TL;DR

SEO is no longer a single service, or a single ‘thing’ you can do or have someone do for you. It hasn’t been for a good long time, to be honest, but the days of ‘fix your metas, get some links’ have long gone. Modern SEO is as much an exercise in information retrieval as it is one of content optimisation, it’s about multi-surface search, about readying a brand for customer journeys that begin on a range of devices, on multiple platforms, by customers that will always expect peak performance. That’s why development of an SEO strategy is fundamental for success online – you can’t just tick boxes and hope the results will follow, every site is different and your approach to search needs to be focused and intentional.

Pain points

If you’re having issues with any of the following, our SEO strategy may be what you need:

• Activity is happening but without direction
• Rankings aren’t improving despite ongoing efforts
• SEO is not showing clear impact on revenue
• You have a specific SEO issue, but are unsure how to tackle it
• You’re new looking for a new SEO partner but aren’t sure what to ask
• You’re looking to bring SEO inhouse, but lack senior practitioners

What we mean by strategy

There are several types of strategy that can be found online – there’s the (forgive the Americanism, but the English lacks the lovely alliteration) cookie cutter strategy that many agencies will provide – they’ll offer an audit and then the strategy is ‘fix the stuff in the audit’, and they’ll do that for a dozen clients for similar retainers, all without much thought for the specific brand they’re working with. This may work – especially if that agency has committed to a specific vertical and honed their approach. 

Then there’s the ‘bespoke strategy’ which is more expensive, and tends to conveniently be weighted towards the areas that the agency can service. Again, this approach can work – many SEO agencies will have a core technical SEO team and then either a content team or a digital PR team that will offer supplementary support for the strategy.

What we mean by strategy is slightly different again – as a network of expert consultants, we know we can deliver in the key areas, but we also know that the wider agency doesn’t need every client to take every service. As such, we offer SEO strategy both as an entry point to working with us, but also as a standalone service. We have developed specialisms – in terms of our offering, but also in who we work with – we make sure we understand your business, your ambitions, your current capabilities and performance and only then will we work out a way to get you from where you are to where you want to be. That’s our strategy – not a list of services, or a list of fixes, a genuine roadmap to get you where you’re going.

MMC Digital’s SEO strategy service

One of the major issues with the modern marketing agency is that, in order to boost their paypacket, practitioners end up as managers – and, as they drift further from execution, they can end up too far removed from a rapidly changing landscape to properly map the journey a brand needs to take, while those strategies are then executed by junior colleagues that may well spot flaws, but lack the authority to make changes.

Because of how we work, our team of highly experienced consultants not only have the extensive experience required for strategy work, they also get their hands dirty with execution on a day-to-day basis, so they always know what’s working and which levers you’ll need to pull to get things moving.

• We work closely with every client to define exactly where you are at present and where you need to be. 
• We’ll take a deep dive into your particular vertical and your unique position within it.
• We take time to understand the current landscape you’re operating in – including regulatory and other potential limitations.
• We’ll then look to identify growth opportunities, ways to optimise your site across content, linked and unlinked citations, technical on and off-page, potential improvements to site performance, customer experience, technology and tools.
• We then undertake a full scoping exercise to see what can be implemented inhouse, what would need to be outsourced (to us or another partner of your choice) and what will deliver the most immediate, revenue driving results to help keep further improvements approaching cost neutral.

By taking a data-driven approach, you can make an informed decision on whether to move forward with your new strategy internally, look for an execution partner, or simply leave it to us to make sure your SEO performance meets your ambitions.

What can an SEO strategy do for your business?

Spending time crafting an SEO strategy prior to execution helps with several things:

• It makes sure your future efforts are directed into the areas that will deliver growth.
• It cuts down on wasted spend – both by its impact on your paid media spend and by reducing spend on services unlikely to move the needle.
• It speeds up the impact of organic search by focusing on implementation that is likely to directly grow revenue.