SEO Strategy vs. Tactics: What’s the Difference?

Search engine opti­miza­tion (SEO) made its way into our dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing strate­gies near­ly a decade ago and since then, it has gained a dom­i­nant vari­able posi­tion becom­ing a guid­ing force in brand­ing and mar­ket­ing strate­gies across all industries. 

SEO is an essen­tial (if not the most crit­i­cal) com­po­nent in get­ting your web­site and brand in front of users. It involves using a series of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing efforts to help Google and oth­er search engines rec­og­nize your site, take it seri­ous­ly, and then pro­mote it to prospec­tive con­sumers by rank­ing it favor­ably in search results. 

This infor­ma­tion isn’t news to you; you’ve been lis­ten­ing to speak­ers and peers rat­tle on about SEO and put in a con­sis­tent effort to main­tain the bare min­i­mum SEO you need to keep your site alive and in good health. 

Here is where the catch comes in: doing the bare min­i­mum (even if it is dai­ly and time-con­sum­ing) is not enough when it comes to com­pet­i­tive­ly exe­cut­ing SEO. 

Play­ing the game as a viable web­site com­peti­tor means think­ing through ques­tions such as: 

• What are my busi­ness goals?

• What are my brand goals?

• How can SEO help me achieve my busi­ness goals?

• What tac­tics can I imple­ment to make my SEO strat­e­gy come to life?
• What indi­vid­ual strat­e­gy can I assign per SEO tactic?

As you can see, the work you put into your strat­e­gy before any tan­gi­ble exe­cu­tion takes places is exten­sive. How­ev­er, it’s also the start­ing point for the most effec­tive strat­e­gy possible. 

SEO strategy and tactics 

In the ques­tions list­ed above, you can notice the use of SEO strat­e­gy and SEO tac­tics. These two are often con­fused as one, inter­change­able, as doing the same job. But it’s best to under­stand and con­cep­tu­al­ize them as two inde­pen­dent entities. 

An SEO strat­e­gy is your over­ar­ch­ing, long-term plan to achieve busi­ness goals; SEO tac­tics are the tan­gi­ble steps you take to exe­cute your strategy. 

Let’s take a deep­er dive into the dif­fer­ences between curat­ing your SEO strat­e­gy and devel­op­ing tac­tics to har­ness your desired busi­ness objec­tives and goals. 

SEO Strategy vs Tactics

SEO Strategy

Your strat­e­gy for search engine opti­miza­tion basi­cal­ly out­lines how you will accom­plish your brand goals. In today’s dig­i­tal­ly promi­nent mar­ket­ing land­scape, suc­ceed­ing online will take your brand far­ther than you could grow on any oth­er medi­um, which is why SEO is such a pow­er­ful tool being used by brands all over the globe.

What is SEO strategy?

SEO strat­e­gy refers to the actions and a time-restrained plan car­ried out to achieve set mar­ket­ing goals. As soon as you have out­lined the type of con­sumer you want to attract, how many, how often, what type of brand growth you want to see quar­ter­ly and annu­al­ly, and what ROI you expect to meet at your fis­cal year, you’re ready to out­line an SEO strat­e­gy to help you get there. 

Examples of SEO strategy

SEO strate­gies will inevitably vary from brand to brand, depend­ing on goals, mar­kets, con­sumers, and capa­bil­i­ties, but these effects are gen­er­al­ly influ­enced and accu­mu­lat­ed through a long-term SEO plan:

