How to Create an Effective SEO Strategy: A Comprehensive Step-by-Step Guide

Summarize this article in:

Creating an SEO strategy requires a deep optimization process understanding. Without it, navigating search algorithms turns into chaos, costing you traffic and online visibility. Our guide explains the importance of a strategic approach including LLMs citation and outlines the steps to success.

What Is an SEO Strategy?

Before you learn how to create an SEO strategy.

Commonly you can see the terms “SEO strategy” and “SEO tactics” used together in the same context, which can appear a bit confusing. However, it is important to distinguish between them before you start. If the latter is a certain action (like link building), the strategy becomes the grand design that gives meaning and purpose to your daily SEO tasks.

This is a process of competitor analysis, keyword research, planning a website’s content posting, on-page and off-page optimization, and link building. As a result it boosts ranking in search results and drives targeted traffic that actually converts into revenue.

The strategy connects your business goals and sales funnel with current search demand and search engine standards. With a clear roadmap, you align your online visibility with your specific business model.

For instance, a SaaS strategy might focus on educational “how-to” content to solve user pain points, whereas an e-commerce strategy prioritizes product-led keywords, and a publisher focuses on high-volume news trends. This planning stage allows you to research your target audience so your content remains valuable for real-life users, search engines and LLMs.

Finally, your strategy must be flexible and adapt to the latest search requirements. Because algorithms and user behavior patterns change, your plan ensures you do not just perform randomized marketing, but consistently move toward your long-term goals.

Why an SEO Strategy Remains Essential in 2026

Before you start search engine optimization of your website, you’ll undoubtedly ask yourself a reasonable question: “Is SEO worth it?” With AI Overviews and SERP volatility, having a documented plan to navigate these shifts is your number one priority. No one wants to spend their money for nothing, and a strategy ensures your budget isn’t wasted by temporary trends but invested in long-term online visibility.

The right optimization strategy for a website can help you solve those issues by providing stability in a changing landscape. Further, it’ll prevent you from the chaos caused by inefficient resource management and making your competitors’ mistakes.

By aligning SEO with your product, sales, and financial planning, you improve efficiency and reduce wasted time on metrics that don’t convert. Regardless of your industry, the strategy must be a core component of your global business plan, as winning rankings in search and LLMs won’t just increase your authority but also boost your sales. Just explore our latest AI SEO statistics to understand the impact of the technology on the industry.

At SeoProfy, we believe that a personal approach to each client and custom strategies can lead to results that overcome all expectations! You’re welcome to check this SEO case in a highly competitive niche, where our team managed to accelerate organic traffic from 1,200 to 4,000 per day in 12 months.

15 Steps to Create Your Perfect SEO Strategy

Grab your coffee and a notebook because right now, you’ll discover how to make a strategy that will lead your business to success. Follow the steps provided below to make your site flourish, attract potential customers, and handle risk issues.

1. Define Your Current SEO Performance

Reviewing your website’s current performance is essential if you want to set clear goals and expectations from the upcoming updates. This should be the starting point of the whole optimization process. Plus, if you have already run a site, you can also identify what works and what doesn’t in your specific case. Using this information, you can start developing an optimum strategy.

Key Metrics of Website Performance

To understand how your website performs, you should collect necessary metrics. We recommend gathering the following data:

• Organic traffic and conversions: To learn how many users visit your website and take action.
• Impressions and CTR: To understand how often your pages appear in SERP and if users click them.
• Keyword rankings: To see your current positions for relevant queries.
• Indexed pages and crawlability: To understand whether search engines can find and read your content.
• Competitors and online visibility: To compare your digital presence to other brands, identify gaps and points of growth.
• Backlinks: Links from relevant reputable online sources raise the authority of your website in the “eyes” of search engines so they rank it higher.

To collect this data, you must have the best tools for SEO at hand. GA4 and Google Search Console allow you to track traffic metrics and impressions. Tools like Ahrefs, Screaming Frog, along with a regular log files revision identify the main problems with your website technical performance that prevent stable growth.

