European Search Awards 2020 - Book of the Night

RELIVE THE EUROPEAN SEARCH PARTY The European Search Awards celebrate the very best in European SEO, PPC and Content Marketing, and recognise the individuals, companies and organizations that are transforming Europe’s search industry.

As you know due to COVID-19 restrictions and concerns around travel, this year’s European Search Awards didn’t take place in Bucharest the way we had planned. It was not our usual Search Awards party, but we hope you enjoyed the virtual celebrations and coming together online as much as we did, for one different but equally fantastic European Search Awards.

The entry quality was extremely high this year and we had a record-breaking number of entries, meaning if you made the shortlist, you are truly one of the best in the Search industry. Our thanks go out to our judges who had the unenviable task of shortlisting and deciding who went home with a prestigious trophy.

We’d also like to take the opportunity to thank all of our sponsors and partners, who without their support, the European Search Awards would not be possible.

We’ll see you hopefully in real life in Bucharest in 2021!

Nicky Wake Founder of the Search Awards

CATEGORY SPONSOR

FINALISTS Bluerank & Wittchen From impression to conversion Crafted & Frugi A Summer of Scillyness Digitaloft & Kitchen Knives UK Using SEO to Build the UK’s #1 Kitchen Knife Shop Evolved Search & Tap Warehouse Making a splash with creative Search Marketing Global Search Marketing & Chemist Direct Google Medic Recovery Peak Ace & kartenmacherei How Data Tells Wedding Stories Peak Ace & Yours Clothing Body Shaming: We don’t need to hide!

Re:signal & ASICS Europe Running the SERPs marathon!

Vertify & Videt Shocking an E-commerce Back to Life

SILVER AWARD Rise at Seven & GAME Christmas Tinner

EUROPEANSEARCHAWARDS BEST USE OF SEARCH RETAIL / ECOMMERCE (SEO) Re:signal & ASICS Europe SUMMARY ASICS is one of the leading sports brands in the world, renowned for its leading-edge and forwardthinking approach to sport enhancing athletic gear. Their products inspire greatness, helping customers to become faster, stronger to improve their sporting performance.

ASICS approached Re:signal in December 2018, disappointed with the SEO agencies because they had been stagnated, couldn’t meet their targets, and the activity that they had carried out didn’t satisfy their level of ambition. We were set up with a high growth target of 30% organic uplift YoY which they had failed to achieve in the previous years.

Re:signal and ASICS Europe have built a fantastic working relationship, which has grown from strength to strength as we work together to drive results.

In 2019 (from the start of partnership in Jan until Dec), our focused and targeted approach allowed us to drive a YoY increase of 41.7% in organic traffic and 93.7% in revenue when compared to 2018, equal to €2.17m more than the client’s revised forecast!

To win this award would be a real credit to all the hard work that has been conducted by the team working together and being committed to driving meaningful results aligned with our clients business goals.

JUDGES’ COMMENTS This campaign was thoroughly researched, seamlessly implemented and filled with examples of creativity. The team seized any opportunity to support the client’s revenue growth. The fact that this campaign was run simultaneously in multiple languages was even more impressive!

FINALISTS BlueGlass Interactive & EAT.ch Maximum performance delivered Fusion Unlimited & Halfords Boosting high street performance through paid search Havas Media UK & Homebase Feels Good to be Home Impression & Magnet Expert iProspect Ireland & Le Creuset A recipe for Black Friday success RIFF Digital Marketing & Klium Google Shopping to the next level

BEST USE OF SEARCH RETAIL / ECOMMERCE (PPC) Wolfgang Digital & Brown Thomas Arnotts SUMMARY Wolfgang has been working with Brown Thomas (BT) since 2013 and have helped them to achieve phenomenal online growth through search. In 2015, Arnotts was acquired by high-end UK retailer Selfridges Group, who also own BT, and in 2018 joined BT under Wolfgang’s wing.

A big challenge we faced was that both stores started stocking the same products and brands following the acquisition, which meant the stores were directly competing on search– in fact, they quickly became each other’s biggest competitor! We worked closely with Brown Thomas and Arnotts (BTA) to better understand brand priorities for each site, and baked this into our bidding and audience strategy.

Wolfgang Digital & Brown Thomas Arnotts A Northside / Southside Love Story

Another big challenge was the high price-point. A dress on the BT website could set you back by as much as €3,800! The higher the price-point, the lower the online conversion rate - We suspected that people prefer to go in-store to buy these products. We needed to prove the multichannel value of our campaigns.

Wolfgang Digital & Intersport Elverys A Business Led Strategy & Automation

Our integrated strategy helped bring two stores from the northside and southside of Dublin together to deliver a record-breaking year!

Wolfgang Digital & Littlewoods Ireland Driving the Machine

JUDGES’ COMMENTS The judges thought that this was an outstanding entry, which provided great results for the client.

They thought that this campaign was cutting edge through supported knowledge building.

FINALISTS Allied Irish Bank Customer Engagement Optimisation: AIB Help Centre SEO Campaign Digitaloft & Veygo Driving SEO Success with Digital PR Re:signal & WorldRemit A better way to send money Refinitiv Billion Dollar Rebrand

EUROPEANSEARCHAWARDS BEST USE OF SEARCH FINANCE (SEO) Digitaloft & Veygo SUMMARY This win goes to demonstrate the impact which a strategically executed digital PR campaign can have upon a wider SEO strategy.

Rise at Seven & AskTraders

Many underestimate the impact of topically relevant links, however the growth demonstrated here over a 12 month period perfectly showcases why no brand should be ignoring digital PR as a trusted link building tactic as we move into 2020.

SEOgroup & EXPANDER SEO 360° FOR EXPANDER

This campaign shows the creativity and innovation from the Digitaloft team and the real impact which the right tactics can have upon organic search growth.

SIDN & RCI Bank Finance Your Car

JUDGES’ COMMENTS

Verve Search & Tide Giving the upper hand to a challenger brand Visibility & Raiffeisen Bank SEO Content Campaign Zeo Agency & Generali Turkey How Did We Increase Our Organic Traffic by 40% & Organic Visibility by 100%?

The judges were impressed by this campaign with clearly set out objectives, budget and strategy.

They thought this was a really well executed content campaign that focused on top coverage from related sites. Digitaloft provided good use of data and content seeding with strong infographics.

FINALISTS Adwise & Qredits Making a non-profit organization grow by 60% in a competitive financial market Core & Liberty Machines at the Wheel Havas Media & AXA Outperforming the Market on Motor Insurance

BEST USE OF SEARCH FINANCE (PPC) The Media Image & Refinitiv SUMMARY

Impression & Sterling Woodrow

The Media Image (TMI) is an independent, performance-driven digital media agency.

iProspect & AIG Motoring to a 303% Year-on-Year Sales Increase

We have been working with Thomson Reuters/Refinitiv since June 2018. Last year we focussed our efforts on the expansion of the AMERs region and this year we were given increased budgets in order to take on the challenge of global expansion of the Refinitiv Brand.

iProspect Ireland & Bank of Ireland Guiding the Way Home: Increasing Mortgage Leads by +67% by Perfecting the User Journey

To win this award would be a major achievement for TMI as it would signify a major operational triumph given that the project is so immensely large in scope and long-term in its orientation.

Not only did it involve a restructure of the account but also rebranding of Refinitiv which was formerly known as Financial & Risk division of Thomson Reuters. The project focussed both on improving efficiency and increasing performance as well as familiarising consumers with the Refinitiv brand.

Mindshare-Greenhouse & ING Video call-ING: The best view on online and offline calendars Pufferr & New Bond Street Pawnbrokers SD Worx Activating state-of-the-art marketing automation tools to introduce entrepreneurs to a renewed payroll and HR solution The Media Image & Refinitiv Rebrand and Restructure: Sustaining Efficiency at Scale For A New Brand

We were tasked with making MoM efficiency improvements throughout 2019 whilst scaling Lead volume. We have more than achieved this goal, increasing Leads by 5-fold and decreasing CPL by 70%. As a result, budgets doubled for Q4 2019 and for the start of 2020.

JUDGES’ COMMENTS This was a very impressive campaign with global expansion which found a sound solution to a very complex situation. The scale of the project and volume of work, along with strong results is evidence of a job well done.

FINALISTS Crafted & Eurotunnel Le Shuttle Opening up Europe with Content Harbingers & The “Wieliczka” Salt Mine Marketing for UNESCO treasure

BEST USE OF SEARCH TRAVEL / LEISURE (SEO) Harbingers & The “Wieliczka” Salt Mine SUMMARY

Impression & Eventopedia A collaborative technical SEO and digital PR event

“Wieliczka” Salt Mine is a priceless monument of world material culture, entered on the First UNESCO World Heritage List in 1978.

Propellernet & PureGym SEO Gains for an Already Fit Brand

“Wieliczka”, although so well-known and popular, faces the challenge of better reaching users online. The organic results had to be strengthened by using the Mine’s blog.

Rise at Seven & SpaSeekers

At Harbingers we took on this challenge. And so, we created the Knowledge Mine – a unique place with a carefully planned strategy, valuable articles and photographs of the magnificent salt underground.

