Two different types of organisations with the same business goal
Anticimex wanted to own local search across multiple international markets in both the US and Europe. But the starting points couldn’t have been more different. In the US, Topdog found a decentralised organisation with 30 to 40 brands and no shared technical platform. In Europe, there was a single brand and existing structures to build on. That’s why Topdog ran the work as two separate projects, united by one shared goal: to rank for thousands of local, commercial keywords in every market.
The challenge
The two markets looked nothing alike. That called for two very different approaches.
The US: a decentralised organisation
The local companies drive sales and decide for themselves which platforms to use and which services to offer. That meant we first had to pitch the projects to the American organisations, with support from Anticimex’s central team. From there, we worked with each individual organisation, each one starting from a completely different place.
We were dealing with 30 to 40 brands, built on different content management systems by people with varying levels of technical skill. The range of services varied from location to location too, and some companies even sold adjacent services such as lawn mowing, gardening and pool maintenance.
That breadth, combined with how much the setup varied from company to company, meant handling thousands of pages at once. We had no choice but to automate content production. This was before today’s AI tools existed.
Europe: one brand, several markets
Here, there was only Anticimex, with local structures already in place. The challenge was all about coordination across markets.
- Several markets, each with its own organisation and language: Norway, Germany, Austria, Denmark and Spain
- Close collaboration with each local organisation, market by market
Goal
The goal was to show up in local, purchase-intent searches and turn that visibility into new customers. Local search is one of the strongest commercial search behaviours on Google: someone searching for “pest control New York” is ready to book a service there and then. Topdog and Anticimex set out to own that kind of search in every relevant market, in a way that could scale.
Strategy and approach
The same business logic drove both projects: build a structure Google understands, fill it with locally relevant, automated content, and deliver it hand in hand with each local organisation. The starting point, though, was different. In the US, Topdog built from scratch. In Europe, Topdog refined and scaled what was already there.
The US: automated local SEO built from scratch
Anticimex offered the local companies a spot on a shared, centrally funded platform, in return for accepting a common structure. On that platform, Topdog built:
- A technical, automated local SEO structure, enabling every site to rank for thousands of local keywords such as “pest control New York” and “pest control Brooklyn”, including terms for specific pests and adjacent services
- Search engine optimization features that made the pages more unique and useful, including FAQs, schema markup and customer reviews
- Automated content at scale, built before today’s AI tools existed
Europe: coordinating, refining and scaling existing structures
In Europe, local structures and a single, unified brand were already in place. Here, Topdog worked market by market with the Norwegian, German, Austrian, Danish and Spanish organisations.
The work involved:
- Launching more local pages
- Making pages more unique and relevant to each location
- Increasing local visibility without sacrificing quality as volume grew
Across both projects, Topdog held overall responsibility for SEO and drove delivery together with the client. That’s the core of how we work: SEO that actually gets done, embedded in every local organisation.
“When you work within an international group, you come up against completely different organisational realities. In the US, we had a fully decentralised structure, while Europe was far more coordinated. Many SEO agencies try to force every client into the same template, but Topdog has the maturity to adapt to the client instead. They helped me navigate the organisation and win over decision-makers at every level, with the right material for leadership and the right support for the teams doing the work out in the markets. That was the key to successfully landing two completely different projects, with the same strong business results.”
– Anders, Anticimex
The results
Topdog delivered scalable local SEO that works across two entirely different organisational structures:
- In the US, the automated local SEO structure now runs across three sites on a shared platform. Topdog designed the pages to rank for thousands of local, commercial keywords, from “pest control New York” to specific pests and adjacent services, and reinforced them with FAQs, schema markup and customer reviews.
- In Europe, Topdog improved and scaled the existing structures across five markets, Norway, Germany, Austria, Denmark and Spain, adding more local pages and making them more unique.
- Anticimex now has a repeatable way of working for local SEO.