Using this information, you can more accurately plan a successful SEO strategy to ensure a smooth workflow during its implementation and stay ahead of changes in LLMs and search algorithms.

2. Analyze Competitors and SERP Landscape

Regardless of your industry, you’ll surely have competitors, so you should also pay attention to their SEO strategy. It is vital to distinguish between your business competitors (those who sell the same product) and your SERP competitors (those who own the search results and online visibility). Thus, this analysis provides important information, including:

• Type of content to create and its depth.
• Keywords to target, specifically those frequently triggering AI Overview.
• Categories to include to build topical authority in your niche.
• Authoritative online resources to get backlinks from.

Step-by-Step Competitive Research

This research will uncover what practices can attract your target audience and meet their search queries. Additionally, you’ll identify your competitors’ weaknesses to surpass them. Follow our tips to efficiently handle this stage:

• Identify your competitors: First, find out who you compete against for target users and rankings.  Note that in 2026, your competitors might be large publishers or LLMs themselves. You can identify your main SEO rivals using Ahrefs. All you’ll need to do is enter your domain name, and the platforms will show the lists of possible brands and websites. Choose the first 10 closely relevant to your niche and pay attention to important metrics like traffic, keywords, and Domain Rating (DR), which you can review in the “Organic competitors” tab:
• Check the keywords: Identifying competitors allows you to discover keyword gaps you might have missed. Use Ahref’s “Competitive Analysis” feature to find keywords you do not rank for.
• Check SERP features: Additionally, check if the SERP is dominated by AI-generated summaries; if so, your content must be optimized to be a source for those LLMs. Enter your target keywords into search and observe the results; if an AI Overview is present, analyze its content depth, the specific facts featured, and the sources cited to understand how to become the next reference:
• Audit backlinks: Sites linking to your competitors provide valuable backlink opportunities. Tools like Ahrefs and Semrush show you a website’s authority to choose high-quality resources that contribute to your backlink profile growth rather than affecting it with spammy links.

Finally, don’t forget that SERP is volatile. Competitors may change their strategies or shift their topical authority focus. That’s why you should keep an eye on them and analyze their websites and search results from time to time to learn from their experience

3. Set SEO Goals & Define KPIs

You can’t control the implementation of your strategy without clearly set expectations. Luckily, using the information you’ve already collected, you can define the SEO goals and KPIs, which will help you measure the results of your efforts. Crucially, these goals must support your business model and sales funnel; if your SEO efforts don’t eventually translate into revenue, the strategy lacks a financial foundation.

If you see that those goals are unattainable at the moment or with the resources you have at hand, it may be a signal to change your approach to search engine optimization and review the chosen methods.

Setting SMART SEO Goals

It might not be so easy to set realistic expectations, but if you want to deal with this task, we recommend you to use the SMART system, which means your goals should be:

• Specific: Decide what exactly you want to achieve after the implementation of your SEO strategy.
• Measurable: Define criteria you’ll use to estimate your success. It’s better to focus on KPIs like organic traffic, keyword rankings, and CTR. To align with revenue, track “conversions” and “assisted conversions” (Google Analytics > Advertising > Attribution > Conversion paths) to see how organic search contributes to your bottom line.
• Attainable: Make sure that the goals are realistic and that your expertise and financial capabilities allow you to achieve them.
• Relevant: Check whether the objectives you set will contribute to your business’ growth. Ensure you are targeting “money keywords” that attract users ready to buy, rather than just high-volume terms that don’t lead to sales.
• Time-bound: Finally, all your goals should be bound to clear deadlines.

A great example of a SMART goal is “We need to increase our organic traffic by 20% in a year.” You should not put too many of them, so you still can achieve them. And if you want to manage all the processes more efficiently, try working in sprints and analyzing the results of each work week.