Stickyeyes & Hertz Europe Consistently driving multi–million revenue through organic search The SEO Works & ukbreakaways Breaking Away from the Competition Wolfgang Digital & Arctic Adventures Song of Ice(land) & Fire Wolfgang Digital & Dublin Airport Take off with future proof SEO Wolfgang Digital & O’Callaghan Collection Smart SEO Turns the Tide Against OTAs

We had tools and knowledge, experience and imagination at our disposal. We made it!

We achieved results that have exceeded the project’s objectives several times!

JUDGES’ COMMENTS The judges commented that this campaign showed clear efforts which brought about significant growth to the client, as well as showcased expertise and in-depth understanding of the search marketing landscape on a modest budget. This is definitely something they should be proud of and can use as a great success story in their portfolio.

FINALISTS Avvio & Auchrannie Resort Harvest Digital & Sziget Festival Sziget Festival 2019 IIH Nordic & Gislev Rejser The Value of Data: 65% revenue increase without compromises INTREN & Accent Hotels Increase direct booking and fight OTAs @ Hotel Gotthard iProspect Ireland & Aer Lingus Preparing bookings for take off iProspect Ireland & Dalata Clayton Hotels The best rates in town!

Check out our ROAS of 86 iProspect Ireland & Stena Line UK Getting our Brand Campaigns into Ship Shape with a ROAS Improvement of +80% Performics & Air France Embrace SEA changes SIDN & Hoteles Elba Expanding Leisure The Engine & Gray Line Iceland On the Defense

EUROPEANSEARCHAWARDS BEST USE OF SEARCH TRAVEL / LEISURE (PPC) INTREN & Accent Hotels SUMMARY At INTREN, we create digital marketing ecosystems. Ranging from a simple ad campaign to cloud solutions, we plan, create and optimize the digital performance of our clients.

Only a small fraction of our message can be reflected in an entry form, but if you see this text, we did it right this time and we are delighted. Dear Reader, we hope to see you soon!

We have been building this bridge with Gotthard Hotel for nearly five years. Every year, online marketing plays an increasingly important role in sales. Please check out the details of our work ;-)

JUDGES’ COMMENTS This was a transparent entry with all the numbers and explanations the judges were looking for.

INTREN delivered a fantastic result by targeting the most valuable audience.

FINALISTS Better Collective Wettfreunde’s Fury vs Wilder SEO Monopoly Better Collective & GrandNational.org.uk Jockeying for position in Google SERPs Evolved Search & Tombola Taking a bet on a content–led approach iProspect & BetVictor Driving New Customers via content driven SEO Serpact & Betenemy SEO Penalty Recovery in 3 Months SUSO Digital Sports Betting Campaign Verve Search & Buzz Bingo Winning the link-building jackpot

BEST USE OF SEARCH GAMING Verve Search & Buzz Bingo SUMMARY We were engaged by Buzz Bingo to create a series of campaigns that would generate high authority, editorial links to their site. Our response was to create Insta Wealth and Movie Mortality – both campaigns providing journalists with a range of unique and surprising angles that would appeal to a wide range of publications including movies, celebrity and sport.

So far both of these campaigns have smashed all the objectives set for us by our client: • Increasing organic traffic by 174% (over THREE TIMES our target!)

• Improving keyword rankings on ‘bingo’ related terms.

• G enerating 783 pieces of linked coverage (nearly EIGHT times our target) in nearly 100 countries from a range of top-tier sites including: Yahoo, GQ, MSN, Express, New York Post and The Sun. What makes these campaigns so special?

• The campaigns tap into a wide range of interests giving journalists a huge amount to talk about.

• W e uncovered results that were truly surprising and newsworthy – who knew that Cristiano Ronaldo makes more money from Instagram posts than from football? Aren’t you surprised that Danny Trejo suffers the greatest number of gruesome fates than any other actor?

• A s a result, both of these campaigns have received top-tier coverage from across the globe and continue to deliver results to this day.

JUDGES’ COMMENTS This entry provided a clever pivot on the target audience to the actual people who bring the links, not the end user. The judges thought the 2 pieces of content absolutely delivered for the client with some fantastic numbers.

FINALISTS Adwise & Qredits Making a non-profit organization grow by 60% in a competitive financial market Bigwave Media Supporting conservation and awareness with Paignton Zoo

BEST USE OF SEARCH THIRD SECTOR / NOT FOR PROFIT Core & Trocaire SUMMARY Core is a media agency based in Dublin. For this campaign we were tasked with turning search volume into charity donations.

Core & Trócaire Counting our Chickens

Whenever we meet the Trócaire client it brings home that their campaigns move beyond lowering CPC’s or improving CTR’s to solving real world problems. Of all the activity we worked on last year this campaign with Trócaire is the one we are truly proud of.

Crafted & Médecins Sans Frontières Supporting the frontline of humanitarian care

JUDGES’ COMMENTS

Quisma Sweden & Bris Bad Words for a Good Cause SIDN & Ecoembes Recycling from the Internet Campaign Sleeping Giant Media & The Aspinall Foundation Lions, Tigers & Bears Oh My!

This was a simple, yet very effective campaign. The entry provided good audience targeting and strategic thinking, marking it as an excellent campaign, which delivering excellent results.

BoostRoas & Parasut.com Increasing B2B Revenue

by Online Wasn’t Easy Peasy

EUROPEANSEARCHAWARDS BEST USE OF SEARCH B2B (SEO) s360

Hallam & Cleveland Containers Uncontainable Organic Growth

SUMMARY

Impression & EMIS Economies of Scale

The content campaign ‘Winning with Content in a Competitive Conference Industry’ ensured that Sinatur Hotel & Conference added €3m to the €20m yearly turnover with an investment of only €26k.

Refinitiv Billion Dollar Rebrand

Their website is more visible than ever in the industry. Because of the content campaign, the organic visibility is up with 636%. The content campaign played a vital role in getting everything to work in a period where Sinatur Conference & Hotels were going through a rebranding process. The rebranding process played a crucial role in the content production.

FINALISTS

s360 Winning with Content in a Competitive Conference Industry SIDN & CDEG Make it legal Traffic Builders & Pon Business Mobility Low Budget, High Impact

SILVER AWARD Resolution Denmark & Hoyer Motors Getting the engine running: Generating leads using zero volume keywords

With a limited budget, s360 & Sinatur managed to prioritize all Search actions in a way where the most valuable content related actions have been executed – and with great success.

Both s360 & Sinatur would be proud to get recognized for a Search campaign that has been created in an industry with very limited budgets, and at the same time achieved great success and exceeded their business goals years in advance, adding €3m to the yearly turnover an investment of only €26k

JUDGES’ COMMENTS In this difficult industry, S360’s campaign generated a great result, using a thoughtful strategy.

The judges also noted that this campaign provided a great way to leverage content, delivering excellent ROI.

FINALISTS Bluebird Media & Soundtrack Your Brand Turning up the volume Bluerank & Raja Package your performance right Hallam & Learning Pool Conversions are Vanity, Customers are Sanity iProspect Ireland & Workday A Journey Through the Clouds: Taking Conversions to New Heights Novi.Digital & Property Data A partnership to improving business growth brick-by-click Raw Digital & 3stepIT Complicated Product Needs Even More Complicated Marketing Result Media & EDEN Springs International strategy for generating leads in the B2B market SD Worx Activating state-of-the-art marketing automation tools to introduce entrepreneurs to a renewed payroll and HR solution Taste Sun & enovation even in B2B has online its place The Engine, Pipar\TBWA, Advant Technology & Taxback International ABM Pilot Success

EUROPEANSEARCHAWARDS BEST USE OF SEARCH B2B (PPC) Bluerank & Raja SUMMARY The RAJA Group serves over 700,000 companies across all industry sectors. From multinational corporations to medium-sized businesses. The company has been constantly expanding its offer.

Google Ads is the largest channel for their business, so we should take care of Raja growth on a Polish market.

Taking into account the needs of the RAJA Group, we had to increase the number of transactions and revenue in Poland. In addition, we should start the Google Shopping campaign and be further than other competitors in this branch.

In order to achieve quite ambitious goals we should think more comprehensively and outside the box. So that we started from deep analyses and planning of future strategy using the power of data. At that stage, FBprophet forecast and Markov’s transition matrix came in handy to build a brand new strategy. For optimization we have been using a vast variety of solutions: from Search Ads 360 bidding strategies to custom attribution models using Markov chain and Shapley value.

Our efforts bore fruit. We were glad to have a 70.2% increase in total transactions from Google Ads and 119.6% revenue growth from Non-Brand campaigns in 2019 (YoY).

JUDGES’ COMMENTS The judges thought this was a well thought-out and presented campaign structure which provided detailed analysis. They also thought it was good to see the use of textbook statistics and digital marketing thinking tools.

