Search Engine Optimization When Entering a New Market

This thesis was done about a Danish online marketing company AWM Network. The company started a website for a loan comparison services in Finland in January 2017. I was the person responsible for creating the content and link building for the website, and before the thesis I had worked in the company with Search Engine Optimization for another website the company runs. This thesis looks at the process of the website and implementation of search engine optimization (SEO) during the first 9 months of the website, and see what kind of results the different actions caused. The thesis also looks at the theory behind SEO through online marketing related literature and articles from industry experts. The aim is to determine which steps are necessary for implementing SEO in a new market in the most effective way possible. The process of creating the content for the new website includes keyword research, site structure and content creation to multiple different link building projects. The tools used for keyword research were Google Adwords Keyword Planner and Ahrefs Keyword explorer. Link building projects examined in this thesis were infographics, competitor link analysis and data driven projects. The main parts of the whole process were documented as well as their results to determine, which were the most effective ones. Based on the results that the website generated, the most important step of implementing SEO to a brand-new website is a thorough keyword research that takes search intent in to an account, as based on it, it is possible to create a coherent site structure, and to gain the most relevant traffic to the website. When it comes to link building, it is important to experiment with multiple different projects to determine which receives the best results in the market. SEO is a long term process, and results of actions can take up to months to appear. This is why it’s important to keep producing good quality content consistently and tracking multiple different parameters, in order to see more permanent results in website traffic, and eventually revenue