When asked to come up with an SEO strategy there appear to be two extremes in approach to creating and presenting strategy.

At one extreme you have SEOs that create their strategies based on a template. They ‘find and replace’ company names, paste a logo and insert an automated competitor report that includes a few scorecards and link volumes and – presto! – they have a document ready to be presented.

Others are far more considered. With every new client, every new vertical, they create a new strategy. They spend time considering factors like:

• The market, since every market is different
• Relevant keywords
• The size and value of the market
• The objectives of the business
• An audit of their situation that includes site optimization, link building, competitors, Adwords, Analytics and conversion data (if available)
• SEO developments and trends
• Available assets like writers, designers, PR support and IT support
• Team dynamic and buy-in. For example, does the CEO think SEO is important?
• The budget

This is followed by carefully considered thoughts on the strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats presenting themselves. When they know everything possible about the challenge in hand, they create a strategy. Not one they prepared earlier but a unique strategy for a unique business with a unique situation.

They then present their ideas in ways that their audience understands and find easy to invest in.

You would have thought that the lengths you go to relates directly to the size of the opportunity. In my experience there are lots of examples where this has not been true. Agencies have turned up to propose significant investments with presentations that were more about them than the company they would like as a new client.  And when smaller budgets were on offer, huge amounts of effort was put in.

This has lead me to think that everyone sits on a line that defines you as a template strategist or an originator of SEO strategy. And your place on this line depends on how determined you are to develop business, how experienced you are as a planner, what the budget is and how much time you’ve got. After all, good planning does take time.