FINALISTS Blue Array & Floom Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day BlueGlass & Medela The Rise of Mum’s Journey Bluerank & Wittchen From impression to conversion Delante & Z Klockow Building Technical SEO Blocks to Increase Income Digitaloft & Veygo Driving SEO Success with Digital PR Evolved Search & Tap Warehouse Making a splash with creative Search Marketing MediaCom & Local Heroes Building SEO success by challenging traditional media Peak Ace & kartenmacherei How Data Tells Wedding Stories Vertify & Logiscool From Zero to Hero / Market Leader

SILVER AWARD Peak Ace & Yours Clothing Body Shaming: We don’t need to hide!

BEST USE OF SEARCH B2C (SEO) Evolved Search & Tap Warehouse SUMMARY Tap Warehouse is a rapidly-growing eCommerce business, specialising in - you guessed it - taps!

They also supply a broad range of over 10,000 products including sinks, mirrors, accessories and more, and boast a huge selection of well-known and specialist brands.

In March 2019 they began working with Evolved Search, a Search specialist and award-winning agency based in Newcastle upon Tyne. Tap Warehouse had experienced a worrying downturn in organic performance and a 36% drop in visibility, which was impacting revenue.

Given that organic search had previously been a big driver in conversions, we needed to help them rectify various technical issues quickly and get KPIs back on track.

The internal team at Tap Warehouse were keen to readdress the way they’d approached SEO in the past and - with the help of Evolved Search - wanted to inject personality and drive results through creative content marketing and effective outreach, as well as the sound technical experience they needed to deliver to customers.

The results delivered in less than a year have seen Tap Warehouse enjoy two record-breaking months in terms of organic revenue, with steady climbs month-on-month.

Evolved Search has helped the brand to not only regain the visibility, revenue and organic traffic they had prior to the downturn, but significantly exceed all KPIs consistently

JUDGES’ COMMENTS This entry displayed fantastic campaign work in not only making taps exciting via content marketing, but also impacting their client’s bottom line. Brilliant all-around work!

BlueGlass Interactive & EAT.ch Maximum performance delivered

BEST USE OF SEARCH B2C (PPC) Wolfgang Digital & Brown Thomas Arnotts

Elevate Digital & Pip Studio Automated Profit Driven PPC Campaigns

SUMMARY

Happy Idiots & A-Z Barbecue & Gourmet Party Service -46% CPA through a customized strategy

Wolfgang has been working with Brown Thomas (BT) since 2013 and have helped them to achieve phenomenal online growth through search. In 2015, Arnotts was acquired by high-end UK retailer Selfridges Group, who also own BT, and in 2018 joined BT under Wolfgang’s wing.

Havas Media UK & The Open University Your Ambition, Our Mission

A big challenge we faced was that both stores started stocking the same products and brands following the acquisition, which meant the stores were directly competing on search– in fact, they quickly became each other’s biggest competitor! We worked closely with Brown Thomas and Arnotts (BTA) to better understand brand priorities for each site, and baked this into our bidding and audience strategy.

FINALISTS AdPeak & Meblobranie.pl How to grow mature eCommerce by 121% in one year Bluebird Media & MediaMarkt Sweden Automation across the nation

Precis Digital & Bodystore FEED THE MACHINE Reprise, Initiative Jr. & LEGO How the Batmobile Became an Unlikely Superhero over Black Friday Stellar Search & Bloom and Wild New Customer Acquisition Campaign Traffic Builders & CarNext.com Conquering Europe Up&More & AmeriGas Automation never ends Wolfgang Digital & Brown Thomas Arnotts A Northside / Southside Love Story Wolfgang Digital & Intersport Elverys A Business Led Strategy & Automation

Another big challenge was the high price-point. A dress on the BT website could set you back by as much as €3,800! The higher the price-point, the lower the online conversion rate - We suspected that people prefer to go in-store to buy these products. We needed to prove the multichannel value of our campaigns.

Our integrated strategy helped bring two stores from the northside and southside of Dublin together to deliver a record-breaking year!

JUDGES’ COMMENTS This was a strong campaign showing a unique approach. The judges commented that even more impressive were the results driven across both the ROAS, as well as validating in-store revenue from online spend.

Digitaloft & Veygo Driving SEO Success with Digital PR

BEST USE OF SEARCH AUTOMOTIVE Evolved Search & Select Car Leasing

Evolved Search & Select Car Leasing Driving performance to Pole Position

SUMMARY

FINALISTS Bluerank & Mitsubishi.pl Efficiency driven by ideas

Hallam & Esso Card Fuelling European Growth Havas Media & Hyundai Driving Towards A Greener Future InfoTrade & LeaseVergelijker How newcomer LeaseVergelijker achieved top rankings in Google within a year Loud Mouth Media & Agnew Group 2019-2020 Search Campaign moccamedia & Opel Vauxhall Europe Search2Sale: Push to the digital Showroom!

Traffic Builders & CarNext.com Conquering Europe

SILVER AWARD Kubix Digital & KIA Finding the Way to Your Car Dealership

The campaign delivered for Select Car Leasing has consistently driven performance across traffic, visibility and backlink metrics, continuing to ensure that the brand sits in poll position versus their competitors, in a very competitive and volatile market. Climbing to and maintaining position 1 rankings for a range of car leasing keywords is the fundamental objective of our work and it’s a box we consistently tick, keeping Select Car Leasing at the forefront of the industry.

Evolved Search has worked with Select Car Leasing for a number of years, previously achieving phenomenal growth figures and winning a UK Search Award in 2016 for their outstanding work, the Best SEO Campaign. Since then, the challenge and objective has been to maintain outstanding results and drive quality leads for the brand, in an extremely competitive marketplace.

Not only have we managed to achieve that, but our creative approach to content production and outreach has picked up 538 high-quality backlinks across target publications.

In the past year alone, our work with Select Car Leasing has helped them maintain their 1st position ranking, as well as a 166% increase in organic traffic, 244% increase in impressions, a 188% increase in clicks and a 160% lift in organic visibility. The brand’s position ahead of competitors continues to be untouchable and our creative strategy has earned Select Car Leasing coverage in line with key events throughout the year to keep things relevant and the brand front of mind.

That’s what we call being in the driving seat!

JUDGES’ COMMENTS It’s great to see a client really buy into the value of SEO and take site transition so seriously.

This campaign demonstrated excellent creative work, with strong results delivered.

FINALISTS BlueGlass Interactive & Hirslanden SEO Health Boost Delante & BeDiet Catering Huge Traffic Gain for Great Weight Loss DWF & Denttaglio From 0 to 17k organic visits/month in less than one year MediaCom & Nuffield Autumn Gyms Semahead & Össur Effective lead campaign in the advanced orthopedic technologies industry SEO Works Achieve 633% ROI for Health Alarm Client After Pressing Rescue Button SIDN & Caser Seguros SEO Campaign Verve Search & Babylon Health Delivering results without stress, with our campaign ‘National Stress’ Whites Agency & Medme A 3616% Increase in Organic Traffic and the Raise of Health Awareness Zeo Agency & AcIbadem Health Group You Are What You E-A-T

EUROPEANSEARCHAWARDS BEST USE OF SEARCH HEALTH DWF & Denttaglio SUMMARY Denttaglio is a dental clinic from Bucharest, founded by two enthusiastic doctors, Monica and Klodian Hazizi. In the last few years, the clinic focus was to invest in technology and in the quality of their services. They soon became one of the most appreciated dental clinics in Bucharest. But they were not visible anywhere in the online environment. They had an outdated website with no rankings and no other online marketing campaigns.

At the beginning of 2019, Monica and Klodian, decided to invest in their website. Their ambition: to become in short time one of the most visible clinics in Bucharest.

DWF, one of the largest SEO agencies from Romania, with 140+ active SEO campaigns, accepted the challenge. With a strong experience in the medical niche, we knew that we’ll be hard to overtake the main dental clinics from Bucharest, especially if we needed to start from scratch.

In a constantly developing market, DWF has been offering SEO services since 2013. In the last few years, we helped more than 300 businesses to grow their traffic and sales with proven SEO strategies.

The European Search Award for our Denttaglio work will encourage us to go further and to develop new strategies, in order to help more local businesses from Romania to invest in online marketing.

JUDGES’ COMMENTS DWF should be extremely proud of the campaign they created for their client.

Their work delivered impressive results with such a small budget!

FINALISTS Artics Internet Solutions & Ingrad From zero to Hero Clickoo & Alliance Investments International Property Investment Campaign Havas Media & Cushman & Wakefield Building Organic Traffic from the Ground Up IIH Nordic & Boligsiden Record-breaking results with an automated full funnel approach INTREN & Biggeorge Property Waterfront City Teaser Campaign MediaVision & Douglas & Gordan Stellar Performance Amid Brexit Uncertainty MediaVision & Share to Buy Stellar Success with Shared Ownership Merkle & Chestertons Automating Budget Management with Business Data Semahead & Hamilton May Real Estate in Search Engine Up&More & Vantage Development The Right Message Ad

BEST USE OF SEARCH REAL ESTATE & PROPERTY INTREN & Biggeorge Property SUMMARY At INTREN, we create digital marketing ecosystems. Ranging from a simple ad campaign to cloud solutions, we plan, create and optimize the digital performance of our clients. Only a small fraction of our message can be reflected in an entry form, but if you see this text, we did it right this time and we are delighted.

