Company-Wide Alignment of International SEO Activities & Reporting
Kärcher is a global leader in cleaning technologies providing, cleaning equipment for both commercial and private use.
Kärcher is a multinational corporation represented by 100 companies in 60 countries, with roughly 50,000 service points around the globe providing gapless care for customers.
Twenty-two of their subsidiaries operate an independent online store with additional shops planned. The product range at Kärcher is constantly growing, with more than 120 new products launched to market in 2014 alone.
The Challenge: Aligning SEO Activity on a Global Scale
Kärcher recently faced the major challenge of aligning their international SEO activity to gain performance transparency at a global level.
Kärcher had 2 priority goals:
1) Increase brand visibility and positioning:
- Clearly position Kärcher the leading global provider of cleaning solutions.
- Achieve top search rankings and increase website traffic and conversions.
- Establish robust SEO covering international and local search engines.
2) Establish uniform SEO processes and international reporting:
- Standardize tools used by international teams so that SEO activity is based on a consistent and reliable source of data
- Provide consistent reporting mechanism covering all national subsidiaries which could be accessed centrally to effectively compare and review regional SEO effectiveness
“The flexibility of the system was very important to us, as we needed to use it not just with existing national websites, but with future ones as well.
In particular, the expansion to additional local search engines needed to be ensured. We needed the data be centralized to allow for all SEO measures to be evaluated and controlled internally.
In addition, the manual overhead needed to be low so that SEO could be implemented for all foreign subsidiaries quickly and easily. Support was needed beyond the launch phase training as well, meaning quick and reliable access to the Support team for the long run.”
Julia Treitz, SEO specialist at Kärcher
System flexibility played an important role in Kärcher’s partnership decision. They needed a platform that would be able to support their planned expansion into local search engines as well as their existing international SEO teams and reporting needs.
In addition, they wanted a cost-effective solution could be implemented across global subsidiaries as quickly and easily as possible along with support from launch stage and beyond across the globe.
The Solution
Following comprehensive training by Searchmetrics, the new system was rolled out to national subsidiaries by Kärcher’s own central online department.
All managers received both personal and webinar training. Because the Searchmetrics Suite is constantly expanding, internal documentation is updated on a regular basis to present the new functions to the marketing managers.
“From the start, we felt confidence in the clear interface of the Searchmetrics Suite. It provides a clear platform for presenting routine analyses and reports. This makes it quick and easy to learn.
Any initial resistance to engaging with the Searchmetrics Suite – due to a variety of other tools in use and as skepticism towards an all-in-one solution – fell away once the system was actually launched!
We decided to have queries forwarded centrally from the Kärcher online department to the support team. We were pleased with the processing times of no more than one or two days – at which point the Searchmetrics Team delivered a solution.
The training routines help with the usage in additional countries – the founding of new foreign subsidiaries is a constant part of Kärcher’s expansion and internationalization efforts.”
Julia Treitz, SEO Specialist, Kärcher
The Result: Professional, Centralized and Transparent SEO Across all International Subsidiaries
SEO has been deployed for all national subsidiaries that have been integrated. The uniformity of SEO data makes results of measurable at the international level, a key factor for Kärcher’s corporate leadership and central stakeholders.
Because the Searchmetrics Suite can be connected to existing web analysis tools, it is also possible to observe actual traffic data.
This represents two-fold significant time savings: first, monthly reporting submitted to management at both the national and international levels provides a quick overview; second, the Searchmetrics Suite allows for easy SEO monitoring even in countries where this was previously considered too time-intensive for the marketing team there.
“The Searchmetrics Suite is constantly being updated. This ensures we’re always applying state-of-the-art methods and are confident we’re implementing a rigorous SEO strategy at the global level.”
Julia Treitz, SEO Specialist at Kärcher
While management at foreign subsidiaries primarily uses the modules content optimization and keyword ranking reports, other data of interest are available for the central Online Marketing Department.
The Searchmetrics Suite includes analysis data that provides a quick and convenient overview of performance on the individual markets.
This can, for example, be highly useful for monitoring a website relaunch. The data allows reliable analyses of the actual state prior to relaunch, an essential component for accurate follow-on ranking, traffic and visibility review.
“In the past, all SEO measures and results had to be queried from the individual national subsidiaries – a process that was both cumbersome and didn’t ultimately provide a comparable picture of performance since the databases were built differently. With Searchmetrics, we took the a decisive first step toward the centralization of our SEO measures.”
Julia Treitz, SEO Specialist at Kärcher
SEO Specialist, Kärcher
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