The Bonzer Philosophy

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) arose in the '90s and is one of the fastest-growing marketing channels ever. And for a good reason: search engines - especially Google - are what we first think of when we have questions that we're looking for answers to.

If you work with marketing, you may have also worked with the discipline of SEO. You might have tried different tactics to strengthen your company's organic visibility - sometimes with success, other times without.

It's no secret that a range of different tactics are used within the world of SEO. Most are under constant development in an attempt to create the best possible organic results. It's also no secret that many of these tactics go against Google's guidelines. In many cases, they can severely set back your SEO results and, even worse, damage your business.

That's why we've developed this manifesto, which describes the modern SEO principles we believe every SEO practitioner should work from. The manifesto contains the best practices for SEO, with the goal of reaching the top of Google's organic results - even when Google releases new updates.

In addition to this, the manifesto represents a mindset focused on creating the best possible answers for your target audience on Google. If you follow the principles in the manifesto, you will not only achieve strong organic Google positions. You will also reach out to new customers and integrate SEO as an essential converting part of your marketing strategy.

The latter is one of the most important aspects of how we work with SEO at Bonzer - let's now delve into it and the full SEO manifesto.

Focus on People

Focus on people, not search engines. We believe that if you create unique, engaging content that people find useful, the organic results will come naturally. We feel precisely that conviction when we work with SEO and develop content. And precisely that mindset significantly impacts the value our customers see in an SEO investment with us.

The "Focus on People" principle means that we help companies structure their messages through content production: structuring them in a way that makes them accessible and useful to go to when seeking answers - a principle that Google itself tries to follow.

SEO, in our view, should be a priority for every business - both internally and externally - so you best equip yourself against SEO and marketing challenges.

An SEO partnership only becomes stronger when we have internal resources to draw on. Together with your marketing team, we can quickly create and work with the most effective SEO strategy. At the same time, we can spread the knowledge of SEO to the rest of your business and thus come together around your marketing goals.

Our Approach

We do this by working holistically with SEO instead of breaking it up into silos. For us, it is an important approach to have to SEO if SEO is to be a source of increased traffic, brand awareness, and conversions.

Key Elements of SEO Today

In SEO, we often talk about the main aspects as being three elements: technical SEO, content, and link building. Many, however, make the mistake of separating the three elements and forgetting that they play closely together when you want to create results with SEO. The separation of the three is an approach many have worked with in the past. But the SEO world has changed.

Often the focus on SEO has been either to increase technical health, create "SEO content," or get a lot of links. Today, you can no longer work with SEO in silos in that way. You need to understand the connection between the three elements and work with them in conjunction with each other. Ultimately, it's not just about one of the three elements; it's about combining the three and getting them to work together in an SEO strategy.

1. To obtain links solely for the purpose of obtaining links is not a serious KPI for an ambitious company. Nor is it to look exclusively at the number of words when evaluating whether your content is good enough for Google's page one.
   

2. Your main focus should again be on people - your target group - in the same way as it is the focus for Google. Although Google may not always have been good enough to show that this is their focus, their algorithm today largely understands search intent at a semantic level: i.e., understanding search intentions not only from individual keywords but from covering a topic and related keywords in the content.
   

3. The main areas of SEO are still within technical SEO, content, and link building, but they play together and should not be separated. Your company's technical team will need to work with your content team and PR team and vice versa.
   

Especially, content is the core of SEO and is often referred to as the "king of marketing". Content is the definition of what your target group is looking for. It means that you need to understand the needs of your target group and meet them with engaging content, which in turn generates organic results for your company. Content is also an aspect of SEO that Google has focused on through its recent updates, including one of the latest titled Helpful Content Update.

But it takes more than good content to achieve visibility in a competitive landscape and on Google's page one with only room for ten organic results. Your website's technical foundation and strong links to your content should also be focal points. This again leads back to perceiving the three elements of SEO as connected.

The technical foundation allows your page to be indexed by Google and to create content in an optimized design. The strong links help brand awareness of your company and increase your authority on search engines. This, combined with valuable content that considers the needs of your target audience, is the approach we take in our SEO sprint approach. The work with repeated SEO sprints, which contain sets of tasks, allows us to deliver strategies that create the best possible results.

