Most weak strategies begin with weak discovery. Agencies start crawling, exporting keywords and building prompt lists before establishing whether the website represents the real commercial priorities of the organisation.
Onboarding manages the engagement. Discovery establishes the truth the engagement needs to reflect.
Commercial Model
Understand how the client makes money: revenue, margin, lifetime value, priority services, strategic markets and sales cycles. Search demand should not determine investment without commercial context.
Strategic Direction
Document where leadership wants the business to go. AEO compounds over time, so authority and evidence should support future positioning rather than reinforce a service the client plans to retire.
Priority Audiences
Define roles, problems, buying triggers, objections, trusted sources, constraints and decision criteria. Broad audience labels are insufficient for contextual recommendation prompts.
Buying Journey and Real Questions
Use sales calls, support tickets, reviews, live chat and customer interviews to identify the questions behind the keywords. These reveal the proof and reassurance buyers require.
Entity Inventory and Positioning
List the organisation, products, services, people, locations, sectors and important relationships. Ask what the business wants to be known for and test whether internal stakeholders agree.
Evidence and Hidden Expertise
Inventory public and private case studies, data, methodologies, qualifications, awards and customer outcomes. Identify specialists whose knowledge has not yet been documented.
Reputation and Risk
Discuss review platforms, recurring complaints, sensitive issues, customer advocacy and known inaccuracies. Reputation risks should not be discovered unexpectedly during a public campaign.
Competitor Sets
Separate commercial competitors, search competitors, citation competitors, reputation competitors and alternative solutions. The visible competitor set may differ from the names leadership expects.
Technical and Operational Readiness
Governance and Measurement Expectations
Agree the executive sponsor, programme lead, approvers, meeting cadence and reporting audience. Explain measurement limitations before the first dashboard is presented.