SEO Strategy versus SEO Techniques: Is there a Difference?
Sometimes when I suggest to my clients to make a SEO strategy first before commencing any SEO activities, I see raised eyebrows. Sometimes it is followed by ‘why not start working on SEO instead of creating yet another document’. Why the heck create something like this?
What is an SEO strategy anyway?
Like any strategy, it’s a manual, individually crafted, that will get you from A to B: A being the current point you are in and B, the target point. A business strategy will get your business from A to B, a marketing strategy will get your business from A to B using marketing channels and an SEO strategy, using SEO channels.
Techniques, on the other hand, serve as a tool that could help you get there.
Let me give you an example:
There are two companies represented by two websites. Company X and Company Y. Both companies are in a very similar position. So let’s take a look at the two websites: Company X’s website has more quality content than company Y does, however, company Y ranks higher than company X. Other ranking factors are more or less the same, except for the link portfolio, which is more diverse in Company X.
Company X
Company X’s website has more backlinks, but fewer referring domains, which may contribute to lower authority and less traffic.
Company Y
Company Y has a more diverse backlink portfolio.
Theoretically, if we manage to somehow treble the link diversity and the number of links, with the more quality content there is a higher chance of outranking Company Y’s website. So, the B point for Company X is outranking the Y’s website say in a 12 month time.
So we know that we have to build links from 490 domains in 12 months, which makes it 40 of links per month.
How do we do that? That is called a strategy. It can be about producing unique content to attract more links or just simply reaching out to the websites which link to Y’s website and convince them to link to the more quality content on X’s website.
Important is that we know A and we know B and how to get there.
If we only rely on techniques, we will never know what to do exactly and in what quantity and quality to reach point B in our plan. And that’s a lottery bet.
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2 Comments
Nice theory Martin and apologies if I’m missing something glaringly obvious here but I’m not quite sure your logic stacks up as you’ve presented it.
Your 40-links-a-month strategy is based on an assumption that company Y will stand still and not attract a single new backlink over this time period, which isn’t really realistic; you’re setting a static target against a moving object, which although can be deemed a strategy, is a somewhat flawed strategy, IMHO.
For this to be an actionable strategy, you’d need to factor in the link velocity – the speed at which Y has been acquiring links over time – and factor that against a revised target for X over the same time period…
Plus, with a differential of 1.73k Vs. 245 referring domains, where is the 490 as a strategic target derived from?
Hi Luke, thanks for the comment! The strategy presented here is not based on the assumption you mentioned. It is based on a static goal, which is ‘treble the link diversity to be able to better compete with website Y’. There is no intention to equal the competitor when it comes to link diversity. Sorry for this simplification, as I only wanted to explain the difference between an SEO strategy and SEO techniques; i.e. doing SEO while having a fixed target versus not having any target at all. Of course the competitor could acquire some new links over time as well as lose some links; although there is no guarantee that the website will steadily acquire/lose links nor the quality of the links will increase or decrease.