It may be a good idea to opt for SEO outsourcing services if you want to get the desired results faster and avoid common mistakes. Depending on your team’s possibilities, you may shift only a part of your tasks or the implementation of the whole strategy to remote experts. If you’re considering this option, check out our SEO pricing guide to calculate the expenses of the most efficient services for your website.

4. Technical SEO: Make an Audit and Keep Control

As an important part of your SEO strategy, technical optimization involves the improvement of your site’s elements to provide its visitors with a better user experience. Also, these enhancements will simplify finding, crawling, understanding, and indexing the web pages on your website for search engine bots. As a rule, during technical SEO, you should focus on the following issues:

• Poor mobile optimization: When it comes to indexing and crawling pages, Google primarily pays attention to mobile versions. It is essential to ensure there are no bugs and that your Core Web Vitals (like loading speed and visual stability) meet current standards:
• Inappropriate site structure and orphan pages: Poor website structure results in orphan pages — content that exists but has no internal links pointing to it, making it invisible to users and crawlers.
• Duplicate content: When several similar posts are available on multiple URLs, the algorithms won’t know which of them to list higher on search results. Moreover, they may opt for competing web pages, lowering your website rankings.
• JavaScript rendering issues: Modern websites often rely on heavy scripts. If not handled correctly, JavaScript rendering issues can prevent search engines from “seeing” your content, leading to failed indexing of critical information.
• Unstructured data:  Without schema markup, search engines won’t correctly understand what a page is about, preventing it from appearing in Featured Snippets or AI-generated summaries.
• 404 pages: These are the error pages that users see when they try to find non-existent content on your site. If there are too many of them, your website’s rankings may be affected.
• Unadjusted XML sitemaps: This important website element acts as a roadmap for search bots.
• Oversized HTML: If your HTML includes large, unoptimized scripts, it will take ages to download, negatively impacting your Core Web Vitals and user experience.
• Improper LLM crawling access: Your technical setup must allow AI crawlers to access your site. If your robots.txt or security settings accidentally block LLM bots, your brand cannot be cited in AI-generated answers or summaries. To check this, type yourdomain.com/robots.txt into your browser. Look for the “Disallow” command next to AI user-agents like GPTBot (OpenAI), Google-Extended (Gemini), ClaudeBot (Anthropic), or PerplexityBot. If you see Disallow: / under these names, you are blocking them from your entire site.

The problems mentioned significantly affect user retention, site indexation, and rankings. It’ll be a good idea to include their solution in your strategy if you spot them using apps like Screaming Frog:

Don’t ignore the technical SEO, as this is one of the key parts of your site’s success. Check out how the enhancement of HTML structure, loading speed, and other elements led to 500% growth in car buying services in our Google Update traffic recovering case.

Professional Audit of Your Website

Don’t miss the tiniest technical issues with SeoProfy! We know how important it is to keep your website running smoothly, and our SEO company is ready to help you with this challenging task! It’s time to turn your site into a benchmark for other online businesses together with our professional services:

• Advanced technical audit
• Content quality audit
• Backlink profile audit

Audit my website

5. Evaluate Keyword Potential & Search Intent

An astonishing fact is that 15% of daily Google searches have never been searched before. (Google). This means that every day, your business gets new opportunities to be the first to reach a prospective audience. However, you will never know how to do it without proper keyword research and clustering. When you group related terms and create clusters, you can target entire topics rather than single words. Such an approach allows a single page to rank for dozens of similar queries.

It’s impossible to craft an SEO strategy without making content that targets the words people search for. How can you know what your target audience is interested in? Just opt for these time-tested practices to discover valuable keywords:

Use Google Search

Despite the simplicity of this method, it’s still popular with many SEO experts. All you need to do is type the main keyword related to your business in the Google Search field. Its algorithms will automatically come up with a list of suggestions, which your prospective customers use to look for information, and it’ll look like this:

Pay Attention to Semantic Entities

These are people, places, and concepts Google identifies as related to your core topic. Including them helps search engines understand the broader context of your content.

