Eva Pasgaard Skytte is the CEO of Odense Aafart, a river cruise company in the city of Odense. Since 1882, Odense Aafart has been sailing people up and down the Odense River, offering boat trips and team-building activities in the beautiful green surroundings of the river.
In addition to her managing duties, Eva is also responsible for the content of their website and all the marketing tasks within the company. For Odense Aafart, marketing is one of the top business priorities. During the winter season, when they close down their main activities, Eva has time to take a helicopter view of the business to prepare it for the next season. Each year, she prioritizes different marketing projects, and in the fourth quarter of 2023, Eva managed to pay more attention to their site’s SEO.
The SEO challenges of a one-person marketing team
Juggling multiple marketing projects in a small team usually means prioritizing tasks based on immediate impact or urgency, often leading to long-term activities like SEO not getting the attention they deserve.
Despite her marketing background, Eva’s knowledge of SEO was limited. She knew it existed but hadn’t used it strategically. Eva was only working with Yoast SEO, a popular plugin for WordPress.
From what we have experienced at Morningscore, Yoast SEO has a lot of great features and is easy to use, but it is not enough on its own to make a real difference in search engine rankings. You cannot solely rely on the Yoast plugin if you are serious about your search engine optimization.
Ironically enough, after consulting with an external advisor about Google Ads, Eva realized the potential of organic growth instead of relying solely on paid ads. She also realized that they needed to approach content creation differently to enhance their visibility.
“We just didn’t prioritize SEO. And I guess I didn’t take it seriously enough. I didn’t realize the opportunities we were missing out on by not focusing on SEO, which led to us not being found on many relevant keywords.”
How Morningscore became an eye-opener
Eva found out about Morningscore through that external advisor, who also introduced her to the tool, and the amount of work that had to be done became immediately clear.
“Morningscore was a huge eye-opener. I realized so many things that I should pay attention to. When I first logged into Morningscore, maybe shock is a big word, but it was definitely like a ‚wow‘ moment.
I had no idea that our website had so many issues that were invisible to me within WordPress. Dead links, missing meta descriptions, images without alt tags, duplicate H1s, and the website speed all became clear to me.”
While some fixes were relatively easy, Eva also had to look into the website’s code, which was a bit daunting. Surprisingly, she managed to address many of these issues herself without help from their website developer. Eva has been delving into something she had no idea she should ever do thanks to the clues we give in Morningscore.
Now, Odense Aafart’s site is much “healthier,” which is also a clear sign of a better user experience.
Well done 👏
Here, you can also check how „healthy“ your website is and take action from there
The next small steps in a big SEO journey
Before, SEO was not a priority for Odense Aafart, but now it holds leading positions in their marketing strategy. Eva began her SEO journey by addressing the website’s health and has then moved into link building. Keyword optimization is next on her agenda, along with creating new content and landing pages.
She has already observed significant improvements in some of the keywords and appreciates the ability to analyze competitors and similar businesses for keyword strategy inspiration.
“I regularly check Morningscore when I receive the weekly report, and it motivates me to log in and investigate any potential issues. I allocate time, usually once or twice a week, for basic website maintenance. Instead of going directly to the website, I prefer using Morningscore as my starting point.”
Eva likes the fact that Morningscore allows her to work with SEO throughout the year and serves as a reminder of the importance of SEO. When the Morningscore decreases, it’s a clear signal that there are issues like dead links on the website. According to Eva, she wouldn’t have noticed this in the past without the tool. Now, the system keeps her informed.
„Morningscore is definitely something I would recommend. It’s a tool that has greatly enhanced my understanding and ability to work with SEO. As someone who hasn’t worked extensively with it, I can now do things on a better level without the need for Googling and spending time finding out which results are actually useful.
Working in a small business means I always have to learn and know a little bit about everything. And when I don’t have the opportunity to have a specialist, then I need the right tools.“
We wish Eva and Odense Aafart that more and more people find you organically on Google.