Creating your Search Strategy

Use Search Strategy Plan to decide which customer searches your business should serve and what someone should find when they arrive. The plan connects search intent, useful pages, supporting articles, paid search choices, and measures of success.

This guide uses an illustrative bicycle-repair business. Adapt the examples to the services, locations, customers, and evidence that apply to your business.

Open the plan and define its scope

Open Assistant → Strategy → Plans → Search Strategy Plan. Choose Fill it in myself for an empty plan, or Add details, Edit, or Review suggestions on a section. Select Save after editing each section; you can save work in progress.

Your Business Strategy and Marketing Strategy must be ready before this plan can show Ready to use. Use them to keep search work aligned with your audience, approved offers, priorities, and available resources.

The four essential decisions are Main search goal, Markets, languages & scope, Customer searches & opportunities, and Organic, paid, both, or avoid. Start with these, then add page briefs, evidence, and a review routine.

For section editing and answer states, see Setting up your business strategy in Cedros. Saving this plan does not run a site audit, create pages, change links, or launch ads.

In Goals & Scope, record:

• Main search goal: the business result search should support, such as helping nearby customers find and book an appropriate repair service.
• Customer action from search: the action that matters after arrival, such as a completed booking or a suitable quote request. Define what counts so later results are comparable.
• Markets, languages & scope: the locations, languages, customer groups, and services included, plus clear exclusions. A local workshop should distinguish the area it serves from places it cannot support.
• Search constraints: the limits shaping your choices, such as writing time, technical help, budget, capacity, or missing proof.

Record what you know and where it came from

In Research & Current Position, make the starting point clear:

• Site status: describe the site as it is today, including whether the relevant service pages exist and whether you have done search work before.
• Demand source: record where your search ideas came from, such as customer questions, existing keyword research, search-performance reports, paid-search queries, or business knowledge. Ideas based on experience are useful starting points; label what still needs checking.
• Research & performance sources: list the website, available reports, research, and other evidence. Include the source, date or reporting period, relevant market, and what is missing.

Google Search Console, often shortened to GSC, is one possible source of search-performance evidence. You can also record research gathered outside Cedros. Listing a tool or report here does not connect it or import its data.

For example, “Customers often ask how long a puncture repair takes — staff observation, not measured search demand” gives a useful starting point without inventing search volume. If you have a report, record its actual figures and period separately.

If you use Review suggested starting point for a field, check that the wording fits the research you have actually done. Edit it as needed, select Accept reviewed answer, then Save. You can start with existing evidence; you do not need to generate AI suggestions to complete the plan.

Group searches by the customer's need

In Search Intent & Priorities, organize queries around what the person is trying to do. A group of related queries is often called a cluster.

Use Customer searches & opportunities to record each group:

• Its name, example queries, customer need, and buying stage.
• Why it matters to the business and which customers it should serve.
• Whether it suits organic search, paid search, both, or neither.
• The page or other content needed and the next action for the visitor.
• Terms or meanings to avoid, priority, confidence, and supporting sources.

For the repair business, consider these illustrative groups:

• Book a local repair: someone wants a provider nearby. A service page with location, scope, and a clear booking path may fit.
• Understand repair costs: someone wants to know what affects the price. Use current service information and explain when an assessment or quote is needed.
• Learn to fix a puncture: someone wants to do the work themselves. A useful guide may fit, but that reader has a different immediate goal from someone ready to book.

In What searchers are trying to do, define the types of need you will use, such as finding a service, comparing options, understanding cost, solving a problem, or learning how to do something. Include searches that sound related but do not fit your business.

In How we prioritize searches, assess business fit, useful content you can provide, likely customer value, effort, evidence, and the risk of attracting the wrong audience. Record organic and paid priorities separately. A topic worth explaining in an article may still be unsuitable for your advertising budget.

These examples illustrate how to organize the plan; they are not measured demand or recommendations to spend money on particular queries.

Decide where organic and paid search fit

Use Organic, paid, both, or avoid to explain the treatment for each priority group. Organic search means unpaid search listings; paid search means advertising placements.

For each group, record your decision and reason:

• Organic: identify the useful page or content you want people to find and why it belongs on the site.
• Paid: describe the proposed use, customer action, destination, and budget or approval needed before testing.
• Both: explain the job of each approach and how the message, offer, and destination stay consistent.
• Avoid: record why the intent, location, service, or economics do not fit. If you run ads, note terms to consider excluding through the advertising system's negative-keyword controls.

For example, a workshop that only repairs bicycles can record motorbike-repair queries as outside its scope. The plan helps the team remember that distinction; it does not change an advertising account's targeting or exclusions.

