Yes, there is a pun here: na eTrails we like mountains. In particular, the peak we're climbing right now, ranking in general organic search. And look, it was stone upon stone. The maximum altitude more than doubling. The valleys falling into the distance. The verdant view of low bounces. Staying on the summit longer and longer, watching the sunset hand in hand with increasing session time. And most importantly – the Key Results climbed the ladder hand in hand. It is the result of our SEO initiative in sustainability and ecotourism.
However, before this story comes the primordial question: why climb this mountain, which will take so much work? This priority is directly related to the company's business objectives, and that is why it was chosen. The eTrilhas model is more similar to a SaaS, in which the client is the licensor of the application and not the end user. There is no charge for app visitors, and this is a business differentiator from the main competitors in the segment. If some players bet on creating content per user and also charging them for premium content (such as navigation tools and offline maps), in eTrails the premise of the business is to offer curated and free access content. The client here is the licensor, which can be a city hall, an NGO, a company looking for ESG results.
This directly impacts the CAC, user acquisition cost, which necessarily has to be low. We need to deliver users organically to the licensors, otherwise the account will never close. And that's where the SEO priority on sustainability comes in.
A eTrails It has existed for over 10 years and is a reference in the segment, which already helps a lot in the relevance of the site for search engines. First positions in areas where the company is most active, such as Rio de Janeiro, are frequent.
Sustainability SEO best practices
Therefore, throughout 2022 we took a series of measures to improve rankings and which built the peak. Some examples:
– Restructuring of the content in a textual model. We work on collecting absolute information such as distance, altimetry and altitude, but the output for the user is always a friendly textual content
– Content structuring according to the natural search flow. For this, we carried out a research on user behavior, understanding what stage this visitor is in on the journey and what type of information is relevant to him and what is left for later.- Dedication of a team to quality. The data here is viewed and reviewed, and this helps build relevance and keep the data always up to date. In addition, user reviews bring up-to-date information on the current state of the attraction.
– Website performance optimization. We restructured all home logic in terms of code to minimize unnecessary database searches. Reports demonstrate a 3-4x improvement in server response time.
– Code organization by structuring tags H1, H2, Alt, Title, etc, etc.
– Structuring the sitemap.xml for wide detection of pages.
– Optimization of image sizes and formats to reduce server response time
– Indexing videos next to pages. We produce thematic videos about attractions and publish them on Youtube and also on the website, and we have seen Google prioritizing searches that offer video in an associated way.
– Offpage SEO, building a network of content partners.
The quest for search optimization is ongoing
Thus, these are some of the measures that would not make sense if they were not combined with the other product metrics. Here we work a lot on acquisition, but it is directly associated with activation and retention. The organic website offers a login experience, which is complemented with the use of the mobile app, which in turn requires the creation of a registration. It's quite fair for the user to leave their information in exchange for an app with offline maps and free route tracking.
In short, we continue to look for this intersection between sustainability SEO and creating a virtuous cycle for the user. If you want to stay on top of these searches, register your email below and I'll send you what we discovered.
English 
Portuguese