Restaurant Brödernas’ successful SEO journey – this is what happened in just 7 months

• Results after 7 months of cooperation:

• Keyword increase: 234%

• Increase in keywords in the top ten: 143%

• Increase in traffic value: 184%

• Increase in impressions: 206%

In March 2021, the collaboration between the expanding restaurant chain ‘Brödernas’ and Bonzer began. As we’re writing this case, we are seven months into the collaboration. And the results are impressive. In this article, we’ll go through:

Who are Brödernas?

Few Swedes have missed out on‘Brödernas’ substantial expansion in recent years. Behind the chain, whose primary focus area is high-quality burgers, are the actual “brothers” Joakim and Jonas Wiklander, NHL star Mika Zibanejad and his brother, also an agent Monir Kalgoum.

In the spring of 2021, Bonzer was commissioned to take advantage of that expansion rate and perform SEO. The hamburger boom has hit Sweden for quite some time. That means that there are already established players in the market. In some cases, there is as little as 50 meters difference between plenty of the industry colleagues/competitors. Therefore, we needed a well-thought-out strategy that would take advantage of Brödernas’ ongoing momentum. A shared and ambitious vision was adopted where Brödernas’ SEO journey would quickly yield results.

How did we get here?

In order to build up Brödernas’ organic visibility, we created a tailored strategy based on the situation of the restaurant chain. That meant that we could allocate our resources to provide as much business value as possible with an agile approach.

Tailored strategy

The most important traffic for ‘Brödernas’ will naturally be that traffic from groups of friends, colleagues, and families looking for something good to eat in their immediate area. The most important pages will thus be the specific landing pages for each restaurant. Thus, by ranking in both higher positions and on more relevant keywords, the goal was to open more paths leading to Brödernas’ for hamburger lovers across Sweden.

The SEO strategy adopted was therefore built to perform well on the local searches. This strategy essentially consists of two pillars:

• Produce content tailored to local search patterns

• Build strong links from sites of local relevance

Content

Brödernas opens restaurants at a high rate, which means that we need to adapt the production of SEO content. Instead of an initial content sprint, the content production was distributed every month to keep pace with the openings. That meant that we could quickly achieve visibility in the search results connected with the launch of a new restaurant.

Search patterns can vary significantly from area to area. Some specific street names, neighbourhood names or other landmarks are used when you want to find a restaurant near you. Analysing existing search behaviours thus helps us to focus on what the target group is looking for. With the help of computerised keyword analysis, Brödernas’ landing pages could provide content tailored to what was requested. And thus get better conditions to drive traffic that leads to booked tables.

Link building

When reaching high positions on geographically targeted searches, links from websites with local relevance become essential. It can, for example, be from local media whose content revolves around a specific place. A link from such a website provides a higher local SEO value. That means that Brödernas’ restaurant pages will have a better chance of ranking high on local keywords. The link strategy that we adopted meant that we could effectively build the links that provide the best conditions for ranking on the keywords that are most important commercially.

Results

By writing SEO-adapted and unique content for each landing page, the total number of keywords has increased avalanche. Similarly, the number of keywords in both the top ten and the top three has doubled during the period. With a linking strategy that rewards the commercially important keywords, we have quickly climbed in connection with new openings. As a result, higher positions and more keywords have led to the brothers' visibility in the search results doubled since the collaboration started.

• Increase in total keywords: +8251 (corresponding to 234%)

• Increase in keywords in the top ten: +629 (corresponding to + 143%)

• The increase in keywords in the top three: +200 (corresponding to + 117%)

• Increase in impressions: 206%

Organic keywords

Organic keywords indicate how many words and phrases the site appears in the search results. In the top 3 positions, the majority of the traffic is available to pick up.

Impressions

Impressions is a measure that demonstrates the visibility of search results. An impression corresponds to an occasion when the website appeared in the search results.

Organic traffic and traffic value

Achieving higher traffic on more keywords also entails a commercial value. Traffic value is a measure that Ahrefs uses to measure what organic traffic would have cost with pay-per-click. Traffic that has a strong business value tends to have a higher cost-per-click. In other words, it is not a direct measure of what the traffic means in terms of conversion but is regardless of an indicator that the traffic has a commercial value, which others are willing to pay for.