SEO strategy example

SEO strategy example for an online appliance parts retailer

An ecommerce SEO strategy sets out which product, category and help pages an online store wants found in search, and the catalog, technical and link work needed to get them there. It is owned by the head of SEO and agreed with the leaders of ecommerce, merchandising and the engineering team that runs the storefront.

This is the Ecommerce version of the sEO strategy template.

Horizon: 1 year5 priorities · 13 outcomes

Use this template

What this sEO strategy template includes

ContextThe situation, the challenges to solve, and what is deliberately left out.
Current performanceWhere organic search stands today.
Keyword themesThe groups of searches to target and the page that should rank for each.
Technical prioritiesThe site issues that hold rankings back, in order of impact.
Content planThe pages to create, update or consolidate.
Links and authorityHow the site will earn links and mentions.
Priorities and measuresThree to five priorities, each with an owner, outcomes with a baseline and target, and the initiatives behind them.

Worked example

A complete sEO strategy for a fictional organization: online retailer of replacement parts for home appliances, with a catalog of 1.9 million parts.

Worked exampleSEO strategy

Organization	Online retailer of replacement parts for home appliances, with a catalog of 1.9 million parts (500 staff)
Ambition	Have one strong page for every part and model family we sell, so organic search earns $6.3 million a month and growth no longer depends on raising paid spend.
Horizon	1 year

Context

Where we are and what we are choosing

Revenue is $140 million from about 188,000 orders a month at an average of $62. Organic search brings 3.4 million visits a month and 43% of revenue. Paid search and shopping ads bring 31% and cost $8.7 million a year. The catalog has 1.9 million part pages and 310,000 model pages. Of the part pages, 520,000 are superseded part numbers that duplicate the current part and 410,000 are parts no longer available. The model pages cover only 74,000 distinct model families. Search engines have crawled 1.3 million of our URLs and chosen not to index them. Marketplace listings outrank us on most of the part number searches we track.

Challenges

The same part lives on several pages, one per superseded number, and the same model family on several variant pages. Links and relevance are split, and only 38% of model pages are indexed.
On part number searches a marketplace listing with price, stock and review stars beats our page, which shows valid product structured data on only 48% of in-stock parts.
Repair help pages draw 646,000 visits a month from people with a broken appliance, but only 11% of those visits reach a part page and they earn 6% of organic revenue.

We will focus on

One indexable page per current part and per model family, with every old number and variant listed on it.
The 25,000 part pages that earn 70% of part page revenue, and the model families behind them.
The path from a symptom to the part that fixes it, for the appliances where we stock the fix.

We will not

Machine-written descriptions across all 1.9 million part pages. Only the top 25,000 get rewritten, by technicians who have handled the part, and the long tail keeps supplier data.
Buying guides and reviews for new appliances. The searches are large, but we do not sell appliances and the few test articles we ran converted at 0.1%.
A separate indexable page for every model variant suffix. Some variants get searched by exact number, and we accept ranking for them with the family page.

Current performance

Monthly organic visits	3.4 million a month, 3.05 million of them non-brand. Part pages take 41% of visits, model pages 22%, repair help 19% and category pages 14%. Organic visits convert at 2.4% and bring $5.06 million a month.
Ranking keywords	2.6 million keywords rank in the top 100 and 310,000 in the top 10. In our tracked sets we hold a top three position on 34% of 2,000 part number searches and 21% of 2,000 model number searches.
Referring domains	9,800. About 6,900 point only to the home page. Just 85 repair help and category pages have ten or more referring domains.
Main weakness	Duplication. Superseded numbers, variant model pages and dead parts mean 1.3 million URLs are crawled but not indexed, and log files show only 29% of crawl requests reach an indexable page for a part we can ship.

Keyword themes

Theme	Search intent	Monthly searches	Target page
Part numbers, current and superseded	Transactional	5,200,000	One page per current part, listing every number it replaces
Model number with "parts" or a part name	Transactional	2,900,000	Model family pages
Part type by appliance and brand	Commercial	1,400,000	Category pages, such as dishwasher racks by brand
Symptoms and fault codes	Informational with repair intent	3,800,000	Repair help pages linked to the likely parts
How to replace a specific part	Informational	950,000	Install steps and video on the part page itself
Our brand and "appliance parts" searches	Navigational	350,000	Home page and brand hub pages

Technical priorities

Redirect 520,000 superseded part number pages to the current part, and print every replaced number in the title area and body so one page ranks for all of them.
Collapse 310,000 model pages into 74,000 model family pages. Variant URLs canonicalize to the family page, which lists each variant suffix and flags the parts that differ.
Sort the 410,000 pages for parts no longer available: keep about 60,000 that have search demand or external links and show the compatible substitute; return a 410 for the rest.
Block internal search results, sort orders and paginated diagram views from crawling. They generate about 900,000 crawlable URLs with no search demand.
Emit product structured data with price, availability, part number and reviews from the live inventory feed on every in-stock part page. It validates on 48% today because price and stock load after render.
Split sitemaps by page type and stock status and rebuild them daily. The current single weekly sitemap still lists parts that went out of stock months ago.

Content plan

Action	Pages	Why
Consolidate	520,000 superseded part pages into current parts	One part should have one page that carries every number people search
Update	25,000 top part pages	Own photos, install difficulty, symptoms fixed and model fit, where 70% of part page revenue is earned
Update	74,000 model family pages	Add most-replaced parts and common faults so the page is more than a parts list
Create	600 category pages by brand, appliance and part type	Demand exists for combinations that have no landing page today
Update	1,150 repair help pages	Add a model lookup and link each symptom to the parts that fix it
Remove	350,000 pages for unavailable parts	No demand, no links, and they absorb crawl

Links and authority

Approach	Publish what only we can see: which parts fail most by appliance type and age, and what a repair costs against a replacement. Add a trade account program for independent repair technicians with a public directory. No paid links.
Target sites	Home improvement and consumer advice publications, local news home sections, appliance repair forums, trade schools with appliance repair courses, and the sites of independent repair businesses.
Monthly goal	60 new referring domains a month, at least 20 of them pointing to a repair help or category page instead of the home page.

