Strategic SEO 'requires killer project management skills'

14:10 22nd January 2010

Strategic thinking is important for digital marketers when they are working out their search engine optimisation plan.

That is the opinion of Stephan Spencer, vice president of search engine optimisation strategies at US marketing analytics company Covario, who said in an article for Search Engine Land that tactics were always less effective than strategy.

He said: "Strategic thinking forces you to step back and look at the bigger picture; it keeps you from the trap of treating SEO as merely a collection of tactics. Without strategy, you leave yourself open to strategic-minded competitors swooping in and stealing market share from you."

Without a long-term search engine optimisation strategy, there is no guide to choosing and carrying out specific tactics and no framework to support actions, he explained.

Mr Spencer added that project management skills were therefore a necessity in order to ensure the strategy was moving forwards correctly.

By having a strategy, not all tactics would need to be implemented, Mr Spencer said. Only those that would result in a worthwhile positive result for the overall strategy would need to be carried out.

Affiliate marketers should also have a strategy that focuses on their whole sales chain, David Marks advised in an article for Gather.

Researching the market properly and learning about its trends and patterns would ensure an affiliate marketer's strategy would stand out from the crowd, he said.