Content: The Core of Successful SEO

In theory, all companies have the opportunity to be number one on Google. But to reach that winning position - and stay there - requires hard, dedicated, and continuous SEO work. Continuous content production is especially important here.

Therefore, the main goal of all successful optimization is to be experts (thought leaders). You do this especially by developing content that provides your target audience with in-depth answers to their questions. And you do it by making sure you have enough content to also answer all the related questions your target group has. The key here is to follow the search intent behind the business-relevant keywords you are creating content against.

If you create helpful content of high value, users will share your content. You only need to help them find it.

At Bonzer, we have developed a link building playbook based on our experiences and the idea that not all links are created equally. We believe in the idea of the triangle of link building, where the goal is to get links from trusted, authoritative pages - and perhaps most importantly, links that are relevant to your business.

The more links you achieve - links that actually create value -, the more willing Google is to help you to the top. But if you do not understand what your target audience is after, and how to create valuable content for them, your link-building efforts are probably not of much use. Therefore: focus on content.

This is how we approach SEO

At Bonzer, we help customers create SEO strategies based on their overall business and marketing goals. We do this through in-depth analyses, strategic roadmaps, and effective SEO sprints. Behind strategic planning and execution lies extensive data, heavy SEO knowledge, and customer understanding. At the same time, our work requires a basic curiosity about the needs and challenges of your target group.

The overall strategy is not fixed but changes as the business does. It is adaptable, must fit into the bigger picture, and is based on continuous efforts that build on the created results and add value. That's how we make our customers succeed.

Build Continuous Strategies that Last

Your company's strategies should be based on in-depth analyses, flexibility, and continuous efforts that build on the results already achieved and add value. Without thorough analyses, you cannot understand your company's target group, and you will find it difficult to give them a website experience that appeals to them and creates conversions.

Flexibility allows you to adapt your company's strategy to new trends, product updates, or other factors that may arise during a planned strategy.

Why you should follow the modern principles of SEO

When it comes to SEO, you have two options: you can either isolate SEO as one marketing channel among many, or you can work with SEO as a fundamental and integrated channel for your company's growth.

Modern SEO is not just about optimizing towards search engines and benefiting from the organic traffic that comes from it. Modern SEO is about understanding your target audience and meeting their desires by optimizing your customer journey for them. This will make it easier for your target audience to understand your product, and it will help them choose you at the moment of truth (zero moment of truth).

With an extreme amount of content being created every single day, it is essential that you create content that is both unique and helps your target group find the best answers to their search.

While we see good Google placements as a success factor, the whole process of getting to the top of Google is perhaps one of the most valuable investments for your company's digital visibility.

For example, optimizing your site's technical structure is part of this process. When you optimize the technical structure, you create a better user experience for everyone who enters your website from different channels. And that's an important element to have in terms of leads and sales.

Keyword analysis and production of high-quality content are also part of the process towards reaching Google's page one. And it's a way for you to develop a unique understanding of what your target audience wants. At the same time, good keyword-targeted content improves your company's performance on ads and social media...

Another bonus of well-founded content is that you can use it for link building and obtaining relevant referrals to your website. If your content is interesting and good enough for those you reach out to, you can obtain referrals in the form of links - which can increase your company's brand recognition, link authority, and number of visitors.

The sum of everything we've covered here is that SEO is no longer what you might know or used to know. SEO is no longer just an isolated discipline created to make your company more visible on search engines.

SEO has evolved significantly and is now a leading marketing channel. If you work properly with SEO today, it can be your most important marketing channel and the way to more visitors, increased brand awareness, and not least more sales.

Our Approach

SEO is about investing in your own business and reaping the benefits of that through increased ROI.

To stay ahead of your competitors, you must stay updated on relevant Google, SEO, and industry news, and use the right SEO tools. Understanding SEO and achieving good results takes time, but if you follow the developments in the SEO field closely, you have the opportunity to be a step ahead of your competitors.

Updated knowledge about and development in the SEO field can come in the form of cryptic messages - especially when it is Google that announces it. Therefore, one of our main focuses when collaborating with companies is to make this knowledge easily understandable and convert it into the necessary actions for you and your business.