Dear Reader, we hope to see you soon!

JUDGES’ COMMENTS The judges commended this entry for their very detailed and logical explanation defining the process to identify targets and their behaviour. They thought this campaign had hugely ambitious objectives on a relatively modest budget, and the results were beyond impressive.

EUROPEANSEARCHAWARDS BEST USE OF SEARCH FMCG Zenith & Nomad Foods FINALISTS

SUMMARY

OMG Transact & Henkel Holistic Amazon optimization for maximum revenue

Nomad Foods is a leading Europe-wide packaged foods company with brands such as Iglo, Birds Eye and Findus. Traditionally their advertising focused on mass media such as TV and OOH.

SIDN & Ron Montero Reaching out the millennials

As part of a company-wide digital transformation we wanted to use SEO to change how the business plan campaigns and to grow website visits and influence consumer’s food choices to increase sales.

Starcom & Procter & Gamble The Power of Mobile Speed Optimisations Zenith & Nomad Foods Using SEO to influence consumers food choices Zenith Worldwide & Reckitt Benckiser The Champions League of Search

We created an interactive insights tool coined ‘Intent Radar Dashboard’ to see live consumer search intent across 13 European countries which changed how Nomad plan campaigns.

Our additional research revealed that people avoid certain foods for unusual reasons and we used content to educate and influence their food choices.

We used the data to develop a scalable SEO led and data driven content plan. This included restructured 13 websites, with 532 pages of created content.

The results included: • Over 4.6 million NEW users reached on the websites and through Press YoY; • 37% YoY increase in SEO visits delivering 1.55 million added visits (4.23m to 5.78m visits); • SEO ROI contributed to Nomad Foods 7% revenue increase and 2.1% organic revenue growth in 2019; • Our search insights tool changed how Nomad plan campaigns Europe-wide.

JUDGES’ COMMENTS This entry was a great showcase of Zenith’s work, particularly the implementation of the strategy across countries. A very impressive campaign and professional entry.

DWF & Carrefour Local SEO & Google Maps

EUROPEANSEARCHAWARDS EAT.SLEEP.SEARCH.REPEAT. BEST LOCAL CAMPAIGN (SEO) Vertify & Veranda Mall

GetResponse Blogger Program

SUMMARY

FINALISTS Blue Array & Floom Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day

Impression & Harvey Water Softeners Making Local SEO Work Harder PromoTraffic & Merkury Market Search Engine Odyssey Resolution Denmark & Specsavers Northern Europe The Wonders of Local SEO SIDN & BP Geo-reinforcing strategy SIXT SE Locos for Local Vertify & Veranda Mall Changing the Face of a Mall & its Neighborhood Wolfgang Digital & DALATA Hotel Group Eating the OTAs

Implementing SEO for a retail or services business can be somewhat predictable. There are certain steps that most agencies follow to increase the visibility of such clients in the Google search results.

And while there are factors that can dictate and customize the exact approach that’s best to take, most strategies tend to be fairly... similar.

It was thus a big challenge for us, an agency with over 80% e-commerce clients, to take on doing SEO for Veranda, a local shopping mall in the Obor neighbourhood of Bucharest, Romania.

An odd project of sorts - what do you do when a business doesn’t really sell anything online, and its competitors don’t really do anything remarkable? In fact, the situation was unique enough that the Veranda team itself decided to leave it to us to innovate and come up with a strategy and figuring out what results we could bring.

Thus, this is an atypical SEO story about a fresh and innovative way to market a local shopping mall by creating meaningful points of difference, fulfilling audience needs and using content as a gateway for consumers to discover a new, updated face of the Mall.

JUDGES’ COMMENTS The judges thought this was a really solid campaign and were impressed by the use of content in the form of a blog, which resulted in some stand-out results for the client. Vertify clearly set out target audience and strategy, which made judging the entry straightforward and enjoyable.

FINALISTS BlueGlass Interactive & EAT.ch Maximum performance delivered Bluerank & PizzaPortal.pl Ingredients for 2800% ROI Success BRW & Semahead Delivering offline store visits with WIFI marketing campaign in Google Ads Docklin Digital & Qleano.se Hyper Localized Cleaning Services Campaign iProspect Ireland & Workday A Journey Through the Clouds: Taking Conversions to New Heights Maxlead (part of Abovo) & Q-Park Driving Store Traffic with Search Advertising moccamedia & Opel Vauxhall Europe Hyper Local: Marketing at scale PromoTraffic & Rolmarket Crops increased by 23% The Engine, Pipar\MEDIA, Pipar\TBWA & Olís Olískvizz They.pl & Bridgestone Local Tire Change Season

EUROPEANSEARCHAWARDS BEST LOCAL CAMPAIGN (PPC) Bluerank & PizzaPortal.pl SUMMARY PizzaPortal.pl, the first and one of the biggest food delivery services in Poland, continued their cost-reduction strategy in 2019. That is why, together with Bluerank (R&D Team), we developed a customized system for managing our Google Ads campaigns in Q1’2019.

The system automates the creation and management process to increase effectiveness of local restaurant campaigns based on a 30+ field restaurant feed with 50+ configuration options.

Project responded to the needs of the marketing team that wanted to save time, update hundreds of campaigns in a short time by automating creation and changes, thus reducing conversion costs.

We also helped customers by always serving them personalized and upto-date information – a hungry user shall never meet bottlenecks in his customer journey.

We managed to greatly outperform our estimations in 2019 – we saved 300.000€ YoY, reducing our conversion costs by almost 40% - all that with 2800% ROI on our investment in the tool itself.

Key to success in our project based on cooperation between the marketing in-house team and the agency R&D know-how. We believe that achieving great results in the future will be possible primarily due to this model of cooperation – marketing team market know-how combined with agencies’ automation competences.

JUDGES’ COMMENTS The judges were impressed by this campaign’s clear and measurable objectives and budget.

They thought that Bluerank’s entry did an excellent job of detailing what was done and the technical approach with the output of a developed tool.

CATEGORY SPONSOR

FINALISTS Digitaloft & Kitchen Knives UK Using SEO to Build the UK’s #1 Kitchen Knife Shop Digitaloft & The Institute of Contemporary Music Performance Fake Followers Edit & The Hospital Group Festive Drinks Grupa TENSE & Allecco.pl How we found a prescription for an online pharmacy Havas Media & Pearse Lyons Distillery Driving Sales Through Building Local Audiences Mikuláš Prokop & SME News Events SEO Content Strategy Retro Digital & USTC increasing sales by the thousands Upswing & Mega Image When Content Drives ROI Vertify & Intersport Unforeseen Consequences (and Low Hanging Fruits) Vertify & Logiscool From Zero to Hero / Market Leader

EUROPEANSEARCHAWARDS BEST LOW BUDGET CAMPAIGN (SEO) Upswing & Mega Image SUMMARY The Upswing & Mega Image campaign changed the SERP landscape for the online food retail industry and accelerated the growth of the industry.

The online supermarket industry was in an “introduction phase” in Romania. Industries in this life cycle have participants that tend to be unprofitable, because expenses are incurred to develop and market the offering while revenues are still low. We had extra pressure to deliver quick ROI in this climate.

The user intent in this industry is unusual. The vast majority of head terms (category/ product names) are informational queries. Therefore, we had to create a lot of content while making sure we keep a high conversion rate on the ranking pages.

Despite the challenges, our strategy and execution made our client dominate SERPs both for informational and transactional queries. We have well exceeded our traffic and revenue goals.

We have gained a massive amount of first ranks against well-renowned food blogs or online culinary publishers.

JUDGES’ COMMENTS The judges thought this was a brilliant campaign with outstanding results on a tiny budget.

They were also impressed with Upswing’s use of data and technology to achieve results.

FINALISTS Happy Idiots & Bali Bungalow Rent -92% CPA with a small budget, thanks to smart conversion series moccamedia & Opel Vauxhall Europe Search2Sale: More Bang for your Buck!

Promotraffic & Ekomaluch How to overcome the crisis and increase sales without raising campaign budget?

Promotraffic & Topsanit Small budget, big results Result Media & Casa Carina Effective new advertising formats in e-commerce SIDN & Hammam Al Ándalus Centros Hammam Reservas Transtal & Semahead An effective low-budget Google Ads campaign in the steel construction industry Up&More & S-mumo.pl ROAS of 19:1? Challenge accepted!

Visibility & Svet Stromčekov Christmas Trees Performance Campaign WebDigital & Utilul.ro 1 € budget to generate 30 € in sales

BEST LOW BUDGET CAMPAIGN (PPC) Promotraffic & Ekomaluch SUMMARY Ekomaluch is a brick and click store with a wide range of baby and child products. Ekomaluch offers a rich assortment of ecological products such as food, cosmetics or cleaning supplies, as well as accessorises for babies: baby carriers, nappies, blankets, toys etc. The store ensures secure products of the highest quality. It distributes brands such as BabyBjörn, Bio-D, Close, Elodie Details, La Millou, Lenny Lamb, Puppia and Tula.

