Mikko Rindell from Balanced Growth visited Waffle Wednesday last October to talk about the importance of search engine optimization (SEO). Rindell has been working in digital marketing for 10 years and co-founded Balanced Growth in 2020, where he focuses on helping clients build SEO strategies, marketing strategies and scalable data-driven marketing engines.

In today’s digital age, where online visibility can make or break a business, SEO has emerged as a game-changer. Whether you’re a small startup, a medium-sized enterprise, or a large corporation, harnessing the power of SEO can significantly impact your online presence and overall success

So what should you know about SEO and what to consider if you have an SEO project in mind?

The right keywords are essential

SEO is a set of strategies and techniques designed to enhance a website’s visibility on search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. It involves optimizing various elements of your online presence to ensure that your website ranks higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) when users search for relevant keywords or phrases.

So with SEO, you can ensure that your website appears at the top of search results, which will drive organic traffic to your site. Increased visibility leads to a higher click rate and more potential customers finding out about your products or services.

Keywords are the words and phrases that a search engine uses to perform searches. It is important to include useful keywords in your own website content so that search engines know what kind of service your business offers and can show your website to potential customers.

As an example of the importance of the right keywords, Rindell uses the recipe for mokkapalat (brownies):

“The recipe for mokkapalat  is searched more often than mokkaruudut. So as we can see the keyword used has an impact on the number of search results. This kind of information about your business helps it to climb to the top of the results page in search engines”.

Optimized content attracts traffic

Search terms alone are not enough if they are not present in the company’s content. One of the benefits of keyword research is therefore to be able to create keyword-optimized content in the future.

“For example, optimized blogs and articles can be used to attract potential customers to your site, increase brand awareness and boost sales,” says Rindell.

According to Rindell, conducting keyword research and creating optimized content is the most important step if a company wants to rank higher in search results:

“Changing images that are too big and fixing broken links are definitely things that need to be fixed at some point. However, it’s not worth focusing on them as a priority in SEO projects, as there’s always something to fix. The primary focus should be on getting the keywords and content on point and ranking”.

Identifying the right keywords is rarely straightforward and can be a long project, as competition between keywords varies considerably. It is therefore sometimes preferable to focus on keywords with less traffic and less competition:

“We have done this with clients and have had good results. This can be a good tactic, especially on a Finland´s scale,” tells Rindell.

Find Balanced Growth´s website here.