Robert Pielanen
SEO Specialist

Robert Pielanen

SEO director at Photobox.
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About

Robert Pielanen has 15 years of search engine optimization (SEO) experience, specializing in technical SEO, content marketing, and link acquisition. He has worked on small and medium enterprise websites as well as large e-commerce platforms. At Photobox, he has led SEO for three brands, such as Photobox, Hofmann, and PosterXXL. His experience also includes web development, PPC, CRM, affiliate, display, and paid social.

Employment

5 roles
Jan 2012 - Present 14 years 3 months
Lead Tech & SEO
Deep House Amsterdam

Deep House Amsterdam is an international online magazine, event organizer, and media platform for electronic music reaching millions of music fans each month.

  • Developed SEO initiatives and managed content for the website.
  • Worked on a successful project, the start of 5-week advanced DJ course for classes of ten individuals.
Jan 2011 - Present 15 years 3 months
SEO, Digital Marketing & E-commerce Consultant
Independent
  • Consulted in and executed many e-commerce, content, and digital marketing projects.
  • Designed and built well-converting e-commerce websites with WordPress and WooCommerce.
  • Implemented multi-channel marketing automation, CRM systems, and back-office solutions.
  • Consulted for e-commerce businesses and publishers in web design, web development, and online marketing, including SEO, PPC, CRM, and social media).
Nov 2017 - May 2019 1 year 6 months
Director of SEO
Photobox
  • Led SEO for the three brands at Photobox (Photobox, Hofmann, PosterXXL), reporting to the chief marketing officer. Managed a team of five SEO specialists, looking after 18 markets. Main areas of focus include technical SEO, content, link acquisition, and user experience. Managed two SEO agencies.
  • Grew the non-brand organic traffic for three main markets significantly YoY in 2019. A total increase of 17%, resulting in over 600,000 extra clicks yearly. Photobox UK: 6.2% annually, 22.1% OND; Photobox France: 13.6% annually, 17.6% OND; Hofmann Spain: 108.5% annually, 72.5% OND.
  • Recruited five skilled multilingual SEO managers and executives for the team. Implemented a novel team structure, set team and member OKRs to measure success. The team was awarded the company award for Outstanding Achievement for firmly over-delivering on target sets in Nov 2019. Managed an English and German SEO agency to cover all markets.
  • Vastly improved the standing of the SEO team within the wider company, evangelizing the importance of SEO with concrete actionable data. Built strong relationships with internal stakeholders and other channel managers to significantly improve the cooperation between the SEO team and other teams within the company, maximizing the combined performance and output. 
  • Co-coordinated a dedicated squad of SEO engineers, designers, and copywriters. These two teams combined have been able to considerably improve the quality and delivery time of large SEO projects, driving the aforementioned gains in organic clicks. Strong daily cooperation with web operations, engineers, content, performance marketing, and migration teams.
  • Implemented new SEO tooling and analysis processes to create better actionable insights. These insights have allowed the team to much better hone in on issues, areas of concern and areas of opportunity, allowing to create a very effective SEO strategy. Conducted several SEO and CRO A/B testing projects.
  • Conducted a qualitative and quantitative competitor analysis and applied these learnings to define the biggest opportunities and highest priorities for the SEO team. Followed by a comprehensive search landscape and user intent analyses to define and execute an integrated SEO strategy, including an ROI analysis to secure internal resources and budget.
  • Led a large-scale legacy clean-up project across all markets, including (sub)domain clean-up, crawl budget optimization and indexed content pruning exercises to improve overall SEO hygiene. Performed backlink profile detox audits to remove spam links and reclaimed thousands of linking domains through proxy-redirects, redirects and internal linking improvements.
  • Implemented technical SEO best practises on the platform across all markets, including essential SEO elements, international SEO and structured data implementation. Collaborated with the engineers to implement several technical improvements to vastly improve page speed performance. 
  • Successfully migrated 16 markets onto the new stack/platform, maintaining or growing organic visibility. Fixing many large impact SEO issues during preparation, implementation and aftercare phases. Migrating large amounts of content and updating and optimizing this content for the new platform.
  • Initialized and led wide-reaching transactional and informational content strategies. Greatly improving the content experience on transactional, informational and blog sections of the website. Translated and keyword optimized these content improvements for all other markets. Introduced new sections to the website focussing on novel spectrums of keywords catering to all stages of the consumer journey. Implemented a new process of content creation and iterative keyword optimization, improving the work requirements for copywriters and introducing a scientific iterative process of keyword optimization.
  • Cooperated with the PR team in highly successful PR/link acquisition campaign, resulting in the acquisition of 346 backlinks (of which 40 with Ahref domain rank higher than 75) worth approximately £270.000 if bought. Including links from The Guardian, The Times, and Business Insider, among other successful link acquisition projects.
Nov 2015 - Oct 2017 1 year 11 months
Group Head of SEO
Treatwell
  • Managed SEO for over ten European markets, leading all technical, content and outreach efforts of the SEO team. Managed two direct reports and external SEO agency. Managed SEO activities needed for company rebrand and implemented large scale stack/platform migration in multiple markets. Conducted technical SEO site audits large e-commerce platforms, implemented best practices and performed extensive information architecture restructures. 
  • Defined and implemented large informational and transactional content projects to significantly increase the keyword reach. Performed extensive site-pruning project to clear Panda penalty fixes on large e-commerce platform. Performed risk analysis and initiated and completed project to move to a fully responsive website in advance of mobile-first index switch to considerably improve mobile organic traffic.
  • Performed extensive internal linking restructures and Penguin backlink profile audits. Implemented education courses for non-SEO departments in multiple markets. Managed cooperation with local marketing teams in over ten markets and external content and link building agencies. Used aggregated data to create automated dashboarding for reporting, using data insights to justify and prioritise SEO projects to stakeholders.
Apr 2013 - Nov 2015 2 years 7 months
Head of SEO (NL, BE & DE)
Treatwell
  • Managed the organic search and social media channels of Treatwell in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany.
  • Oversaw content, editorial and outreach teams and worked together with external agencies in several countries.
  • Cooperated with other channel managers to create the Treatwell brand and substantially grow traffic across all channels to the marketplace.
  • Defined SEO requirements to be built e-commerce platform.

Education

Sep 2010 - Jun 2012 1 year 9 months
Bachelor of Science, Communications
University of Amsterdam
Sep 2006 - Jun 2010 3 years 9 months
Bachelor of Communication, Media, Advertising & Design
InHolland Amsterdam