PromoTraffic is a SEO/SEM/SM agency which specializes in boosting sales, generating leads and improving profitability of online businesses. Our aim is to truly understand customer’s needs and expectations, analyze the market and implement the most effective strategies so that the business is being constantly developed. We offer premium-quality services both on domestic and foreign markets.

JUDGES’ COMMENTS The judges thought this campaign displayed good implementation of automation tools to extend beyond what a person could do, which resulted in a project that surpassed expectations. A good strategy and results, well done!

FINALISTS Accella Digital & Ozone.bg Smart integrated performance strategy Core & HomeSecure Setting the Alarm Bells Ringing Crafted & Médecins Sans Frontières Supporting the frontline of humanitarian care iProspect Ireland & Energia Fuelling Dual Search OrangeValley & KPN Increase performance by the integration of SEO/SEA The Engine, Pipar\TBWA, Advant Technology & Taxback International ABM Pilot Success Traffic Builders & CarNext.com Conquering Europe TUYA Digital & Madame B Digital Integrated Campaign Wolfgang Digital & DID Electrical Black Friday, Your Way Wolfgang Digital & ZAGG Killing Germs & Driving Conversions

EUROPEANSEARCHAWARDS EAT.SLEEP.SEARCH.REPEAT. BEST INTEGRATED CAMPAIGN Core & HomeSecure SUMMARY Despite being dominated in terms of brand awareness, market share and budgets, our home alarm system client HomeSecure expanded, against all odds, at the same level as Amazon’s Ad business in 2019 (+40% YoY).

By integrating the insights and data from our PPC into our other digital channels, we out-performed all lead objectives and are now delivering a new customer centric service that is something to be proud of, all thanks to our PPC campaigns!

Core and HomeSecure went about waking up a sleeping market by using the power of an established competitor brand, treated like a commodity, and turning it into a competitive advantage.

Using PPC, HomeSecure hijacked the market leaders’ position, used data to refine their targeting of a younger audience and future proofing their business while striking a blow to Goliath.

For Core and HomeSecure, winning a European Search Award would be the icing on the cake for what has been an extraordinary year. For a small Irish company to take on a dominant force, redefine the market and be recognised and awarded at an international level would both transform the business and prove that the underdog can truly come out on top.

JUDGES’ COMMENTS This was a fantastic campaign. Core studied all the data sources available to deliver an integrated channel success story. Their work had good objectives, good strategy, neat implementation and clear results – excellent work!

CATEGORY SPONSOR

FINALISTS DWF & Whatfontis Worldwide visibility for font finder tool Increase & Slimster Ultimate SEO migration Making Science & Ifema Organic sessions and visibility Merkle NL & Europcar Multiplatform Local Search strategy

EUROPEANSEARCHAWARDS MOST Innovative CAMPAIGN (seo) Onely & AppJobs.com SUMMARY Onely has a reputation for being advanced, but our goal is simple: we want to make your website more profitable by making it better. And our unconventional cooperation with AppJobs is a great example of how Onely achieves that goal.

Our data-driven approach allowed us to isolate and prioritize AppJobs’ technical SEO problems that started us on a year-long journey that ended with the website’s organic traffic doubling.

Mikuláš Prokop & SME News Events SEO Content Strategy

More importantly, seeing an additional opportunity to not only improve AppJobs but the market as a whole, Onely designed its own software to monitor Google Jobs position fluctuations which allowed for AppJobs’ traffic from Google Jobs to nearly triple.

Onely & AppJobs.com A Global SEO Campaign and an Innovative Approach to Monitoring Google Jobs Results

This campaign highlights Onely’s commitment to improving our client’s website and maximizing their revenue flow through tried-and-true data and fresh innovation.

OrangeValley & KPN Increase performance by the integration of SEO/SEA Pufferr & New Bond Street Pawnbrokers The Digital Transformation of a Traditional Pawnbroker SIDN & RTVE SMART BROADCASTING Wolfgang Digital & O’Callaghan Collection Feeding The Machine To Drive Organic Revenue Growth

JUDGES’ COMMENTS The judges were very impressed that Onely created their own SaaS software to help the client.

This was something that took a lot of hard work and time to see the impact, and the results speak for themselves. Excellent work!

FINALISTS Bluerank & Mitsubishi.pl Efficiency driven by ideas Burstit Digital & Randstad Sweden Let’s e-commerce this!

Happy Idiots & A-Z Barbecue & Gourmet Party Service -46% CPA through a customized bidding strategy Journey Further & Sky Innovative PPC enhances customer experience and saves £7 million Reprise, Initiative Jr. & LEGO Rebuilding the World, One Passion Point at a Time Sempai & Gorteks Google Ads campaign with perfect measurements Wolfgang Digital & Brown Thomas Arnotts A Northside / Southside Love Story Wolfgang Digital & Intersport Elverys A Business Led Strategy & Automation.

The Perfect Match!

Wolfgang Digital & Littlewoods Ireland Driving the Machine Wolfgang Digital & ZAGG Killing Germs & Driving Conversions

MOST Innovative CAMPAIGN (PPC) Happy Idiots & A-Z Barbecue & Gourmet Party Service SUMMARY Our goal was to maximize the ROAS by reducing the CPA with the same turnover value. How? Not by doing the usual, but by creating a predictive formula and linking 3rd party data to it.

This way we created our own bidding strategy that works better than the Google Ads algorithms.

With amazing results for the client. Winning an award would be an acknowledgement for the work we’ve done. This case proves we’re always on the hunt for the best results, in the most innovative way possible.

JUDGES’ COMMENTS The judges thought that this campaign generated great overall performance and was delivered with an interesting approach. They also commented that this was an innovative campaign that takes the weather into consideration!

FINALISTS

EUROPEANSEARCHAWARDS Best SEO CAMPAIGN Peak Ace & kartenmacherei

BlueGlass Interactive & Hirslanden SEO Health Boost

SUMMARY

Digitaloft & Veygo Driving SEO Success with Digital PR

Our campaign “How Data Tells Wedding Stories” is the perfect example of how to rock organic search with a symbiosis of data-driven content and emotional storytelling.

Evolved Search & Tap Warehouse Making a splash with creative Search Marketing

With our client kartenmacherei (an online shop for greeting and wedding cards) being active in a very competitive market, we had to find a way to push the keyword rankings of commercial product pages within content marketing measures. We had already published a survey about weddings for kartenmacherei in the past. However, with the website being optimised for technical SEO and the SERPs constantly changing, we needed to rework our campaign and content strategy.

CATEGORY SPONSOR

Peak Ace & kartenmacherei How Data Tells Wedding Stories Re:signal & ASICS Europe Running the SERPs marathon!

Re:signal & WorldRemit A better way to send money Serpact & Silentbet Complex SEO Strategy Upswing & Mega Image When Content Drives ROI Vertify & Logiscool From Zero to Hero / Market Leader Verve Search & Buzz Bingo Winning the link-building jackpot

We wanted to generate backlinks from referring domains with high trust metrics via content and PR measures and in doing so profit from link equity and increased traffic, that would give our keywords the last necessary push to outperform competitors.

Winning this award would confirm our conviction that combining storytelling with data and a holistic use of content is the right approach for successful content marketing. And of course, it would be an amazing honour for kartenmacherei, as well as the whole Peak Ace team that has worked on this project.

JUDGES’ COMMENTS This campaign was amazing, providing creative ways to utilise solid data for SEO purposes.

The judges were also impressed with the very clear objectives set up and exceeded!

CATEGORY SPONSOR

FINALISTS Bluebird Media & KitchenTime A recipe for profitability Bluerank & PizzaPortal.pl Ingredients for 2800% ROI Success PromoTraffic & SneakerStudio Multi Market Strategy Reprise, Initiative Jr. & LEGO How the Batmobile Became an Unlikely Superhero over Black Friday Resolution Denmark & Silvan A/S Turning Competitor Pricing Data Into Your Own Advantage Traffic Builders & CarNext.com Conquering Europe Wolfgang Digital & Brown Thomas Arnotts A Northside / Southside Love Story Wolfgang Digital & Intersport Elverys A Business Led Strategy & Automation.

The Perfect Match!

Wolfgang Digital & Littlewoods Ireland Driving the Machine

SILVER AWARD Bluerank & Raja Package your performance right

EUROPEANSEARCHAWARDS Best PPC CAMPAIGN Wolfgang Digital & Brown Thomas Arnotts SUMMARY Wolfgang has been working with Brown Thomas (BT) since 2013 and have helped them to achieve phenomenal online growth through search. In 2015, Arnotts was acquired by high-end UK retailer Selfridges Group, who also own BT, and in 2018 joined BT under Wolfgang’s wing.

A big challenge we faced was that both stores started stocking the same products and brands following the acquisition, which meant the stores were directly competing on search– in fact, they quickly became each other’s biggest competitor! We worked closely with Brown Thomas and Arnotts (BTA) to better understand brand priorities for each site, and baked this into our bidding and audience strategy.

Another big challenge was the high price-point. A dress on the BT website could set you back by as much as €3,800! The higher the price-point, the lower the online conversion rate - We suspected that people prefer to go in-store to buy these products. We needed to prove the multichannel value of our campaigns.

