When a large brand plans to enter a new market it may seem natural to start with strong advertising campaigns. We did that as well. But what happens when paid channels such as PPC take a step back and results depend on organic visibility instead? Since Sportland’s SEO efforts in Finland practically started from zero the baseline was low which meant early results showed significant percentage growth – organic traffic +20.7 percent and revenue +79 percent compared to the same period the previous year.
How Do You Reach People Who Search for Products Not Stores?
Sportland had a clear goal in Finland: increase organic ecommerce traffic and the sales generated from it. Due to low brand awareness in that market customers did not search for “Sportland” but instead searched for products such as “adidas Samba shoes”. This presented a clear challenge for us: how do we ensure that Sportland appears in these highly specific and competitive search results?
Effective SEO Answers the Customer’s Search Intent
The SEO team at Nobel set out with a clear objective – grow Sportland’s visibility across the brands and product categories that people actively search for in Finland.
The core activities fell into three main workstreams:
- Updating brand landing pages – pages optimised for user questions that contain relevant information and offer intuitive navigation;
- Optimising product categories – unique content, accurate titles and metadata that help users land directly on the category page from search;
- Technical SEO and authority building – internal linking and backlink audits to strengthen the domain’s authority and improve content visibility in a new market. This work required a full stack approach combining seo analysis, technical improvements and content work typically delivered by a professional seo agency or internet marketing agency.
Improved Visibility Drove Organic Sales
Within 12 months Sportland reached Google TOP 5 with most of the key target keywords and TOP 3 with many of the most important ones. Since previous rankings were low or nonexistent the visibility jump happened quickly. This in turn improved long tail keyword visibility and significantly increased sales of related products.
Results in Numbers:
- +16% organic traffic growth year over year (2024 vs 2023)
- +79% growth in organic sales in Finland (2024 vs 2023)
- In specific categories such as running shoes, casual wear and training gear sales revenue increased by up to 368%.
The growth in sales was driven by organic traffic that largely came from searches that did not contain the Sportland brand name. The running shoes category performed particularly well:
- product views +273%
- products purchased +148%
- category revenue +368%
SEO Must Reflect the Local Market
SEO is not only about “keyword optimization”. It is an understanding of the local market, ongoing work with website content and continuous UX improvements. All of this can be delivered successfully from Estonia across the Baltics and even in Finland. A strong digital marketing strategy, ongoing website optimization and systematic seo services from committed SEO specialists are what enabled Sportland to grow quickly and sustainably in a new competitive market.
If you also want to rise in search results explore Nobel’s SEO services and get in touch with us.
