Shaping the SEO and AIO strategy for Basel Area

For every project we work on, we carefully consider the wider context and business objectives that are driving it for the client. A key objective for our website projects is often improving SEO performance, and increasingly this includes visibility on AI platforms and LLMs too.

Some projects require an even deeper dive. Learn about how we worked with Basel Area to guide their content, SEO and AIO strategy across two distinct but interconnected website projects.

Project background

The Basel Area is a globally recognised hub for life sciences, pharmaceuticals and biotech businesses – home to over 800 companies, 33,000 experts and 1,000 research groups.

We’ve been working with the non-profit that helps businesses establish in the area on two website projects:

• Basel Lifesciences Supercluster: showcasing the benefits and values of the Basel Area as a life sciences hub.
• Basel Area Business & Innovation: promoting the range of support and services available for businesses looking to launch or locate in Basel.

In the project brief, Basel Area (BA) set out their intention to preserve and improve on their existing organic presence, whilst also reviewing the efficacy of their content. They were also keen to understand how they could harness the growing prevalence of AI tools and LLM as search engines and research tools through their technical setup and content strategy. As part of their branding project, they were also developing new messaging and positioning, which would need to be considered for the website project as well as the wider SEO and AIO strategy.

The existing site and its sub-domains had established a solid organic presence, particularly in Switzerland, France, Germany and the US, with some high-performing content. There was room for improvement, though, particularly in terms of better harnessing content to drive conversions and better meet their organisational needs and objectives.

Understanding the current landscape

Their existing digital ecosystem consisted of three websites on three subdomains on baselarea.swiss. There was significant crossover between content, and a lack of clarity around which website/sub-domain targeted or focused on what, which was causing confusion for both users and search engines.

Although they were launching new messaging and positioning, the three subdomains did have an established organic presence, and we needed to ensure we were capitalising on this foothold. As such, there were important considerations around how the migration from the three sites to the two would be handled – particularly as the new site launches were to be staggered.

Establishing objectives for SEO & AIO

All of our projects begin with a discovery phase, which our team uses to define project goals, user journeys and core functionality.

As part of this process for the BA project, we were able to establish more clarity on their objectives for content, SEO and AIO. This helped to guide the review and audit process.

The main objectives we identified were:

• Map out a clear customer journey and the relationship between the sites in the ecosystem moving forward.
• Develop a strategy for boosting visibility in AI overviews and LLMs.
• Uncover opportunities to target keywords/prompts related to new service positioning.
• Balance preserving current organic rankings with implementing new messaging and content.
• Consider how to grow the presence and awareness of content in Switzerland and beyond.

Shaping the website & wider content strategy

Before starting design and development on the websites, we did a review and audit of the SEO and AIO landscape for the current sites as well as the wider market. This helped to inform things like content structure, as well as guide BA strategically in how to approach content migration and production for the new sites.

The audit and review process for both websites included:

• Assessment of current top 100 rankings in the five main regions they rank in.
• Review of top and under-performing content, including blogs and resources.
• Analysis of current visibility and sentiment on LLMs for Basel Area and competitors.
• Mapping of the customer journey content types, queries and keywords.
• Actionable strategic and technical recommendations for the pre and post-launch.
• Recommendations for migration of blog and knowledge hub content.
• Considerations for multi-lingual content.

During the development process, we also supported with reviewing website copy and recommending tweaks for improved optimisation, the SEO and AIO strategy was baked in from launch.

Launch & beyond

Before launching both new sites and retiring the old subdomains, we produced and executed a comprehensive redirect plan, mapping existing content to the most relevant new content. Redirect mapping can be overlooked by less commercially aware developers as part of a website project, but is vital to ensuring a smooth experience for users and preserving search engine rankings. This is especially important when moving to new domains, as it’s beneficial to ensure any pre-existing authority and goodwill are passed on.

Impact

Early stats point to the work we did to shape content strategy having an impact:

• 1.3% increase in engagement rate from organic search.
• 105% increase in average session duration from organic search.
• 11x improvement in click-through rate from organic search results.
• 24% increase in average position in organic search results.

Want to launch a website project that’ll hit the ground running when it comes to search and LLMs? Get in touch to find out how we could help.