Our integrated strategy helped bring two stores from the northside and southside of Dublin together to deliver a record-breaking year!

JUDGES’ COMMENTS This was an outstanding campaign, delivered with results at the cutting edge of digital marketing, and excellent client testimonials. Well done!

FINALISTS Amplexor Next–Generation Intranets Campaign DAC UK & NetJets Micro Moments Strategy Digital Ethos & Hostmaker Fuelling the International Property Market Using the Power of Search moccamedia & Opel Vauxhall Europe Search2Sale: Worldwide Local!

PromoTraffic & SneakerStudio Multi Market Strategy Re:signal & ASICS Europe Running the SERPs marathon!

Reprise, Initiative Jr. & LEGO Rebuilding the World, One Passion Point at a Time s360 & EasyTranslate Driving Business Leads Across 10 Markets SEMrush Global Marketing Day Traffic Builders & CarNext.com Conquering Europe Zenith & Nomad Foods Using SEO to influence consumers food choices

EUROPEANSEARCHAWARDS BEST PAN EUROPEAN CAMPAIGN Re:signal & ASICS Europe SUMMARY ASICS is one of the leading sports brands in the world, renowned for its leading-edge and forwardthinking approach to sport enhancing athletic gear. Their products inspire greatness, helping customers to become faster, stronger to improve their sporting performance.

ASICS approached Re:signal in December 2018, disappointed with the SEO agencies because they had been stagnated, couldn’t meet their targets, and the activity that they had carried out didn’t satisfy their level of ambition. We were set up with a high growth target of 30% organic uplift YoY which they had failed to achieve in the previous years.

Re:signal and ASICS Europe have built a fantastic working relationship, which has grown from strength to strength as we work together to drive results.

In 2019 (from the start of partnership in Jan until Dec), our focused and targeted approach allowed us to drive a YoY increase of 41.7% in organic traffic and 93.7% in revenue when compared to 2018, equal to €2.17m more than the client’s revised forecast!

To win this award would be a real credit to all the hard work that has been conducted by the team working together and being committed to driving meaningful results aligned with our clients business goals.

JUDGES’ COMMENTS This campaign had fantastic execution and results. Re:signal’s entry provided great examples of research, data, creative and the judges were also very impressed by the PR campaign with the FAQ strategy.

CATEGORY SPONSOR

FINALISTS Amplexor Next-Generation Intranets Campaign BlueGlass & Medela The Rise of Mum’s Journey Digitaloft & Veygo Driving SEO Success with Digital PR Peak Ace & kartenmacherei How Data Tells Wedding Stories Type A Media & Funky Pigeon Parent Salary Calculator

EUROPEANSEARCHAWARDS Best use of Content Marketing BlueGlass & Medela SUMMARY The Swedish-Swiss breast milk product manufacturer Medela has been working with researchers in breast milk for over 50 years. The “Mum’s Journey” campaign has been launched in June 2018 to support breastfeeding. It earned a lot of trust and credibility among young mothers around the world, supporting them to feed their babies with mother’s milk for as long as possible.

The mum-centred breastfeeding content distributed through Medela’s 22 country domains did not only catch the attention of mums but also of local search engines. The daily organic website traffic got a lift from 5,000 page views 2017 to 36,000 per day in 2019.

Type A Media & Global App Testing Stack Overflow

The recognition of high-quality content from mums changed Medela’s image from a breast milk product manufacturer to a trustworthy partner for young mums in their breastfeeding journey and a leading advocate for human milk.

Upswing & Mega Image When Content Drives ROI

Winning the European Search Award for “Best Use of Content Marketing” is a confirmation for the great performance of this international content marketing & SEO project for BlueGlass & Medela.

Verve Search & Buzz Bingo Giving our client instant fame with ‘Insta Wealth’ Verve Search & Buzz Bingo ‘Movie Mortality’ and results worth screaming about Wavemaker & TPE Driving a 55% uplift in visibility market share through creative content

JUDGES’ COMMENTS The judges thought this was a great example of an entry that did SEO well and delivered absolutely fantastic results for a project well done on a relatively small budget.

FINALISTS Claneo GmbH & Mister Auto Driving Cities index 2019 Digitaloft & Cosmetify The Cosmetify Index Digitaloft & Veygo Driving SEO Success with Digital PR Peak Ace & kartenmacherei How Data Tells Wedding Stories Peak Ace & Yours Clothing Body Shaming: We don’t need to hide!

Rise at Seven & GAME Christmas Tinner Stickyeyes & LG A campaign that answered the Call of Duty Vertify & Logiscool From Zero to Hero / Market Leader Verve Search & Buzz Bingo Giving our client instant fame with ‘Insta Wealth’ Verve Search & Buzz Bingo ‘Movie Mortality’ and results worth screaming about

Best use of PR in a Search Campaign Peak Ace & kartenmacherei SUMMARY Our campaign “How Data Tells Wedding Stories” is the perfect example of how to rock organic search with a symbiosis of data-driven content and emotional storytelling.

With our client kartenmacherei (an online shop for greeting and wedding cards) being active in a very competitive market, we had to find a way to push the keyword rankings of commercial product pages within content marketing measures. We had already published a survey about weddings for kartenmacherei in the past. However, with the website being optimised for technical SEO and the SERPs constantly changing, we needed to rework our campaign and content strategy.

We wanted to generate backlinks from referring domains with high trust metrics via content and PR measures and in doing so profit from link equity and increased traffic, that would give our keywords the last necessary push to outperform competitors.

Winning this award would confirm our conviction that combining storytelling with data and a holistic use of content is the right approach for successful content marketing. And of course, it would be an amazing honour for kartenmacherei, as well as the whole Peak Ace team that has worked on this project.

JUDGES’ COMMENTS The judges thought that this entry displayed great use of a PR content marketing campaign returning excellent SEO results. They were impressed with the great levels of detail included, particularly explaining the implementation of the campaign.

FINALISTS Adwise & Heracles Almelo A record breaking number of sold season passes by using a combination of data, creativity, and personalized campaigns Adwise & Kees Smit Tuinmeubelen Hypersegmented video campaign Bluebird Media & Sports Car Center Crushing records trough automation & data GetResponse Blogger Program Harbingers & Capgemini I will call you back Maatwerk Online & Logistiek24 Messengerbot recruiting campaign SIDN & Hammam Al–Andalus Social Relaxing Campaign Traffic Builders & CarNext.com Conquering Europe Wolfgang Digital & DID Electrical Black Friday, Your Way Wolfgang Digital & ZAGG Killing Germs & Driving Conversions

Best use of Social Media in a Search Campaign Adwise & Kees Smit Tuinmeubelen SUMMARY For the last 5 years, Kees Smit has grown more than 50% YoY which is largely attributed to the high investments in performance marketing. However, growth started to decrease, and the competition increased. We knew we needed to get more creative! We knew we needed a large-scale branding campaign on social media channels to reach new audiences and increase branded search.

The first part of our strategy was that all audiences where obtained by detailed data analyses on high performing search audiences. The second and maybe even more powerful part of our strategy was to tailor each video to the selected audience. The third part of the strategy was to start with micro-conversions.

For the content of the creatives, we used the line-hooksinker model as a guideline. With a total of 10 opening sentences (lines), 10 middle parts (hooks) and 5 call-to actions (sinkers), all videos were written out first on paper.

The hyper segmented video campaign outperformed previous video campaign by a huge amount! With a total of 14.553.075 impressions we reached a whole new audience and extended our (performance) marketing activities in a highly competitive market.

JUDGES’ COMMENTS The judges were pleased with the clear objectives and great use of hyper-segmentation. They added that this was a nice campaign showing how targeting is extremely important. Great work!

CATEGORY SPONSOR

FINALISTS GTB & Ford Demystifying SEO Kubix Digital & Oleg Cassini 50 Shades of Oleg Cassini Dress Colors OrangeValley & KPN Increase performance by the integration of SEO/SEA Peak Ace & kartenmacherei How Data Tells Wedding Stories Propellernet & PureGym SEO Gains For An Already Fit Brand s360 & Allakando Finding the SEO Data Nirvana s360 & F-Secure Integrating business acquisitions through SEO Vertify & Intersport Unforeseen Consequences (and Low Hanging Fruits) Verve Search & Tide Giving the upper hand to a challenger brand Verve Search & Buzz Bingo Giving our client instant fame with ‘Insta Wealth’

EUROPEANSEARCHAWARDS Best use of DatA (SEO) Peak Ace & kartenmacherei SUMMARY Our campaign “How Data Tells Wedding Stories” is the perfect example of how to rock organic search with a symbiosis of data-driven content and emotional storytelling.

With our client kartenmacherei (an online shop for greeting and wedding cards) being active in a very competitive market, we had to find a way to push the keyword rankings of commercial product pages within content marketing measures. We had already published a survey about weddings for kartenmacherei in the past. However, with the website being optimised for technical SEO and the SERPs constantly changing, we needed to rework our campaign and content strategy.

