Boodschappen: more traffic through synergy SEO and SEA

About Boodschappen

Most Dutch people are familiar with Boodschappen as a magazine found in supermarkets like Plus and Hoogvliet. But online Boodschappen also shares countless of recipes. Whether you are looking for an easy recipe that you can quickly prepare after work or whether you want to go big, at Boodschappen you will always find inspiration for a delicious meal. Additionally, you can also create your own inspiration page or shopping list, making it even easier to find and make your favourite recipes.

Since spring 2019, we have been working on improving the online visibility of Boodschappen.nl. We started with SEO, but later added SEA for an optimal return.

The challenge

The goal of the collaboration was simple: get more traffic to the Boodschappen website. Boodschappen.nl is not an e-commerce website or a lead generator, but derives its revenue mainly from advertisements. The more people that come to the website, the more interesting the website is for those advertisers, so we started looking for ways to better exploit the visibility potential of the site.

When we also started SEA for Boodschappen.nl, the goal was the same. What we did have to pay attention to, was the CPC. We had to keep it low, otherwise there was a risk of spending more than was earned.

The strategy: SEO

At the beginning of the SEO process, we started with an extensive keyword research. This showed that we could create an even broader base by capitalising on more specific search intentions. For instance, search queries focused on types of recipes, recipes per period, per ingredient or per preparation time or nutritional value. At the same time, we looked at technical aspects of the website. Although it was well put together, some things, such as loading time and URL structure, could still be optimised. We also set up the landing pages in a slightly different way, including by adding more images.

After over a year of working on the basics, the technology and updating the existing content, we went back to the drawing board based on the growth: how can we build on what works even more? Our answer: content. We again did additional keyword research and a comprehensive competitor analysis, which served as a basis to see how well Boodschappen.nl was now findable on relevant terms.

The content strategy we created on the basis of the information obtained was not just about organic findability. Boodschappen is also a brand and content should fit the brand experience. When creating new content, we did not focus on keywords, but took into account what Boodschappen wants to convey. In addition, it is very important that the content really adds value for the reader, so we had an eye for that too.

The strategy: SEA

Bringing in traffic with low CPCs was the original goal of the SEA journey for Boodschappen. After a 3-month trial period, this proved to have produced good results. Therefore, SEA also became part of the overall strategy.

This was mainly about the good synergy between SEO and SEA. For some pages, it was difficult to rank well organically. With SEA, we wanted to respond to this by making those very pages more visible through ads, still at a low CPC, of course. In this way, we wanted to make the most of the visibility potential of Boodschappen.nl. We also wanted to use SEA to quickly provide more traffic when there was a quieter period organically.

Table 1: Shown is the growth of organic users year-on-year between 2019 and 2022, shown as a percentage. It shows that Boodschappen.nl performed better almost every month than the same month a year before, with the exception of the COVID-19 pandemic, which had a major effect on Boodschappen.nl’s visitor count.

The results

Both the SEO and SEA strategies have had the desired effect. Organic traffic increased markedly and SEA only enhanced the growth in traffic. In the process, CPCs remained on average below the maximum CPC agreed with Boodschappen, making it profitable traffic.

An additional advantage of a collaboration that has been going on for a while is that you get an increasingly better picture of what works and what doesn’t, especially when you collect as much data as we do. This enables us to give better and better advice to Boodschappen.nl.

Do you also want to become more visible online? Get in touch with us and we will be happy to discuss the possibilities!