An SEO strategy should have a commercial objective. It should be possible to explain why the work is being done, what it is intended to achieve, and how one stage supports the next. Lists of issues to fix aren't a strategy, but they may be part of a strategy if they work towards a tangible goal.
Where I have more difficulty is with the idea that SEO can normally be planned around a quarterly roadmap.
The theory is that work completed in the first quarter creates the foundation for the second. The second quarter builds on the first, and each subsequent stage produces measurable progress towards the final goal. That sounds entirely reasonable, and in some circumstances, it may even work. But I think those circumstances are much narrower than the theory suggests.
When quarterly progress is possible
The clearest example I can see is a programmatic SEO strategy.
A retailer may have hundreds or thousands of products that are poorly organised or inadequately exposed by its ecommerce platform. The information might exist in a database, but the website structure, templates, navigation or internal linking prevent search engines from finding and understanding it properly. There is an obvious sequence of work in that situation.
The first stage might involve restructuring the product catalogue and improving the information architecture. The next could expose useful combinations of products, categories and attributes. Later work might strengthen internal links, improve supporting content and expand the range of searches for which the site can appear. Each stage can genuinely build on the one before it.
This is particularly plausible where the website already has authority. If search engines know the business, trust the domain and regularly crawl its pages, new sections of the site may then begin to perform comparatively quickly. But that is not the position most businesses start from, and more importantly, the whole strategy relies on having something worthwhile to expose.
What is the system actually exposing?
This is the part that is often missing from discussions about technically led SEO strategies.
A platform can expose products more effectively. It can make pages easier to crawl, organise them into sensible categories and help search engines understand the relationships between them. But it cannot make the information on those pages original, useful or persuasive.
Ecommerce is an obvious example of this. If you search for a particular product, you will often find the same description on several different retailers’ websites, and in most cases, the copy has been supplied by the manufacturer. The manufacturer publishes it first, distributes it to retailers, and it then appears repeatedly across the market.
A retailer may ask why its page isn’t appearing prominently for the product. The answer may have little to do with technical SEO; the page simply gives the search engine no particular reason to prefer it. It contains the same description, the same specifications and often the same photographs as every other retailer selling the item.
Restructuring the site may make that page easier to find, but it does not make it more valuable.
Creating original product content isn’t easy
The obvious answer is to create unique descriptions, but that is easier said than done.
If a business sells thousands of low-value items, producing substantial original content for every page may be commercially unrealistic. There are only so many useful ways to describe a screw, washer or cable fitting. Creating another version of the manufacturer’s wording simply to make it different is unlikely to achieve much. It may be original in a technical sense, but it still adds no experience or judgement.
The opportunity becomes greater with higher-value or more complicated products.
Here, a retailer can explain who the product is for, how it compares with alternatives, where its strengths lie and whether it represents good value. It can discuss the quality of the construction, the situations in which the product works well and any limitations a buyer ought to know about.
That information can be genuinely useful, but it takes time to produce. Someone needs to understand the product. Ideally, they need to have handled it, tested it or used it themselves. You cannot write a convincing account of a product you know nothing about. You can generate more words, but that is not the same thing as adding knowledge.
The difference is obvious in outdoor retail
I do a fair amount of work in the outdoor retail industry, where the difference between the two approaches is particularly noticeable.
Outdoor clothing and equipment usually deserve more than a manufacturer’s description. Buyers want to know whether a jacket is suitable for sustained rain, whether a pair of boots will work on rough ground, or whether a tent is realistic for the conditions in which they intend to use it.
The weaker retailers reproduce the supplied copy and specifications. The better retailers add their own experience by explaining how the product performs in practice, take useful photographs, create a video, compare it with similar products and offer a view about who should buy it. Those retailers are more likely to attract the traffic, earn trust and make the sale.
It's also where smaller retailers can gain an edge. Retail chains gain authority by the back door, by their nature they get more mentions and they have the budget to do great PR, but they are also those that are guilty most often of repeating manufacturer's descriptions. If smaller retailers can make more of an effort, they can shift the goalposts in their favour. Yes, it's hard work, but if you want to be a successful online retailer, you need to consider it.
So, the technical platform helps expose that information, it has value, but the platform is not the reason the information is valuable.
When the roadmap is really an IA project
This is why I am cautious about quarterly SEO roadmaps.
If a business already has a substantial body of original product information, a programmatic SEO roadmap can make sense. Each quarter can expose more of that information, strengthen the structure around it and build on the results of the previous stage.
If that information does not exist, the work is rather different. The first stages may involve redesigning the information architecture, rebuilding templates, cleaning up product data and deciding what content needs to be created. The business may then need to research, write, photograph and film the products before there is anything distinctive for SEO to expose.
All of that may be necessary and commercially valuable, but it is not SEO producing neat quarterly gains. It is a platform, information architecture and content-development project that may eventually provide the foundations for SEO.
When timescales and expected results are being discussed, content must be considered.
Start with the content, not just the roadmap
I am not arguing against SEO roadmaps. A strategy should have an objective, and the work should be connected to it. A roadmap is far better than a spreadsheet full of unrelated technical jobs that can be marked complete without anyone knowing whether they contributed to the business.
But before committing to a quarterly plan, businesses need to ask what the system will actually expose.
Do you already have original product descriptions, informed opinions, useful comparisons, first-hand experience, photographs or videos? Are you prepared to create them? Or will the roadmap simply make a large number of ordinary product pages easier for search engines to crawl?
A technically strong website is important. Clear structure, sensible internal linking and accessible product data are important; they can expose and amplify useful information. But, they cannot create the missing value.
Without original content and genuine product knowledge, the quarterly SEO roadmap may turn out to be an information architecture project wearing an SEO label. That may still be work worth doing, but the likely timescale and the expected results need to be described honestly. The roadmap isn't a genuine strategy.