E-commerce, Multi-market
Building organic authority in a category dominated by global giants.
A Dutch supplements brand grew from near-zero search visibility to 3.5M impressions across three European markets, without competing on paid spend.
About Vanan Herbal
Founded in 2023 and based in The Hague, Vanan Herbal brings premium Ayurvedic supplements and natural skincare to the European market, serving over 20,000 repeat customers across more than ten countries. The brand is the European arm of Apex Laboratories Private Limited, a top-40 player in the Indian pharmaceutical market with more than four decades of manufacturing heritage. Through Apex's herbal division, Green Milk Concepts, the group has spent fifteen years developing over 110 Ayurvedic and Siddha-inspired formulations. In 2024, Vanan turned its attention to building online strength in Europe.
Challenge
A new domain, a regulated category, and three language markets.
Despite the strength of the parent group, Vanan's European launch began with a fresh domain, no organic visibility, and the full weight of competing in one of Google's most scrutinised categories.
The Dutch supplements market is large, mature, and crowded. Established players have spent years building domain authority, branded search demand, and trusted content libraries. New domains face an additional hurdle: a six-month sandboxing period before Google rewards them with meaningful rankings, regardless of how strong the underlying brand or product is.
Layered on top of all of this, Vanan needed simultaneous visibility in Dutch, German, and French markets. Each market has its own search behaviour, its own cultural framing of wellness and health, and its own regulatory constraints around what can and cannot be claimed about supplements. A one-size-fits-all SEO playbook would have failed in at least two of the three markets.
Approach
Foundation, authority, expansion.
Rather than chasing quick wins, the strategy was sequenced for compounding. Build the technical and content foundations correctly. Establish topical authority through long-form content. Then expand into adjacent markets once core rankings stabilised. The discipline was in resisting the temptation to spread thin across all three markets at once.
Technical and E-E-A-T foundation
On-page authority architecture for YMYL credibility. Pharmacist-led content frameworks, structured data, proper citation of clinical sources, and a content hierarchy designed to signal expertise to Google. The technical groundwork that makes everything else possible.
Trilingual content production
Native-quality content in Dutch, German, and French. Adapted, not translated. Each market reflected local search behaviour, cultural framing, and the specific trust signals each audience responds to. German consumers want scientific rigour. French consumers want lifestyle resonance. Dutch consumers want practical evidence.
Authority through compounding
Sustained link-building targeting topically relevant placements in each market. Consistent content cadence designed to compound rankings rather than chase volatile traffic spikes. The kind of work that looks slow for the first six months and inevitable by month eighteen.
YMYL: where most SEO playbooks break down.
Health, finance, and legal sites fall under Google's "Your Money or Your Life" framework. Content that could affect a person's wellbeing or finances is held to far higher E-E-A-T standards (Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trust) than ordinary e-commerce. Generic SEO tactics don't work. Cutting corners gets penalised. Real growth requires a category specialist.
Results
From new domain to category contender.
Trajectory
Foundation in year one, acceleration in year two.
Year one focused on clearing Google's new-domain sandbox and establishing topical authority. Daily clicks grew approximately tenfold over the first twelve months. Modest in absolute terms, but the foundational signal that the strategy was working. Most agencies lose clients in this phase because the numbers don't yet justify the investment. The work that doesn't show up on the chart is the work that makes the chart possible.
Year two delivered the compounding payoff. With domain authority established and content libraries deepening across all three language markets, daily clicks accelerated another tenfold. By the end of the engagement, the brand was generating 250 daily clicks and was firmly positioned as a credible European entrant in a category dominated by global heritage brands.
What this means for marketing leaders
Three takeaways for anyone building organic growth in a competitive category.
This case study is more than a graph. It is a reflection of decisions that compound, mistakes other agencies routinely make, and a strategic logic that applies to almost any brand entering a competitive vertical with limited domain authority.
The first six months are an investment, not a result.
SEO that compounds is slow before it is fast. Marketing leaders who expect quarter-one ROI will pull the plug right before the curve turns. The discipline is in protecting the runway.
Multi-market is not multi-translation.
Translating content across three languages is not international SEO. Each market needs its own keyword research, cultural framing, and trust signals. Skipping this step is why most international SEO programmes underperform.
Authority outlives the engagement.
Paid channels stop working the day the budget stops. Organic authority, built correctly, keeps generating traffic for years afterward. The work compounds whether or not the agency is still on the retainer.
Category specialists outperform generalists.
YMYL, regulated industries, and trust-sensitive verticals do not respond to generic SEO. The agencies that win in these categories are the ones who understand the rules other agencies don't even know exist.
After the partnership
Foundations that keep compounding.
Our active partnership with Vanan Herbal has since concluded. The chart you see above continues past the end of our engagement, and the trajectory tells its own story.
The pages we built kept ranking. The content we produced kept earning links. The authority we established kept compounding.
This is the difference between SEO that performs while you're paying for it and SEO that builds something durable. The technical foundation, the content library, and the topical authority remain assets on the domain long after the engagement ends. That is what foundation work is supposed to do, and it is the standard we hold ourselves to with every client.
Working with Unnamed Project has been super impactful for our business. Their expertise in international SEO, localized strategies, and content creation brought us exceptional results in record time. Our traffic grew beyond expectations in both Germany and The Netherlands, surpassing goals by 425%.
Have a multi-market growth challenge?
If you're entering a competitive European market and need organic authority that compounds, we should talk.
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