3 min read
Making circular economy the competitive alternative
Over the past years, Columbia Road has partnered with Schibsted Marketplaces (SMP) to drive the transformation of their marketplaces to operate on one web platform. Our collaboration has been instrumental in advancing their digital presence, enhancing organic visibility, and strengthening their competitive position in several business verticals, including recommerce.
Through strategic SEO initiatives and technological advancements on sites like one of Finland's most beloved and known recommerce brands, Tori, we have helped SMP make their sustainable alternative the obvious choice for consumers across the Nordics.
Starting point: challenges and market context
SMP owns multiple online marketplaces across the Nordics and operates in four business verticals: recommerce, mobility, real estate and jobs. For Finns, SMP is known for beloved brands like Tori and Oikotie. SMP brands in other markets - Blocket in Sweden, FINN in Norway, and DBA in Denmark - are also household names, recognized and trusted by millions of people in the Nordics.
During a multi-year web platform migration, one key goal for the company has been to maintain its websites’ organic visibility while building scalable SEO capabilities that work with different languages and business verticals.
The Nordic recommerce market is experiencing rapid growth, driven by shifting consumer behaviour, increased investment, and regulatory changes. Up to 80% of consumers have purchased second-hand goods instead of new ones, reflecting a broader trend towards sustainability.
Strategically, SMP Recommerce wants to show second-hand marketplaces as competitive alternatives to traditional ecommerce platforms. Unlike major online retailers with substantial Google Ads budgets for advertising products, SMP needed to rely on organic search as the key digital channel to drive visibility and consumer engagement.
Our approach: building a sustainable and scalable SEO strategy
One key business goal for SMP Recommerce is to make the sustainable alternative the obvious choice for consumers. This principle guided our approach to enhancing their SEO strategy, ensuring that second-hand marketplaces became more accessible and competitive online.
With four languages and also other large business verticals, it was essential to make the day-to-day SEO work scalable and separate content from code.
Columbia Road collaborated with SMP to develop a strategic and systematic approach to SEO, moving beyond ad hoc efforts to a structured, long-term roadmap. Our work focused on:
- Establishing SEO as a core business function: We redefined ways of working by embedding SEO into SMP’s' business verticals, ensuring alignment with product development teams.
- Multi-site SEO strategy across markets: We helped implement local SEO and user-friendly taxonomy and used native language specialists in each country to ensure localised, relevant content.
- Leveraging modern SEO technologies: All business verticals on the new platform receive their SEO data through a seamless process, where content and meta tags are edited in an air table, exported to a Google Cloud Storage bucket, and automatically rendered on the website via an SEO API.
- Addressing SEO risks throughout the organisation: The transition has involved 55 teams, many of which SEO has dependencies with. Cooperating with a large number of teams all the way from planning the transition to go-live verification, execution and after-launch monitoring has been a long-term, rewarding process.
Impact: measurable success in scaling recommerce
- Increased organic visibility for Tori: Improved ranking for key category pages, leading to greater discoverability of second-hand products alongside new product retailers. 27% YoY growth in Google organic non-brand web traffic, 39% YoY growth in Google image traffic, and 420% YoY growth in Google Discover traffic.
- Competitive positioning: Established circular economy marketplaces as a viable alternative to traditional ecommerce platforms in multiple Nordic markets.
Scalable SEO framework: Created a replicable SEO model applicable across Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, ensuring consistency while accommodating local market nuances. - Ongoing SEO maturity growth: Built sustainable SEO processes, shifting SMP's approach to SEO to be scalable across markets and business verticals.
The way forward: advancing SEO strategy with an ongoing strategic partnership
Over the past four years, Columbia Road has played a crucial role at SMP, with the website transition project running for the last two years and counting. By embedding SEO into their core business strategy, optimising taxonomy, and leveraging modern SEO technologies, we have helped maintain the position of the recommerce platforms as leading destinations for second-hand shopping across the Nordics.
As the collaboration continues, SMP is well-equipped to sustain its growth in organic search and further establish itself as a major player in the circular economy.