SEO visibility for Viking Office supplies. A screenshot from Search Metrics showing a graph detailing SEO visibility for Viking office supplies.

Summary

Exceptional results have been achieved across all the territories
It uses a unique combination of Search Laboratory’s SEO software with an in-house team, including mother-tongue linguistic experts
Key revenue and organic visibility goals were met and exceeded
Viking’s approach to search marketing has been revolutionised as a result
Creative ways to promote “dry/dull” office supplies have been applied

Viking has secured its place in the global market as the leading ecommerce vendor of offices supplies.

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107% of European organic revenue target for Viking

International SEO management case study