• Increased traf­fic: SEO gen­er­ates more web­site traf­fic due to high rank­ings and asso­ci­at­ed search vol­umes, but it also brings in tar­get­ed traf­fic; that is, searchers who fit our tar­get con­sumer demo­graph­ic and will like­ly pur­chase some­thing from your site. 
• Cost-effec­tive: SEO takes care of many tasks, cut­ting down on hours and effort spent by employ­ees doing tedious online maintenance. 
• ROI: If you want to see high ROI, invest­ing in SEO is a sure way to get there. The ini­tial invest­ment is steep, but the amount of traf­fic and sales you gen­er­ate is worth it.
• Brand aware­ness: Show­ing up more quick­ly in search results means your name is repeat­ed­ly dis­played to con­sumers, whether or not they click through to your site. SEO gets your brand’s name in the pub­lic eye across all dig­i­tal plat­forms, increas­ing your brand aware­ness repeat­ed­ly and significantly. 
• Site usabil­i­ty: SEO requires your site to be in its best shape; oth­er­wise, Google and oth­er search engines do not take it seri­ous­ly enough to share with searchers. Whether site usabil­i­ty is your goal or a byprod­uct of try­ing to rank high on Google, fol­low­ing an SEO strat­e­gy will always result in a user-friend­ly website. 

The strategy keeps your goals fresh

When you are fol­low­ing the steps of your SEO strat­e­gy, your long-term goals and plans are con­stant­ly being rein­forced because every step you’ve set out as a part of this strat­e­gy effec­tive­ly achieves or helps to con­ceive of that father reach­ing goal. 

What are SEO tactics?

SEO tac­tics are the par­tic­u­lar steps you take to achieve your SEO strat­e­gy goals. As your strat­e­gy evolves to accom­mo­date big­ger com­pa­ny goals, your tac­tics will do one of two things (or maybe both): they will either mul­ti­ply so that you have more tasks to exe­cute or they will deep­en and with­in the few tac­tics you’ve set your focus on, you will dig exten­sive­ly into and uti­lize as thor­ough­ly as possible. 

Examples of SEO tactics 

Depend­ing on strat­e­gy goals, tac­tics are lim­it­less in their poten­tial. Here are just a few exam­ples of SEO tac­tics that are com­mon­ly employed:

• Opti­mize site for voice search (achieves strat­e­gy above: site usability)
• Go into detail only where rel­e­vant (achieve strat­e­gy above: ROI)
• Include more back­links (achieves strat­e­gy above: increased traffic)
• Embed video and opti­mize for YouTube SEO (achieves strat­e­gy above: increased traf­fic and cost-effective)

Tac­tics help you stay on track with SEO strat­e­gy. Your SEO tac­tics also give you some­thing to do that every day you can accom­plish. Fol­low­ing ten new peo­ple on Insta­gram or embed­ding one addi­tion­al back­link on your site are both man­age­able, fea­si­ble tasks to tick off in one day while you slow­ly work toward your big­ger strategy. 

Let’s review: SEO strategy vs. SEO tactics

To recap, your SEO strat­e­gy and SEO tac­tics are two sep­a­rate, equal­ly impor­tant ele­ments in your dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy. Your SEO strat­e­gy will pro­vide a map and timetable for achiev­ing your com­pa­ny goals and busi­ness objec­tives while your SEO tac­tics will pro­vide you with the steps you need to take to make your strat­e­gy come to life. 

In the process of exe­cut­ing your SEO tac­tics, you will like­ly find that each tac­tic has more room for expan­sion and cre­ativ­i­ty and that each step war­rants a strat­e­gy of its own. 

Rosy Strategies can help you

In order to achieve your brand goals, turn your atten­tion toward spe­cif­ic objec­tives and what type of over­ar­ch­ing strat­e­gy can be tak­en toward mak­ing these ambi­tions a real­i­ty. Once you have a strat­e­gy pre­cise­ly curat­ed for your brand, work with a pro­fes­sion­al mar­ket­ing team to estab­lish tac­tics that work toward accom­plish­ing those strate­gic intentions. 

Rosy Strate­gies helps clients bring their brand to their high­est per­for­mance by tai­lor­ing SEO strate­gies and deter­min­ing the most apt way to get there. Reach out to our dig­i­tal experts to start work­ing on a per­son­al­ized strat­e­gy and iden­ti­fy­ing the most prac­ti­cal and effi­cient ways to earn your com­pa­ny the online atten­tion it deserves.