This week, our Fast Five series takes us to meet Jan Coddens, Digital Marketeer at Pharmapets, a Belgian webshop for pet food, toys and pharmaceuticals. Former digital team leader at Fun Belgium, Jan Coddens has more than 10 years of experience in the areas of SEO and e-commerce. During the interview, Jan talked about his first SEO project, shared with us his favorite software, and outlined the future challenges of SEO.
1) What was your first SEO project, and how did it go?
My first SEO project took place 10 years ago for the company Fundoo. In 2-3 years, we launched 26 online stores (zwembadstore.be, trampolineplanet.be, …).
Our largest source of visitors was through organic search. It was a big learning process and we were helped by web agencies. For many keywords, we were ranked in the top 3 positions. In some cases we had 3 websites (blogs) in the top 10.
After 3 years, we created a joint venture with fun.be.
2) What are the main challenges of SEO in 2021 ?
The most important challenge in SEO is to have a fast website, which complies with the core web vitals. For our e-commerce (Magento) sites, this represents a lot of work.
3) What is your favourite SEO software ?
Lighthouse for core web vitals and Semrush.
4) What is the most common SEO mistake you see people making?
- Forget that the most important thing is the user experience. You must put the user first. Even if it doesn’t always comply with the “rules of SEO”.
- That SEO is not a one-time project. You can never be ready with SEO. It’s more than just about putting content online.
5) What is a typical low-hanging fruit optimization to make in SEO for e-commerce?
- Backlinks from suppliers,
- Image optimization (CDN, alt tags, image sitemap…),
- Installing rich snippets.
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