“SEO Works the Same Today as It Did 10 Years Ago”

Cykelkraft is an e-commerce success story, managing to sell complex and expensive products to a broad online audience. Search engine optimization has been a top priority since the beginning, and the core principles remain unchanged.

The founders of Cykelkraft had just built and sold the online tire retailer Bythjul. Now, they were looking for a new business area involving “logistically complex products that would keep startups and Amazon away.” Their passion for cycling led Christoffer and his co-founder to analyze the online bicycle market. Their ambition was to create an e-commerce platform that could combine well-known and lesser-known brands. But in 2012, they found themselves a bit ahead of their time.

“Some suppliers are very traditional in their thinking. Sweden’s largest bicycle manufacturer, for example, declined to work with us because they only wanted their products sold through physical stores. That became our next challenge.”

They found the Cykelkraft store in Täby, which had a turnover of nine million SEK, one-third of which came from online sales. From there, they were able to develop the online business without raising concerns among suppliers. The company grew rapidly, reaching 250 million SEK in revenue in 2018 and projecting 350 million SEK for 2019.

SEO Always in Focus

For Christoffer Tyrefors, SEO was nothing new—it was a key and business-critical element from the very start. He also discovered that the bicycle industry was lacking in search engine optimization.

“Sporting goods stores were fairly good at SEO, but for them, bicycles were just one department among many. The conversion rate for the keyword ‘bicycles’ is also very low because it’s such a broad term. It’s much easier to attract customers through accessories and spare parts. To maximize the long-tail effect, we focused on ranking well for terms like ‘bicycle tires’ and ‘bicycle tubes’ instead.”

Today, Cykelkraft ranks at the top for nearly all of its most relevant search terms, but Christoffer sees no inherent value in ranking first for “bicycles.”

“That’s more of an ego trip than a business priority. A bicycle can cost anywhere from 199 SEK to 300,000 SEK, so matching the right product to the right customer is extremely difficult.”

Ten Years with Brath

Even before founding Cykelkraft, Christoffer Tyrefors had been working with Magnus Bråth in Örnsköldsvik. Over the past decade, their collaboration has only strengthened.

“We handle keyword analysis, structure, and content in-house, while Brath has helped us with links and technical issues. They have also done outreach to secure organic blog links.”

For Cykelkraft, Brath has been a valuable partner throughout its critical growth phase. Christoffer is certain that the decision to work with Brath has helped them stand out in the fiercely competitive e-commerce market.

“E-commerce isn’t complicated—it’s about driving a lot of traffic and then delivering the best possible experience. You can be incredibly skilled, but without traffic, it doesn’t matter. In an often chaotic SEO industry, I believe Brath delivers the most reliable results.”

What Are E-Commerce Companies Missing Today?

“They’ve lost touch with SEO. When we started, it was a hot topic, and people focused on analysis, landing pages, and so on. Today, there’s more buzz around big data and conversion optimization. I don’t believe in that.”

What’s Your Best SEO Advice?

“Go back to basics: create more category pages, write more content. There’s a belief today that everything will sort itself out if you just produce high-quality content. That’s not true. We rank better the more content we have, almost regardless of quality.”

At the same time, you focus heavily on content?

“Absolutely, but that’s different. To drive traffic, content is extremely important because we can link to different levels—categories, brands, combinations, and products. Google Trends shows that ‘why’ and ‘how’ searches are common. There’s a lot of search volume, but little competition—often just personal blogs producing that kind of content. ‘How to change a bicycle tire’ can bring us both conversions and valuable backlinks. We have real cycling experts writing that type of content, and for those pieces, we don’t focus as much on SEO.”

How Has SEO as a Discipline Changed?

“In the industry, it has become more vague and fluffy. I think many people find the strategic and analytical aspects more interesting than the hard work of writing category descriptions. But in my world, the same things work today as they did ten years ago—plenty of content, good headlines, and links. You don’t need to be an SEO expert—just a little better than your competitors.”

Brath on Cykelkraft

Cykelkraft is one of the brightest stars in e-commerce, showing steady growth year after year. As Christoffer says, we’ve worked together for a long time, and while we don’t agree on everything in this article, we believe that this dynamic between agency and client is what drives such impressive results.

We’re confident that we’ll have another ten years of rapid growth ahead together.