Explore Audience’s Interests and Pain Points

It’ll be easier to meet your clients’ search intent if you have a clear idea of their problems and interests through intent segmentation. Dividing keywords into categories like Informational (seeking knowledge) or Transactional (ready to buy) helps create content tailored to their specific stage in the journey. For example, if you run a law firm and your potential clients search for “free law consultation,” you can use this keyword to write an article, “5 Ways a Single Free Law Consultation Can Decide the Outcome of Your Case.”

Opt for Advanced SEO Tools

You can always rely on platforms like Ahrefs, Semrush, and Backlinko to find keyword ideas. These tools allow you to find the options relevant to your niche and target country.  Further, the advanced filters allow you to choose keywords based on topic-level potential, which shows you the total traffic a whole subject can generate rather than just a single phrase.

Learn the Difference Between Keywords

We can divide the keywords into single-word phrases (e.g., “lawyer”), 2-3-word phrases (e.g., “personal injury”), and long-tail keywords (e.g., “best car accident lawyer in New York”). Consider that it’s easier to rank for the longer keywords, but, on the other hand, they have way lower search volumes.

6. Audit and Update Existing Content Regularly

The content on your website is how you gain the trust of your potential customers and prove your authority. Thus, it should be interesting, valuable for your readers, and unique. While planning your SEO content strategy, reviewing your existing blog posts should be among your main priorities. The analysis allows you to discover the pages that underperform and find how to improve them efficiently through pruning (removing low-value ones) or consolidating (merging several thin pages into a “power” one).

How to Identify Underperforming Content

Start your audit by identifying low-performing content. Typical signs of underperforming content include:

• High bounce rates.
• Low average time on page.
• A steady decline in organic traffic over the last 6 months.
• Low ranking (2nd or 3rd page) for primary keywords.
• Zero or very few backlinks despite being a “deep” topic.

Open Google Analytics and go to the “Landing page” tab, which you can find in the “Engagement.” Then, use filters to sort the pages by the lowest number of sessions. Now, you can see the content that just doesn’t attract your audience.

At this stage, you must also check for keyword cannibalization, which occurs when multiple pages on your site compete for the same keyword, causing Google to penalize both. Once identified, you can decide how to handle the content:

• Rewrite and optimize content, making it more relevant and high-quality.
• Prune it by removing it from your website if it serves no purpose.
• Use 301 redirects to a similar, higher-performing page.
• Consolidate content by merging it with more popular blog posts.

The choice of the action depends on the content type. For instance, if you have a blog post about your company’s event that took place five years ago and wasn’t really noticeable, it may be a good idea just to delete it. At the same time, the content may be great, but the information is slightly outdated. In this case, it means that the page has traffic potential, and you may note in your plan that it needs optimization and updating.

Content freshness is now an important ranking factor; Google and LLM algorithms prioritize up-to-date information to ensure accuracy. According to Google’s Search Quality Guidelines (2025 update) and official Search Central documentation, freshness is no longer just a “bonus” for news sites; it is a critical signal of Trustworthiness and E-E-A-T. Following these principles ensures your content meets Google’s quality standards.

You can also use Ahrefs’ Competitive Analysis tool to improve your content. For example, you can enhance your blog posts’ ranking by organically weaving the missed keywords into the existing content. You may also discover the subtopics you haven’t covered yet.

Finally, use Google Search Console’s “Top Linked Pages” report to understand what type of content attracts the most links, allowing you to replicate that success in your future updates.

7. Create a Content Plan Based On Business Value

You should keep entertaining your audience with interesting and unique blog posts. The best way to do it regularly is to create an SEO content strategy. Here, you can find the most effective tips that will help you deal with this important task:

Know Your Audience

There is no reason to publish a blog post reviewing the best bankruptcy filing tips if you run a law firm that specializes exclusively in personal injury. Posting irrelevant information may significantly affect customer retention and overall rankings on Google. On the contrary, interesting blog posts focused on the solution to your audience’s problems will attract them to your site and make them spend more time there.

