Kustvillan flourished where the major players were weakest
Kustvillan competes in an industry where large house manufacturers often have stronger brands, more house models, and greater authority in Google. Kustvillan needed to be smarter and strike where the big players were weak. Topdog’s analysis showed that the large companies’ weakness was longtail. That created an opening waiting for a bolder smaller competitor – Kustvillan. But to succeed, Kustvillan also needed a website that could carry the strategy. Beyond the longtail strategy, we therefore also built the website from scratch with a new structure, templates, content, technology, UX, and navigation. The result was a website capable of capturing more relevant searches, guiding the user further along the customer journey, and creating better conditions for future SEO.
The Challenge
Kustvillan had a clear challenge. They were a smaller house manufacturer in an industry where the major players have more of almost everything: more house models, stronger brands, larger websites, and more authority in Google.
This made it difficult to compete on broad searches, for example searches where the user is simply looking for “house”, “build a house”, or “house manufacturer”. There, large sites with lots of content, strong history, and many established pages are often favored.
At the same time, there was another limitation. Kustvillan’s website was dated and not built for the longtail strategy that would increase their conversion. The site lacked the right page templates, clear structure, scalable navigation, and a user experience that could handle more specific searches. This meant that Kustvillan could not fully meet the searches where they actually had the greatest chance of winning.
Goal
The goal was to both increase organic traffic and increase the number of conversions.
We therefore focused on:
- increasing visibility for relevant longtail searches within the house segment
- building a structure that could scale across more house types and needs
- improving the customer journey from search to the right content
- creating a technical and content foundation that could continue to deliver impact over time.
The focus was therefore not necessarily on traffic growth. The goal was to create a website that better matched how people actually search when they are in the process of choosing a house manufacturer, and that could meet them in the right way throughout the customer journey.
Strategy and Approach
The strategy was built on a simple insight: Kustvillan would not win by being the biggest. They would win by being more relevant in the right searches. Searches where the big players were weak.
There are many longtail searches in the house segment. Users do not just search for “turnkey house.” They search for more precise solutions: “semi-detached house”, “house with loft”, “turnkey house 80 sqm”, “single-story house with garage”, “house 200 sqm”, etc. That was Kustvillan’s opportunity.
Two SEO projects were required because the foundation was not strong enough. The website needed to be rebuilt for the niche longtail strategy to work in practice.
The work included:
- New information structure
- New and converting page templates for scalable longtail SEO
- Texts that matched users’ search intent
- A technical SEO analysis
- Analysis and cleanup of content
- Improved UX
- New navigation that made it easier for both Google and users to understand the website.
This meant combining technology, content, UX, and business goals in two implementation projects so that the SEO initiative would get done and contribute to business impact, increased conversion, and a better customer journey.
“When the phones went quiet and order intake dropped during the extreme downturn, we chose to act. We sharpened our SEO work from the ground up together with TopDog to ensure one thing – that we would be in pole position the moment the market picked up again. The goal was met and we now have an order intake that far exceeds expectations!”
– John Helgsten, Kustvillan
The Result
The result was six times more leads and a website with significantly better conditions to rank for relevant longtail searches in the house segment.
Kustvillan’s position development
The most important result is that Kustvillan now has a solid SEO foundation that continues to create value and conversion. Now that the toughest years in the industry are over, they stand ready with a website built to capture demand.
The foundational work also proved valuable in AI search. Because the website had been given a clearer structure, better content, cleaner technology, and pages that answered more specific needs, Kustvillan was also able to achieve strong results there without AI SEO needing to become a separate project. The conditions were already in place.
Kustvillan’s development in Google AI Mode over time
Kustvillan did not need to become the biggest to become more visible – they needed to become more relevant where the major players were not as strong. That is where Topdog found the way forward.