Use Data Or Be Used By Data!

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The October 23 issue of Seotistics is here for you!

Welcome to this Seotistics issue with a mini-guide on what the f*** is strategy.

Every business "consultant" or SEO alike mentions strategy and tactics like they were the same thing.

Today you will learn why this is wrong and how to craft better plans.

P.S. Shout-out to my friend Wolfgang for helping me with this, he's an expert in strategy and military science, as well as an SEO based in Berlin!

Strategy 🆚 Tactics

As already discussed in this past Seotistics issue, strategy is related to achieving goals.

Strategy is often mislabeled as "abstract", not actionable and not practical.

"Strategy is theory, it doesn't tell you HOW".

Well OK, strategy doesn't need to explain you the nitty-gritty but it does have to take challenges into account.

One of the most common mistakes in war planning was exactly this one. Assuming the enemy wouldn't adjust their plans and played a static game.

In SEO, as you make changes, your competitors will do the same.

Tactics involve single battles, and how to achieve what the strategy wants.

The same applies to SEO and pretty much anything else.

Do you recall when I mentioned different tactics back then? This is the perfect time to check them again (Recommended Reads below).

What is described above isn't a strategy but a tactic you rely upon to achieve what you designed in your strategy.

The 🔑 Elements of a Good Strategy

Among all the books I've devoured, the best explanation was provided by Rumelt:

• Diagnosis- The challenge(s)
• Guiding Policy - Dealing with the challenge(s)
• Coherent Actions - Doing the job

These 3 elements form a kernel. This definition contradicts the perspective of many people who think the strategy is ethereal.

In practical terms, you must identify challenges without even creating processes.

SEO data can help you to quantify the level of the challenge and to improve the efficiency of your Coherent Actions.

A Process You Can Use Today

Let's see with an example how to prepare a strategy.

I am working on Website X from scratch and I have to define what to do and how to prepare a solid strategy.

Here are the 5 steps I follow:

1. Assess competition
2. Define challenges (Diagnosis)
3. Create a policy to play around with challenges (Guiding Policy)
4. Define processes (SEOps)
5. Do the job (Coherent Actions)

The first step involves studying the SERPs and doing some Keyword Research to assess what's going on.

Then, you will notice that some competitors are definitely stronger and pose challenges.

So you create a policy, a way of dealing with them that translates to SEO processes.

You finally execute and see how it goes.

Actions such as optimizing pages and/or clusters can be considered tactics.

And as you may notice, only doing that doesn't make you rich or replace a strategy.

☁️ Data: Opinions Or Facts?

As Cassie Kozyrkov, a prominent figure in the world of Decision Science, correctly points out, the opposite is also true.

It makes sense if you consider what I told you early on. Even with data, you may just have an opinion.

A common misconception is that data is objective and can't fail because "data says so" or "Math is Math!".

This is super common when using Semrush/Ahrefs data as the ultimate truth or even Search Console data, especially if sampled.

This part is crucial to understand that showing some data doesn't make you better.

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A solid strategy combines SEO, Business and Data (Analytics in this case) to achieve a common objective.

A strategic misalignment can result in a loss of budget (and rankings later).

🌉 Operational: The Third Level

Strategy and Tactics alone work but some often insert another layer called Operational.

While anyone agrees that Strategy & Tactics exist, there are some controversies about this third level.

The plot below is too detailed for us SEOs but the key takeaway here is that there may be something in the middle.

Many business books claim it's below Tactics, supporting day-to-day activities.

This doesn't make much sense to me as Operational was born as the bridge between the two other layers.

The original concept was formalized once again from military science (Carl von Clausewitz) to make sense of the gap between the 2 layers.

In SEO, this would be about campaigns or anything that pieces tactics together.

But even so, you can do fine with the knowledge of the other 2 layers.

⚠️ The Alternative

A big part of the industry goes like this:

• Read LinkedIn Carousels with basic ideas
• Call them tactics or strategies, based on the day
• Prepare a Content Plan and call it a strategy

After reading this newsletter (and the past issues), you should be able to create solid strategies with a little bit of practice.

Recall, the most important thing is having order.

Once you are able to structure a project with clarity, it will be much easier to work on it.

The reason why I advocate for the use of data is because you can make more informed decisions and force you to study more.

Even some knowledge of R/Python/SQL can help you add value to your SEO projects.

👥 Join The Community

Our Discord community offers a small place where we can talk business and SEO.

If you hate all the noise of social media, then this place is for you.

Join our Discord Community!

🔎 Analytics For SEO Ebook (v6)

This ebook is aimed at SEOs or Business Owners who want to explore the combination of SEO and Analytics.

If you want to start building your data empire, this is the (initial) path to take.

It will teach you or your employees to:

👉 Avoid common pitfalls that cost you money 💸

👉 Create meaningful analyses that add value 💯

👉 Shorten the learning time of Analytics ⏳

This comes with monthly updates because I want to create the Ultimate Guide out there.

v6 includes the following information:

✅ Strategy in terms of SEO & Data

✅ Decision Making

✅ Integrating Data with SEO

Unlock Powerful Insights Now!

v7 will include additional info on DataViz and topics on request.

[N.B. The only legal copies are available via the link above. Gumroad is the ONLY platform where I sell my products.]

📚 Recommended Reads - Peak Content 🗻

There are a lot of interesting reads, especially in military science.

While there are some differences between business and war (duh) many concepts overlap.

• ​Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters​
• ​Praxis Tacticum: The Art, Science and Practice of Military Tactics (Essential Guides to War and Warfare)​
• ​Business Strategy and/or Military Strategy?​
• ​The Book of Five Rings for Executives: Musashi's Classic Book of Competitive Tactics​
• ​Better Decision Making with Objective Data is Impossible​
• ​Strategy: Second Revised Edition​

All of these are excellent reads and I advise you to read them all, especially if you are on the business side of things.

Praxis Tacticum is dedicated to tactics and it's a great read if you find a way of translating those concepts into SEO.

And a recap of the tactics I covered on Twitter:

• ​Flanking​
• ​Encirclement​
• ​Frontal​
• ​General Overview​

If you want more, let me know so I will allocate more space on this topic!

📞 One-Hour Call

If you have doubts about SEO or Analytics, you can book a call with me.

Have doubts about your content website or with your data?

Look no further, I can help you:

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Book A Call Now!

❗️ Feedback and Recommendations

If you have ideas/recommendations for the next issues of Seotistics, you can simply reply to this email.

Marco Giordano
​SEO Specialist & Data Analyst

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Bernerstrasse Süd 169, Zurich, Switzerland
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