This Is the Result of Really Good SEO

Discussions about SEO versus other channels often get stuck in the technical aspects. Today, I’d like to offer a different perspective on what the real result of truly great search engine optimization is—and it’s not about whether you show up here or there, or being “visible online” or anything like that. It’s about setting the boundaries for your competitors, owning the customers, and closing the deals.

Let’s look at a few examples that will give you a better idea of what I mean by good SEO. The first is about when the world’s largest online gambling brand entered a new market where someone else had already nailed the search engine optimization.

Example One: Owning the Traffic

In the mid-2010s, I was working with a small gaming company. We did well in several markets—France, Germany, and the Nordics were the biggest—but there was one market where we had completely dominated the search results: Brazil. As essentially the only active brand in Brazil, it wasn’t even particularly difficult—much of the work was about not getting overtaken if the big players entered. As a side note, at the time, payment solutions were difficult in Brazil—people didn’t trust credit cards, and there was no simple way to pay online, so it was mostly small transactions.

Brazil is a huge market with a massive population, and as we expected, the world’s biggest online gaming company eventually showed up. As they often do, they launched massive TV and print ad campaigns, held events with big prize pools, and created major buzz around online gambling. But their SEO team couldn’t keep up—or simply couldn’t compete—so when people searched for anything other than the brand name, they ended up on our site. The surge of new players was significant, and we estimated that a large portion of the players they generated with advertising ended up with us instead. The cost? Around five thousand kronor per month—compared to being the top TV advertiser.

Example Two: Owning the Customer

Since day one in my SEO career, I’ve also worked as an affiliate. When you put a strong focus on affiliate marketing in your budget, you’re making some decisions you might not be aware of. The most important one is choosing short-term reward over long-term investment. With the right offer and affiliate commission, you can scale quickly. But the problem is that most affiliates build a large portion of their business on SEO—and they end up owning the customer, not you.

Industries with high online profitability and businesses that focus heavily on affiliate marketing tend to create more affiliates. It sounds like a great deal—you get lots of new customers at competitive prices—but sooner or later, you find yourself in a situation where you’ve created an entire affiliate market that directly competes with you. Just look at the real estate segment, where I’ve dabbled a bit myself. Realtors have traditionally resisted intermediaries, but they eventually had to give in. Now, many search results are dominated by affiliates instead of agencies, and it’s only getting tougher.

Especially affiliates that focus on low prices—think Prisjakt, Fyndiq, and Pricerunner. Sure, offering a super low price through those channels can generate a lot of sales, but they own the customer. The customer didn’t choose you because you’re amazing—they chose you because Prisjakt endorsed you and your prices. Prisjakt owns the customer and can take them away from you.

Example Three: Increasing the Competitor’s Marketing Cost

Search results are the best real estate you can get—that’s why Google makes absurd amounts of money. They lease out a tiny display window in the very best spot on the only shopping street in town—and they have millions of them. In SEO, where we also advertise, it’s not uncommon to pay tens of kronor per click. In some sectors, I’ve seen CPCs well over 100 SEK.

Imagine it’s you and one competitor. You have a stranglehold on the organic search results. Your competitor is spending big on ads. Who has the advantage? You do. You’re sitting comfortably with stable rankings—it’s not easy to take someone’s organic positions quickly—and a large portion of users still skip ads. You get a steady flow of customers without your cost rising with volume. But your competitor’s cost increases with both volume and competition. You also have the luxury of increasing that competition.

You can raise your AdWords bids up to break-even—you’re already getting good income from your organic rankings, and they even reinforce each other. Clicks on organic results tend to increase if you’re also visible in paid results. Overnight, you can start competing on your rival’s turf. Your rival can’t do the same—it takes time to break into organic results, even with a much larger budget. You can drive up their CPCs until it’s no longer profitable.

Example Four: Economies of Scale

When you’ve completely crushed the competition in your niche’s search results, you gain an enormous advantage. There are two things you can do that your competitors can’t: you can enter a new niche with a significant head start, and you can expand into a new country with that same advantage. Since SEO doesn’t have scaling costs like PPC does, a strong site benefits all areas of the site—even if it’s in a different language or niche.

Your competitor, who has invested in TV and radio to build a strong brand, has to repeat that whole process when entering a new market like Norway. You, on the other hand, can just translate the site and change the currency—and you’re in. You’ll rank decently in Norway too, thanks to the work you’ve done in Sweden. SEO gets better the more you do it and the bigger your site becomes. You never have to repeat the full investment just because you’re changing markets (unlike TV advertisers who have to start from scratch).

What Does This Say About SEO?

We’ve looked at four examples, and it might sound like I’m telling you to ignore everything else and just go all in on SEO. If your budget is very limited, that might actually be the right move. But what I really want to say is this: you MUST include SEO in your marketing strategy—otherwise your competitors will eat you alive. In these examples, SEO is like the contact info or label on a can of food. Without a label, it doesn’t matter how well-known or loved your brand is—no one will find your cans. If people can’t get in touch with you because you’re missing that basic visibility, all the branding in the world won’t bring in leads.

Don’t forget SEO when you set your marketing budget.