Search
Deciding what to do, and in what order
Most organisations investing in search do not lack ideas. They lack an agreed basis for choosing between them — which is why the work that gets done tends to be whatever the loudest stakeholder asked for most recently.
The problem
Why search plans stall
A search plan usually fails at one of three points. It optimises for traffic rather than for the traffic that converts, so the numbers improve and the enquiries do not. It sequences work by ease rather than by dependency, so effort is spent on content for pages that are not properly indexed. Or it is written for a specialist and cannot survive contact with a finance director who wants to know what it costs and what it returns.
The strategy IXSEO produces is built to survive that conversation. It states which commercial outcomes each stream of work is intended to affect, why the sequence is what it is, and what evidence would justify changing it. Where an expected return cannot be honestly estimated, it says so rather than producing a projection that looks authoritative and is not.
Approach
How the strategy is built
A strategy that ignores the constraints of the organisation it is written for is a wish list. Most of this process is establishing what those constraints actually are.
Establish commercial priority
Which services or products matter most, which are strategically important beyond their current revenue, and which the business would rather sell less of. This determines everything downstream.
Establish the current position
Where the site currently earns visibility, where it does not, and — more usefully — where it appears just below the threshold where visibility converts into traffic.
Establish the competitive reality
For each priority area, what would be required to compete. Sometimes the answer is a few pages of genuinely better content; sometimes it is years of authority the business has no route to. Knowing which is which prevents most wasted investment.
Establish the constraints
How much development capacity exists, who can write, what the approval process is, and what the platform will and will not allow. A strategy requiring capabilities the organisation does not have is not a strategy.
Sequence the work
Ordered by dependency first and commercial impact second. Work that would be wasted until something else is complete is scheduled after it, and the reason is stated so the sequence survives being questioned.
Define what success looks like
Specific, measurable and honest — including which measures will move within a quarter and which will not move for a year. Setting that expectation at the start is what prevents a working programme being cancelled at month four.
Output
What the strategy document contains
The document is written to be read by three audiences: the person approving the budget, the person managing the work, and the people doing it. Each needs something different, so the structure moves from commercial rationale through to specification rather than mixing them.
It is deliberately shorter than most strategy documents. A hundred-page strategy is usually a sign that the difficult decisions were avoided rather than made.
- Commercial context. What the business is trying to achieve and how search contributes to it.
- Current position. Where the site stands, stated plainly, with the evidence behind it.
- The decision. What to pursue, what to deprioritise, and what to stop doing.
- Sequence. The order, with dependencies made explicit.
- Specification. Enough detail for the work to begin without further interpretation.
- Measurement. What to watch, when to expect movement, and what would indicate the strategy needs revising.
Decisions
The choices a strategy has to make
These are the questions that get avoided in most search plans, which is precisely why those plans produce activity rather than results.
Breadth against depth
Whether to cover more topics adequately or fewer topics comprehensively. For most organisations depth wins, but not for all, and the answer depends on how contested the space is.
Existing pages against new ones
Improving what exists is usually faster and cheaper than publishing more. Sites frequently have pages that would rank with a day's work and are instead commissioning new content.
Commercial against informational
Informational content builds authority slowly; commercial pages convert immediately. The right balance depends on how established the site already is, not on a formula.
Branded against non-branded
Businesses with strong brand demand often over-invest in defending it and under-invest in the searches made by people who have not heard of them.
Where not to compete
Some search terms will not be won within a reasonable horizon, whatever is spent. Naming those explicitly is one of the more valuable things a strategy does.
What to stop
Most organisations are already doing search work. Some of it is not helping. A strategy that only adds is easier to agree and considerably less useful.
Frequently asked questions
How is a strategy different from an audit?
How far ahead does the strategy plan?
Do you need to know our commercial numbers?
What if we already have an in-house team?
Does the strategy cover GEO as well?
Agree what to do first
If you already have an audit and cannot get agreement on what to act on, that is the problem a strategy solves. If you have neither, the free snapshot is a reasonable place to begin.