Priorities and measures

Priority 1Owner: Technical SEO Lead

Give every part and model family a single page

Duplicate part numbers and variant model pages split our signals and fill the crawl with pages that will never be indexed. Nothing else in this plan pays off fully until that is fixed.

Outcome	Baseline	Target	Due
URLs crawled but not indexed	1.3M URLs	150K URLs	Q3 2027
Indexable model pages that are indexed	38%	90%	Q3 2027
Crawl requests reaching an indexable page for a part in stock	29%	75%	Q4 2027

Initiatives

Build the supersession map from supplier data and redirect old part numbers in four batches by appliance type
Launch model family pages for refrigerators first, measure, then roll out to the other appliance types
Retire pages for unavailable parts that have no demand or links
Review crawl logs every month with engineering and block new sources of waste

Targets are illustrative. Adapt them to your baseline before you start.

Priority 2Owner: Head of SEO

Beat marketplace listings on part and model searches

A buyer who types a part number is ready to order. We lose most of those searches to listings that show price, stock and reviews in the result, which our pages often fail to do.

Outcome	Baseline	Target	Due
Tracked part number searches where we rank in the top three	34%	55%	Q4 2027
Tracked model number searches where we rank in the top three	21%	45%	Q4 2027
In-stock part pages with valid product structured data	48%	97%	Q2 2027

Initiatives

Render price and stock on the server from the inventory feed
Have technicians rewrite the 25,000 top part pages with photos, fit notes and install steps
Ask for a review after delivery and show part-level reviews on the page
Create 600 category pages for brand, appliance and part type combinations

Targets are illustrative. Adapt them to your baseline before you start.

Priority 3Owner: Repair Content Manager

Lead repair help readers to the right part

Repair help is our largest source of visitors who do not yet know what to buy. Today the pages explain the fault and stop, so 89% of readers leave without seeing a part.

Outcome	Baseline	Target	Due
Repair help visits that go on to view a part page	11%	25%	Q4 2027
Monthly revenue from visits landing on repair help	$304K	$600K	Q4 2027

Initiatives

Add a model number lookup to every repair help page that returns the parts for that model and symptom
Rank likely causes on each symptom page using our own order and return data
Rewrite the 200 symptom pages with the most visits and retire those for appliances we stock few parts for

Targets are illustrative. Adapt them to your baseline before you start.

Priority 4Owner: Digital PR Manager

Earn links to pages that sell

Most of our links point to the home page. Category and repair help pages compete with almost no authority of their own.

Outcome	Baseline	Target	Due
Referring domains	9,800 domains	10.4K domains	Q4 2027
Repair help and category pages with ten or more referring domains	85 pages	220 pages	Q4 2027

Initiatives

Publish a yearly report on part failures by appliance type and age
Open the trade account program with a public directory of independent repair technicians
Recover links pointing at retired part URLs by redirecting them to the current part or category

Targets are illustrative. Adapt them to your baseline before you start.

Priority 5Owner: VP of Ecommerce

Grow organic revenue while paid spend stays flat

Paid search and shopping cost $8.7 million a year. The plan is worth doing only if organic orders grow and that budget does not have to.

Outcome	Baseline	Target	Due
Monthly revenue from organic search	$5.1M	$6.3M	Q4 2027
Monthly non-brand organic visits	3M visits	3.6M visits	Q4 2027
Share of revenue from paid search and shopping ads	31%	28%	Q4 2027

Initiatives

Report organic revenue by page type each month: part, model, category and repair help
Run holdout tests that pause shopping ads on part numbers where we rank first organically
Show delivery date and return terms beside the price on part and model pages

Targets are illustrative. Adapt them to your baseline before you start.

Blank sEO strategy template

The same structure with a prompt in every field. Copy it, or download it as a Word or Excel file.

Your planSEO strategy

Organization	[Describe your organization in a few words, with its size]
Ambition	[One sentence on where you want to be at the end of the plan]
Horizon	[How long the plan runs, for example 12 months]

Context

Where we are and what we are choosing

[Where things stand today: the facts that make this strategy necessary]

Challenges

[A problem the strategy has to solve]
[A problem the strategy has to solve]

We will focus on

[Something you are choosing to concentrate on]
[Something you are choosing to concentrate on]

We will not

[Something you are deliberately leaving out]
[Something you are deliberately leaving out]

Current performance

Monthly organic visits	[Your monthly organic visits]
Ranking keywords	[Your ranking keywords]
Referring domains	[Your referring domains]
Main weakness	[Your main weakness]

Keyword themes

Theme	Search intent	Monthly searches	Target page
[Theme]	[Search intent]	[Monthly searches]	[Target page]
[Theme]	[Search intent]	[Monthly searches]	[Target page]
[Theme]	[Search intent]	[Monthly searches]	[Target page]

Technical priorities

[A technical fix and the pages it affects]
[A technical fix and the pages it affects]
[A technical fix and the pages it affects]

Content plan

Action	Pages	Why
[Action]	[Pages]	[Why]
[Action]	[Pages]	[Why]
[Action]	[Pages]	[Why]

Links and authority

Approach	[Your approach]
Target sites	[Your target sites]
Monthly goal	[Your monthly goal]

Priorities and measures

Priority 1Owner: [Role accountable for this priority]