How To Craft A Winning SEO Strategy

SEO

By Chris Barnhart Last updated Aug 20, 2024

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Image Credit: Lyna ™

Strategy is the most misunderstood topic in the SEO world and likely the most impactful one. Just search for “SEO strategy” and notice that almost every article is about tactics. I get it. Tactics are sexier.

HOWEVER, focusing on tactics without a strategy increases your risk of:

• Prioritizing the wrong tactics.
• Losing market share to newcomers.
• Missing critical opportunities and threats.
• Doing what others are doing instead of doing it better.
• Not getting buy-in for SEO from decision-makers or clients.
• Heart disease.

Okay, the last one might not be true. But the others are. I’ve seen it many times. It’s ugly.

In an environment of aggressive algorithm updates, fewer clicks due to AI Overviews and more SERP real estate taken by forums, you cannot afford to take those risks. And yet, everyone does. I’m no exception: After spending the last two years crafting SEO strategies for companies like Ramp, Reddit, Nextdoor, and Hims, I realized the article that previously occupied this URL was too tactical – and completely rewrote it.

I’ve seen the difference between no and elegant strategy. Good SEO strategies embody a framework that seizes the opportunity of change, focuses on leverage, and beautifully stacks tactics in a logical structure.

To bring strategy to the forefront of SEO, I’m sharing with you:

• A crisp definition of what strategy is and how it works.
• The 5-question framework I’ve been using to develop SEO strategies.
• Countless notes from books and practical experience I’ve taken over many years1

What An SEO Strategy Actually Is

Short definition: An SEO strategy defines how to overcome critical challenges by leveraging competitive advantages.

After years of not really getting it, I located the best definition of a business strategy in Richard Rummelt’s book “Good Strategy, Bad Strategy”. He explains that the kernel of strategy holds three parts:

1. A diagnosis of key challenges to overcome
2. Guiding policies that define how to overcome the challenges
3. Coherent actions that implement policies

A myriad of strong examples convinced me that this is the framework to go – and to apply to SEO. I’m rewording Rummelt’s framework to make it more colorful and approachable:

1. Challenge
2. Approach
3. Actions

The SEO strategy kernel (Image Credit: Kevin Indig)

Long definition: An SEO strategy clearly defines the Challenge a company must overcome through deep analysis. It concludes the direction in which the company needs to move to overcome that challenge in a framework called the Approach. Lastly, an SEO strategy defines specific Actions that must be taken to implement the Approach and overcome the Challenge. The Challenge remains constant, but the Approach can adjust, and Actions can change completely based on new information.

In his book “Originals”, Adam Grant even mentions that flexibility towards actions can be a strength:

Teams that evaluated their strategies at the midpoint were 80 percent more effective than teams that had the conversation at the start. […] This is one of the reasons that halftimes can be so influential in basketball and football: They allow coaches to intervene when teams are most amenable to new strategies.

You can tell a strategy is well thought-out based on four indicators:

• Layers: elements build on top of each other
• Exploit: maximization of a competitive advantage
• Simplicity: focus on overcoming the core challenge
• Change: capitalization of change in technology, competitors, consumer behavior and other areas

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Challenge

The Challenge stands in the way of achieving your goals and embodies the “why” behind what you do. A strategy’s job is to find and solve the core challenge.

Defining the challenge is the most important part of a good SEO strategy because it’s the base for the direction and future actions. If you get this wrong, you waste a lot of time and money. To avoid failure, you need to invest in researching your market position, customers and competitors to understand the problems, their causes, and the ecosystems in which they occur.

Example: You aim to “win” the pet food SEO space but face established incumbents with more resources. After doing the research, you come to the conclusion that incumbents have outsized authority and relevance for pet food product names and category keywords.

Approach

The Approach is the “what” you do to overcome the core challenge. It’s a framework that sets the direction of your actions by exploiting your current advantages and exploring new ones. Getting the approach wrong means you lose focus and work on actions that don’t help you overcome the core challenge.

The Approach is an unambiguous list of the areas in which you invest and which you do not. Defining what you’re not going to do is equally as important as what you’re going to do because every strategy is a choice. That’s why my framework is called the 5 Choices. Without making hard choices, you likely don’t focus enough.

The Approach outlines your strategy risks, i.e., where the execution of your approach could go wrong. Every choice bears risk. By getting ahead of them, you minimize your chances of failing.

Critical: the approach needs to be differentiated. You need to do things differently (competitive advantage or asymmetry). You cannot expect to do the same things as your competitors and beat them. That’s just a way to end up in attrition warfare and obsession with operational efficiency. Differentiation creates greater value, prices and margins.

Sources of competitive advantages can be:

• Focus.
• Reputation.
• Network effects.
• Stronger tools/automation/systems.
• Being the first to do or notice something.
• A resource your competitors don’t have access to.

Example: To overcome the core challenge in the pet food space, you decide to leverage your strength of inhouse experts (say, you have a bunch of vets on staff). You invest in writing pet food guides instead of focusing on category and product landing pages. Traffic to the guides is funneled to landing pages where you sell your product.

Actions

Actions are “how” you implement the approach to overcome the core challenge. This is where it gets more tactical. But instead of picking “cool tricks” or “shiny objects”, your actions need to align with the approach and challenge. You know you’re there when your actions reinforce each other.

Example: Actions you could take to focus on pet food guides are publishing 100 pieces of content with detailed content briefs over the next 3 months, define a regular content refresh cadence and syndication to 10 industry magazines. You also create a video for each guide and position your site as a source of expert guidance from field practitioners.

Notice how you could have taken a different approach to solving the core challenge, like focusing on category and product landing pages. However, this approach would’ve likely not solved your core challenge because you know that strong incumbents already have a stronghold in that area. So, you need to do something different that plays into your strengths.

SEO Strategy Examples From Instacart, Substack, And Adobe

Instacart is a marketplace aggregator connecting buyers with supermarkets (read the full case study). Even though the company has been around since 2012, it encountered a defining moment when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out and consumers ordered groceries online.

• Challenge: Win the grocery market during the pandemic amid strong competition
• Approach: Target grocery and near-me keywords
• Actions: Build dedicated landing pages with rich snippet enhancements

Instacart’s approach was to capitalize on the trend as an aggregator instead of a supermarket chain. They tried to differentiate with inspirational editorial content but missed an opportunity to gain more visibility with recipes. Competitor Kroger regained the lead in 2022, and incumbent Costco is still far ahead.

Image Credit: Kevin Indig

Substack is a newsletter and blog hosting platform (read the case study) for journalists and writers.