We wanted to generate backlinks from referring domains with high trust metrics via content and PR measures and in doing so profit from link equity and increased traffic, that would give our keywords the last necessary push to outperform competitors.

Winning this award would confirm our conviction that combining storytelling with data and a holistic use of content is the right approach for successful content marketing. And of course, it would be an amazing honour for kartenmacherei, as well as the whole Peak Ace team that has worked on this project.

JUDGES’ COMMENTS It was great to see metrics beyond just links, by focussing on referral traffic and using YoY data.

The judges were also impressed by the use of multiple infographics targeting different audiences. and thought it was good to see how the campaign improved overall rankings, and not just those focused on in the entry.

FINALISTS Ambition & Morfars RFM segmentation campaign Bluerank & PizzaPortal.pl Ingredients for 2800% ROI Success Bluerank & Raja Package your performance right BoostRoas & Migros Unlocking the Power of Data in Digital Growth ForwardPMX & Tommy Hilfiger Success Beyond Search iProspect Ireland & Bank of Ireland Guiding the Way Home MediaCom & American Airlines Growing Recognition for a legacy US Airline MediaCom & DLG Delivering More than Marginal Gains Precis Digital & Bluestep Quality over quantity in banking Precis Digital & Bodystore Feed the machine

EUROPEANSEARCHAWARDS EAT.SLEEP.SEARCH.REPEAT. Best use of DatA (PPC) BoostRoas & Migros SUMMARY Migros is one of the biggest chains of supermarkets in Turkey. Its ubiquitous brand and loyalty program plays a central role in the daily life of Turkish citizens. It’s a dilemma for the marketers o work with well-known, successful companies because the usual projects have already improved; so you should focus on finding growth potentials in an unusual way.

This case is not the first thing we jump in, last year, we got awarded for the Best Small PPC Agency at the MENA Search Awards, and for now, we enlarged our qualified services with data-scientists and in this case, was the excellent chance to prove our hypothesis.

To gain full visibility of the journey and sales cycle, we focus on the whole marketing funnel and shopping behavior analysis. Segmentation was made to marketing touchpoints along the entire customer journey based on RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary) modeling. Not the usual way to use static values but also reinterpreted the RFM model for every unique customer.

JUDGES’ COMMENTS This campaign provided a good example of how a high level of statistical analysis can come to life and create profit. The judges added that this entry also displayed good usage of product integrations to serve customised ads and reach targets.

FINALISTS AccuRanker YouTube Rank Tracker Botify crawlOPTIMIZER Log Files meet Google Indexing API DeepCrawl Automator SEO QA ForwardPMX ShelfShare OnCrawl Scaling up with Data & Machine Learning rankingCoach Sellics Search marketing growth software for Amazon SEMrush Market Explorer Tool SEOmonitor Forecasting 2.0

EUROPEANSEARCHAWARDS EAT.SLEEP.SEARCH.REPEAT. Best Software Innovation AccuRanker SUMMARY AccuRanker launched the most superior YouTube Rank Tracker in the market to power cutting edge agencies and SEO professionals with an in-depth view of their YouTube SEO performance. 1 million keywords are already being tracked on YouTube in AccuRanker.

Our rank tracker innovation stands out with the following features: • Monitor the performance of the entire YouTube channel in YouTube search results; • See which videos have the most visibility on YouTube; • Find out which YouTube channels are the real competitors; • See which YouTube SERP features are visible in search results on YouTube; • N ew smart algorithm: When adding a YouTube channel, AccuRanker fetches all videos from that channel making it possible to monitor the entire channel’s performance across any search engine.

Our technology is the key in driving remarkable results at scale for our clients (Search Award winning agencies like Aira, iProspect, s360, StrategiQ, GroupM). Our clients requested adding YouTube rank tracking to help bring their video SEO to the next level with advanced data insights since YouTube is the second largest search engine with 2+ billion users. Our innovation focuses on enabling our clients to excel in SEO while providing the best value-for-money solution for large accounts and agencies.

JUDGES’ COMMENTS YouTube is such an underserved search engine in terms of tools, that having this new one from a trusted provider like AccuRanker surely is refreshing and needed.

EUROPEANSEARCHAWARDS BEST PPC MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE SUITE Adchieve SUMMARY FINALISTS Adchieve Engineering Success Kenshoo Kenshoo Search Marin Software MarinOne Squared.io Audit & Automation for Google Ads

At Adchieve we help large result driven online advertisers to increase their return on investments by leading the way, with solutions that are scalable, flexible and optimised to specific customer needs. We do this by combining smart people, data science and automation. We have a large variety of features ranging from feed management, to automatic campaign creation and optimization, and bidding algorithms.

Since the PPC search landscape is changing with, among other things, Amazon Ads and Google that reveals less and less data. We introduced new features that give search marketeers new windows of opportunities. New features such as Order Data Insights, Amazon Ads creation and the Search Query Manager enables companies to gain new data insights that can be used to optimize search campaigns and combine the best of Google, Microsoft and Amazon.

We would be very happy to win this award as we consider it as a form of encouragement to further expand into Europe and to keep offering even better solutions and opportunities.

JUDGES’ COMMENTS Adchieve is a robust tool to manage Google Ads, Microsoft Ads and Amazon Ads. This software is especially appealing for tech savvy marketers, with a clean interface and the manual was also a nice touch.

FINALISTS Botify Jetoctopus Crawler and Log analyzer without limits OnCrawl Scaling up with Data & Machine Learning rankingCoach 360 All-in-One suite for SMBs SEMrush Search Visibility Management Senuto SEO Analytics Platform SEOmonitor SEO suite for SEO agencies SE Ranking Powerful yet simple SEO software Stickyeyes

EUROPEANSEARCHAWARDS EAT.SLEEP.SEARCH.REPEAT. BEST SEO SOFTWARE SUITE SEMrush SUMMARY SEMrush has built the ultimate suite for search visibility. It is a fully-featured SEO software suite and Google Ads software, powered by content writing workflow and reputation management tools.

SEMrush is currently used by 5,000,000 people worldwide and is the most popular search marketing solution in the world.

In its niche and pricing segment, SEMrush is an absolute leader in the number of tools and solutions available for one account and the richness of data.

The software is built together with users, addressing their most challenging tasks. SEMrush is the data provider that reacts first to Google’s changes and trends. It also invests in the industry’s education by providing free courses from top opinion leaders. Over 140,000 marketers enrolled in SEMrush Academy courses in 2019.

We are trusted by world’s leading media such as The Guardian, Bloomberg, The Washington Post, BBC and CNN, Journalists are working with a dedicated analytics team in SEMrush to battle fake news. In 2019 SEMrush data on online user behavior was used in 5,830 media publications.

JUDGES’ COMMENTS This is the best tool covering various aspects of SEO. The judges thought that this software provides a well-integrated set of tools for marketers who would only want one interface for most activities.

FINALISTS Adchieve Engineering Success Adthena Whole Market View Technology Botify ForwardPMX ShelfShare

BEST Search Software Tool SEMrush SEO & SEM solutions SUMMARY

Kenshoo Kenshoo Search

SEMrush has built the ultimate suite for search visibility. It is a fully-featured SEO software suite and Google Ads software, powered by content writing workflow and reputation management tools.

SEMrush is currently used by 5,000,000 people worldwide and is the most popular search marketing solution in the world.

OnCrawl Predict page rank with OnCrawl’s Inrank

In its niche and pricing segment, SEMrush is an absolute leader in the number of tools and solutions available for one account and the richness of data.

rankingCoach

The software is built together with users, addressing their most challenging tasks. SEMrush is the data provider that reacts first to Google’s changes and trends. It also invests in the industry’s education by providing free courses from top opinion leaders. Over 140,000 marketers enrolled in SEMrush Academy courses in 2019.

Sellics Search marketing growth software for Amazon SEMrush SEO & SEM solutions One Tool for Both Worlds

We are trusted by world’s leading media such as The Guardian, Bloomberg, The Washington Post, BBC and CNN, Journalists are working with a dedicated analytics team in SEMrush to battle fake news. In 2019 SEMrush data on online user behavior was used in 5,830 media publications.

SEOmonitor Forecasting 2.0

JUDGES’ COMMENTS

Squared.io Audit & Automation for Google Ads

The judges thought that this was an extremely detailed entry, with very good illustrations of the benefits of the tool to their users. Well done!

Swydo

EUROPEANSEARCHAWARDS EAT.SLEEP.SEARCH.REPEAT. BEST In-House Team Better Collective FINALISTS Beslist.nl Digital Marketing Team Better Collective Grand National Team Harbingers Dream Team heycar SEO Team Refinitiv Digital Performance Heroes Twinkl SEO Team

SUMMARY Better Collective is the leading Sports Betting Affiliate empowering iGamers through transparency and technology. Our commercial operations are following events-based strategies, utilising the UK betting industry calendar.

We focused on the culturally momentous Grand National. The race represents the single biggest betting event in Britain (ÂŁ200 Million+) and provided the opportunity to develop a comprehensive in-house strategy.

