Voka and iO: more than a new website
As the largest network of entrepreneurs in Flanders, Voka defends the interests of local entrepreneurs every day. But to do that, its digital presence needed to be stronger. Together, we increased Voka's brand awareness among different target groups by focusing on SEO, SEA, thoughtful content, and smart campaigns on social media.
More website visitors and registrations for Voka events and training courses.
Higher visibility thanks to SEO, content creation, and engaging campaigns on social media.
About Voka
Voka is the largest network of entrepreneurs in Flanders. It is committed to defending, uniting, and strengthening Flemish entrepreneurs. In this way, Voka makes Flanders an environment in which doing business is at its best and in which everyone can freely and successfully pursue entrepreneurship and grow. With the motto 'Doing business together, growing together', the organisation strives for healthy, shared growth for all its members. Flemish businesses in Brussels can turn to Voka Metropolitan, focused on the same goal.
As an alliance of entrepreneurs, Voka is at the forefront when the interests of Flemish and Brussels entrepreneurs need to be defended: at local administrations but also at the regional, national, and European levels. Since 2008, Voka has been working closely with 29 industry organisations, further strengthening the employer landscape.
The collaboration in numbers
Do you also want to optimise your website with SEO and SEA and rank better on Google?
Then you have come to the right place at iO. Our experts are ready for you. Feel free to contact us — without obligation.
Awareness among entrepreneurs (and non-entrepreneurs)
The website is Voka's showpiece. Not only can interested parties register there for training courses and events, but they can also become members of the network. But the findability of this important information was another story. At iO, we set to work on optimising the website in terms of SEO, to increase visitor numbers and draw more attention to Voka's events and training courses.
Voka also deserved more exposure among Flemish people, whether they were entrepreneurs or not. SEA was our way of getting this done. Read how we approached it later in this case.
Voka.be — SEO-proof
Before we started working on the content, we analysed the status of the Voka website. After all, SEO goes a lot further than texts and keywords. So what did we do to make the website SEO-proof?
Resolve error messages, 404 pages, and broken links.
Evaluate usability.
Increase readability of URLs and meta tags.
Improve indexability and security.
Improve quality of subdomains.
Together, these elements contribute to better performance on Google and other search engines. With a readable, user-friendly, and tidy web environment, you make it clear to Google that your website is trustworthy. And that's quite the understatement for the leading organisation for Flemish entrepreneurs, if you’re asking us.
The art of outstanding content for Voka
To assess the website content, we conducted keyword research. These keywords give us vital information about prospects' search behaviour and the search volume of keywords. Using this as a basis, we evaluated Voka's web pages. Do they score well? Are the pages findable? Are the right keywords being used?
This is how we discovered which pages needed optimising. Moreover, keyword research provides useful information about possible content gaps: keywords that the target group searches for, but for which Voka has no content. By filling in the missing content on the Voka website, all entrepreneurs — with any question — could now contact Voka.
Google My Business: Voka at a glance
When an entrepreneur searches for "Voka Brussels", Google not only shows the SEA and SEO results, but also information from Google My Business. By optimising this information, we further highlighted Voka's offer. Here, we added events and a contact button. This way, the target group is always aware of the ins and outs of Voka and can easily get in touch.
By the way, we didn't just perform this optimisation for Voka Brussels, but also for all other regions. This way, Voka gets to experience all the benefits of smart Local SEO.
SEO, hand-in-hand with SEA
On their own, SEO and SEA are strong ways to put your organisation on the map. But the road to success is only really open once you choose synergy between the two. Too often, the combination of SEO and SEA still seems like an either/or story, whereas together they can write the envisioned and/and story.
Together, they build towards your goal: optimal digital visibility and findability. SEO helps you improve the quality score of your (landing) pages, which in turn allows your SEA ads to score better. That's why we also focus on targeted advertising, mainly on areas where Voka gets less traffic organically.
And this is paying off: in the form of a CTR of 11.4% on non-branded campaigns — a nice increase compared to the original CTR of 7.5%.
What synergy can do; higher visibility for Voka
SEO optimisations are important to rank well on Google. Although the effects often take a while to appear, we saw great results for Voka very quickly. We've already removed some 1,500 domains and pages of low or questionable quality, resulting in a much healthier backlink profile. From a technical SEO perspective, we've already fixed several error messages, so Google now considers the website more reliable. The content is also doing well, with several pages ranking better for the targeted keyword.
Consequently, the results were worth it. Registrations increased by 20%, visitors stay on the website longer on average, and they even visit more pages per session.