If paid search is not part of your current approach, say so and explain the decision. Keep potential tests separate from approved activity, and do not add guessed costs or results to justify them.

Match each need to a page and a useful next step

In Pages, Articles & Internal Links, turn the priority groups into a clear content plan:

• The right page for each need: choose the page type that answers the need, such as a service page, comparison, location page, guide, pricing explanation, or help document.
• Pages to keep, improve, or create: record the existing URL where there is one, what should happen next, priority, customer action, supporting content, links, owner, and status. Distinguish an existing page from a planned one.
• Pages our content should link to: list the priority pages already built, their titles and URLs, the need they serve, useful link wording, and when a link would be inappropriate.
• Priority page briefs: describe the customer problem, page promise, required sections, questions, proof, next action, and relevant links. Record any technical recommendations as work to review rather than completed changes.
• Article briefs for the Blog Plan: record topics that suit articles, their reader and purpose, priority, intended next step, and the main page they support. Carry those decisions into the article-production plan.

For the repair business, a booking-focused service page and a guide to preparing a bicycle for repair have different jobs. The guide could link to the service page where it helps the reader take the next step. Use a real, working destination and wording that describes what the reader will find.

Check existing pages before proposing another one for the same need. If you propose combining pages or excluding one from search indexing, record the reason and have the actual change reviewed in the relevant page workflow. A status written in this plan does not alter the page or its search settings.

Prioritize site improvements and relevant discovery

In Site Improvements & Discovery, keep practical work tied to evidence:

• Technical search backlog: record the issue or proposed check, why it matters, source, priority, effort, owner, and status. Use clear evidence labels such as suggested, user-provided, audit-confirmed, or GSC-confirmed. Explain what was observed rather than copying a label alone.
• Relevant mentions, links & discovery: identify places or relationships that could help the right customers discover priority pages, such as a relevant directory, a resource partnership, or an approved customer story. Record why each fits and what action is needed.

For example, “Check whether the booking page is reachable from the service page — suggested” is a proposed check. After someone inspects the pages, replace that assumption with the observed result and next action. Do not mark work as audit-confirmed merely because an assistant suggested it.

Use Planning Business Development when discovery depends on a partnership. Keep proposed mentions and links separate from placements that have actually been agreed or published.

Measure useful outcomes and revise the priorities

In Measurement & Review, decide what will help you make the next decision:

• Success measures: separate business outcomes, organic performance, page coverage, technical progress, paid-search results where relevant, and learning. Mark each measure tracking, needs baseline, target set, or not available. Include its source and reporting period.
• What search results teach us: describe how evidence should change the plan. For example, repeated relevant questions may justify improving a page; visits from people seeking a service you do not offer may prompt clearer wording or a review of paid targeting.
• Review cadence: choose a schedule and triggers, such as a monthly performance review or a review after major page, service, or campaign changes. A written cadence does not schedule an automated report.
• Related plans & workflows: record the marketing, article, partnership, page, or paid-search work that needs to stay aligned. Note what is ready, missing, conflicting, or in need of an update.
• Guidance for Cedros: summarize the audience, priority query groups, intended page types, link targets, exclusions, and evidence rules. Ask Cedros to flag unsupported metrics and distinguish organic content from paid-search proposals.

Keep search volume, rankings, traffic, advertising costs, and conversions tied to their actual sources. Cost per click, or CPC, describes advertising cost per click; it is not a figure to infer from how promising an idea sounds. If a baseline is missing, record the gap and who will obtain it.

When this plan is included as context in a supported workflow, its decisions can guide search ideas, page briefs, and content suggestions. Review the output and check destinations before publishing. Optional assistant work uses your configured AI service; see Understanding AI usage and costs.

Review the saved plan before starting work

Before acting on your priorities:

1. Check that the goal, customer action, market, and service scope agree with your business and marketing plans.
2. Review each priority query group for customer intent, evidence, confidence, and its organic or paid treatment.
3. Confirm the existing or planned destination, page brief, relevant internal links, owner, and next action.
4. Separate suggested technical work from verified findings, and targets from measured results. Use Not known yet for unresolved decisions, or Not applicable with a reason where appropriate.
5. Save each edited section and check readiness. Ready to use means the essential decisions and prerequisite plans are addressed; it does not verify search data, complete an audit, or guarantee rankings.

If someone else has changed the shared plan, keep a copy of your unsaved wording before choosing Reload latest plan, then compare the latest decisions before editing again.

As pages go live and new evidence arrives, update their status and use what you learn to choose the next piece of work.