by Janus Boye
Ture Alsvik on stage at a recent e-commerce conference in Denmark
How do you make Google love your website? At a recent peer group meeting, Ture Alsvik gave his presentation on that topic a well timed Valentine’s Day-theme and shared his insights on how you build a long term and good relationship between your website and the giant search engine.
Ture is SEO Manager at Lomax, a Danish business supplies and equipment firm with roots back to the 60’s, and has long evolved into a modern e-commerce firm. As an SEO manager, his time is divided between the content, the technical dimension and naturally a fair bit of reporting. Previously he worked 12 years at travel firm Spies, where he also worked at the intersection of traffic, visibility and conversion.
He’s based north of wonderful Copenhagen and also our expert of the month.
How to become a SEO expert
Search engine optimisation predates Google, but ever since the advent of the World Wide Web, it’s been something between art and science to be found and thus to rank high on search engines.
Ture’s background started as an Internet Service Consultant in the late 90’s at Danish financial services firm Nykredit. He then moved onto spending 12 years at Spies working first as webmaster and then later as SEO specialist. As he said, his venture into focusing on SEO started with “why”. To quote:
In 2011, our organic website traffic fell, and the boss wondered why?
This made us look harder at how to get the attention from Google.
Travel is highly competitive and if you want to do well on Google on that topic, in particular when it comes to securing customers and not just displaying informational content about destinations, you have your work cut out. His work included A/B-tests, on-page optimization, competitor analysis, keyword analysis and much more.
In 2019, he then moved onwards to Lomax as SEO Manager. Some of the recent SEO work he mentioned in our conversation included:
On the content, in particular on where the volume is, content gap analysis and understanding how customers search, e.g. for ‘AA batteries’ rather than a battery brand (e.g. Panasonic)
The technical dimension is also never-ending, such as Google now going mobile-only.
Interpreting and understanding the reporting also helps understand where the action is. As an example, Lomax is currently facing an increase in desktop visibility, but a decrease in mobile. What might that mean? There’s sometimes a fair bit of Sherlock Holmes-like detective work involved.
Finally, Ture mentioned the 14 (!) major updates that Google announced during 2021. The pace is high and shows no signs of slowing down.
And while Google is the big one, Bing also matters. As Ture said:
The users of Bing tend to have more buying power.
Google is your friend
A main message in Ture’s presentation with the Valentine’s Day-theme and also reflected in his current work, is the emphasis on building a long-term relationship with Google.
While some of his 15 tips to make Google love your website might seem obvious, they could still use repeating as they sometimes get lost in the rush to achieve results quickly.
I won’t go through all 15 here, but just mention a few that resonated with the peer group:
Get your strategy right - specifically this refers to what he called ‘one keyword, one page’. Don’t confuse the search engine
Be specific - what are the keywords you really want to own?
Show new sides of yourself - or in this context: Avoid fishing in your own lake
Make an effort - when it comes to on page SEO, you need to stand out
Be patient - it takes time and your efforts and ROI will show in the long run
Know the language of love - linkbuilding is often overlooked, but really important
Love and honesty - to Google it is about E.A.T, also known as Expertise. Authority and Trust.
What’s really the search intent?
Staying with what’s currently on his plate, Ture turned to some of the interesting aha moments, in particular when it comes to really understanding search intent. One example from the travel industry would be:
I want to travel to Malaga
I want to read about Malaga
As Ture said:
This boils down to a better understanding of the customer journey. You need to have informative content, but you should categorise your content based on the intention. Keep in mind that if you are #1 on Google, you can help shape what that means.
Ture Alsvik is a popular speaker and enjoys sharing his experiences
If you have many products, like Lomax, they are also the ones to educate you in how to use the products or even how to procure them given different tax benefits.
What about cookies, privacy and Google Analytics?
When talking SEO at the moment, it’s hard to avoid also talking about the recent developments when it comes to regulation and the current data war as Ture calls it. To summarize:
The cookie policy as prescribed by GDPR has cost Lomax the data of about 30% of visitors. That’s those who say no to cookies.
Apple has also started removing UTM codes, which means you can’t easily do the campaign tracking.
Google Analytics was recently ruled illegal in Austria and France. Not being able to use Google Analytics would be a game changer, but Ture expects it to get solved and Google is working on a solution without cookies.
Ture was quick to say, that this is not exactly his area of expertise, but he did offer some speculation about what might happen:
First, he mentioned that you could imagine getting your own version of Google Analytics with your own data - at a cost naturally and excluding certain demographics.
Secondly, there’s naturally also Google Analytics alternatives, some even without harvesting all the personal data that Google does. He highlighted two alternatives:
Matomo which positions itself as a privacy-friendly alternative. It’s also used by many of our members.
Plausible which is an an open-source alternative for Google Analytics that respects users' e-privacy
There are many more alternatives to Google Analytics. When speaking to Ture, he specifically drew attention to the fact that both Matomo and Plausible pushes this message: “doesn’t compromise visitor privacy for data”
Finally, rather than the current and unsatisfying situation, where you need to do a cookie consent on each site, perhaps this becomes a user setting across sites in the future?
Change will happen, so stay tuned!
Learn more about Ture Alsvik
You can naturally connect with Ture on LinkedIn. Like the true expert he is, you can also find more about his work on his own website - alsvik.dk. The website is in Danish, but offers offers helpful advice and more details on the select consultancy that Ture is offering - naturally on improving your online presence and optimising webshops.
If you speak Danish, you can read more about his current work at Lomax in this SEO case study: Lomax 6x doblede synligheden på kategoridefinerende søgeord.