To achieve outstanding results on our GrandNational.org.uk website, we brought together a team of SEO/Content specialists, Digital Intelligence, PR, and Design experts as well as DevOps engineers, technical developers and Business/Sales leads. This was a Cross-Department/Cross-Office/CrossCountry team involving staff from several branches of the Better Collective network.

We acquired the site 2017, after which we implemented a new content strategy and redesign.

For Grand National 2018, traffic increased by +860% to 338,250. Retaining search competitiveness became a challenge for 2019. After refining content, CRO and outreach strategies, we retained these rankings and traffic jumped +436% to 1,812,013 unique visitors (10,000 depositing customers) on race day - 95% attributed to organic search.

Winning this award would reinforce confidence in our strategy and provide recognition for our collaboration as Best In-House Team.

JUDGES’ COMMENTS The judges were very impressed by this in-house team, as the Grand National is exceptionally competitive, so to have ended up in 5th behind the bookies in rankings is quite an achievement in such a tough environment.

EUROPEANSEARCHAWARDS EAT.SLEEP.SEARCH.REPEAT. BEST Small PPC Agency Docklin Digital SUMMARY FINALISTS

Docklin Digital is a performance agency with a clear set of principles for how we want to grow:

Bluebird Media

• F ounded on a culture of nerdiness, Docklin puts constant learning and development ahead of agency growth. The team consists only of hands-on, operative resources – all the way from CEO down to the latest recruit.

Docklin Digital Fluid Digital Loud Mouth Media netpulse AG Pufferr Relevance

• W e only grow by referrals and we hire talents from Business and Engineering programs from top universities, believing that future potential is more important than experience.

• W e strive to go beyond being a traditional PPC agency, acting as advisors to impact the client’s bottom-line results. We invest in technology and innovation developing capabilities well on par with agencies many times our size.

That has generated the following results for us: • 100% employee retention since Docklin Digital was founded in 2015.

• W e have helped our clients achieve excellent results – for instance helping Desenio take their business global, growing from 24 MSEK to 431 MSEK during our partnership.

• 5 5% YoY revenue growth from 9 MSEK to 13.8 MSEK in 2019, while increasing our net margins from 20% to 28%.

• S trong technology and capability development in 2019, including bidding on profit, significant process automation in 2019, designing our own Web App for optimization and building our own Markov-Chain based attribution model.

JUDGES’ COMMENTS Docklin Digital has great values, with outstanding positioning, and has clearly differentiated their agency with solid and distinctive values and ways of doing business.

EUROPEANSEARCHAWARDS EAT.SLEEP.SEARCH.REPEAT. BEST Large PPC Agency Impression FINALISTS Artics Internet Solutions Crafted ForwardPMX Fusion Unlimited Hallam Impression Merkle UK Moccamedia Precis Digital The Media Image

SUMMARY Impression specialises in high performance, high return campaigns for clients across the UK, Europe and beyond. Our team prides itself on strategies based in data driven insight and the creation of excellent online experiences. We’re proud of our multi-channel strategies based on data driven insight and slick digital experiences.

Our core service offerings are SEO, Paid Media, Digital PR & Analytics. Our internal developers innovate tools and services for our clients & teams when required.

We strive to develop the digital industry in the UK through our commitment to training, community support (Digital Insight Days to students & workshops to businesses) and our Impression Labs initiative, designed to push innovation in digital.

Winning Best Large PPC Agency would be a huge achievement for us. We feel we’re doing everything right; our clients are seeing fantastic results and they’re HAPPY, our team enjoys working here and they’re HAPPY. The business is growing as a result and we’re employing many more great individuals.

It would provide validation to add to the success of our growing agency.

JUDGES’ COMMENTS The work this agency achieves for clients is amazing, including the great internal tooling they’ve built. The judges added that having read internal newsletters, Impression looks like a fun place to work!

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EUROPEANSEARCHAWARDS EAT.SLEEP.SEARCH.REPEAT. BEST Small SEO Agency Reddico SUMMARY

FINALISTS

“Good things come in small packages”.

Digitaloft

This is us. Based in a converted barn in Kent, away from the bright lights of the big city, the latest gimmicks and clichés, our team of 25 bring decades of digital experience, energy and innovative ideas to deliver meaningful results and impact on our clients’ business.

five elements digital GTB EMEA SEO Team Infinitum Agency Pixel Nordic AB Pufferr Re:signal Reddico Rise at Seven Serpact Type A Media

Established in 2012 we’ve grown from strength to strength. In the last year alone, we’ve worked with 73 clients, delivering 102 campaigns and achieved a world class NPS of 71. Consequently, increasing revenue +40%.

Knowing that people work best when they’re engaged, trusted and empowered to do their job their way; we’ve worked hard to implement a culture of self-regulation and transparency, from uncapped holidays, autonomy over working hours/location and the removal of managers.

Whilst others may pay lip service to such initiatives, for us, the proof is in the pudding. We’re immensely proud to say our team are happy and engaged. With 95%+ retention, just 1.02 day sickness per person (UK average 4.1) and an internal NPS score of 93.

The icing on the cake? Securing 9th position in the 2019 UK’s Best Workplaces™ and being awarded ’Excellence in Wellbeing’ 2020.

Proving that good things really do come in small packages.

JUDGES’ COMMENTS The judges were impressed by this agency’s fantastic results for clients, especially the reduction in PPC costs. It’s clear there is a very good and special culture at Reddico!

EUROPEANSEARCHAWARDS EAT.SLEEP.SEARCH.REPEAT. BEST Large SEO Agency Peak Ace AG FINALISTS Crafted Delante Evolved Search Hallam Impression Merkle EMEA Peak Ace AG SIDN Verve Search Wolfgang Digital

SUMMARY Established in 2007, Peak Ace AG is a performance marketing agency based in Berlin, Germany – a one-stop shop for flexible, data-driven solutions for performance marketing channels, including paid advertising, organic search (SEO), content marketing and marketing technologies (CRO & digital analytics).

The European Search Award would be an honour treasured, earned and shared by every one of our Peak Acers. It’s the people that make Peak Ace great. We live by the philosophy that fostering a culture of mutual respect and inclusion makes for the best work for our clients. In 2019, we have shown how investing in your employees garners incredible results, company-wide – for brand recognition, client acquisitions and growth.

Anyone can make a little money. Making sure your employees are the best treated, most experienced and happiest in the business? That’s how you run an agency.

JUDGES’ COMMENTS This entry provided great insights into the culture of the company and how they put thier employees at the centre of this. The judges liked the focus on Peak Ace’s own people with surveys, based on pulse, brand and growth.

EUROPEANSEARCHAWARDS BEST Small Integrated SeaRCH Agency Kubix Digital SUMMARY FINALISTS Bluebird Media BoostRoas Innovation Visual Kubix Digital

We are proud to be an integrated search agency as we believe, since day one of our agency, that SEO & PPC belong together. They are like Yin & Yang to us: One is not better or more important than the other. It’s all about being able to have an holistic approach and understanding on how these channels work together. Integration sits at the heart of everything we do here at Kubix Digital.

As the winners of last year’s “Best Small Integrated Search Agency” we are now back again for the 4th year to shoot for one of the most desired awards in our industry.

Raw Digital

This April 13th, we proudly celebrated the 13th anniversary of our agency, so maybe this will be our lucky year! Fingers crossed. By the way, if we win, we will not lose the precious award at the after party like it happened in Budapest unfortunately last year (oopsie) - we promise!

Retro Digital

JUDGES’ COMMENTS

MediaVision

This agency has achieved impressive growth in just a few years, whilst keeping the team relatively small. Their client portfolio and recent work examples were truly inspiring.

Keep up the great work!

FINALISTS

EUROPEANSEARCHAWARDS BEST Large Integrated SeaRCH Agency Hallam

Bluerank

SUMMARY

Click Consult

Hallam is a full-service digital agency based in Nottingham, UK. Originally established in 1999 as an SEO consultancy, our team of 55 digital experts are now trusted by companies across the UK such as Raleigh, Travis Perkins, Jägermeister and Castle Rock Brewery alongside international organisations such as Speedo, The United Nations, Esso and Suzuki.

Crafted Dept Hallam Journey Further Peak Ace AG Sempai SIDN Stickyeyes Wolfgang Digital

To fit into an exponentially fast-paced digital future impacted by privacy concerns and attribution issues, we realise the need to break down traditional silos between teams and diversify the skills within the agency to help demonstrate real value to our clients.

We are focused on developing a team of strategic thinkers and technical experts with deep expertise, who will each play key roles in delivering a unified service for our clients.

The importance of this is becoming apparent across all of our services and is absolutely essential to us, and indeed others, remaining relevant as an agency. For example, SEO can no longer be delivered solely by “the SEO team”. All disciplines play a key role in delivering a unified service – developers contribute JavaScript and Python, designers bring UX and copywriters add content, all underpinned by a strategic core focused on tangible business outcomes.

JUDGES’ COMMENTS This was an amazing entry providing in-depth details and high transparency including revenue, team relationship and challenges. The judges commented that Hallam provided clear and concise objectives for the agency, with impressive achievements, despite the challenges they had faced.