Prioritize Content by Business Value and Landscape

Don’t just chase high-volume keywords; focus your plan on business value (how likely the topic is to convert a reader into a client) and intent coverage (mapping content to the user’s stage in the buying journey). Assess the difficulty and competition by looking at what websites rank for a topic; if the top results are outdated or generic, it’s a high-priority opportunity for you to step in with better content.

Create a Content Schedule

Don’t forget to come up with a well-structured content calendar when working on your SEO strategy. It’ll help you align the publication of your blog posts with seasonal trends, industry events, and holidays. You’ll never run out of ideas for what to share with your audience if you have a clear content roadmap.

Follow E-E-A-T Guidelines

Google standards are the foundation of quality content. Ensure every piece is either written or reviewed by a subject expert, includes first-hand experience (like case studies or original legal insights), and has a clear author bio to prove credibility to users and search algorithms.

Implement the Keywords

When you work on a SEO strategy and focus on your content, think beforehand about the keywords you can insert to get more views. Also, keep in mind that they should be naturally woven into the text. Remember that no one likes reading sentences like: “Our New Jersey law firm is the best law firm in New Jersey for clients because our New Jersey law firm has the best expert lawyers in New Jersey!”

8. Prioritize High-Value Pages (“Money Pages”)

No doubt, an effective SEO strategy should not only lead to higher rankings but also help you generate more income. Thus, focus on so-called “money” pages, which sell your goods or services. Ideally, they should have high business value and be attractive to your target audience.  To identify these revenue-drivers, analyze your Google Analytics “Landing Page” report to find URLs with the highest conversion rates and average order value.

As a part of your SEO strategy, you can identify such pages using Google Analytics or Ahrefs. The latter is a preferable option if you are new to SEO. Use the platform’s Site Explorer, where you should enter your domain. After that, visit the “Organic keywords” report and use filters for keyword rankings in positions from 2 to 10. Additionally, remove all informational blog posts from the report. Luckily, Ahrefs allows you to exclude the pages containing certain URLs (e.g., “/blog/”):

Now, look through the report and find your “money” pages there. Once you do it, open Google and enter “site:x.com + “y,” where”x ” is your website’s name and “y” stands for the topic of your “money” page. As a result, you’ll get examples of your blog posts that mention the target phrase. Now, you can use these opportunities to add the inner links to your “money” page. By surrounding your money pages with these “supporting clusters” of informational blog posts, you signal to search engines that your service page is the authoritative hub for that entire topic.

You can also opt for the “Best by links” report in Ahrefs’ Site Explorer. Choose the blog posts with the most referring domains and insert the links to your “money” pages there too.

Another efficient method to boost your sales is to use the “Internal link opportunities” report in Ahrefs’ Site Audit. This is undoubtedly the easiest way, as the platform will automatically help you find the content on your websites where you can insert links to your “money” page just like it’s shown on the screenshot:

9. Optimize On-Page Elements

According to Google’s recommendations, the creation of helpful, reliable, and people-first content should be the main priority of your SEO strategy. Nonetheless, you shouldn’t forget about the importance of on-page optimization, which will have a direct influence on your visitor’s experience. Here is a checklist of website elements you should review to ensure there are no issues:

• Title tags: Ideally, the length of your SEO title tags should be between 50-60 characters. In addition, ensure that each page has its own unique and clickable title that clearly identifies the core entity or topic.
• Meta descriptions: They should be between 150-160 characters and up to 920 pixels in size if you want Google to display them correctly. Plus, don’t forget to include the main keywords in your meta descriptions.
• Headings: Each page must have a clear structure, which you can create using H1, H2, and H3 header tags. Optimize these headings by including semantic keywords and answering specific user questions to satisfy intent.
• Visuals and UX: Ensure all images have descriptive alt-text and are compressed for speed. Focus on page experience and UX by maintaining a stable layout and fast loading times to keep users engaged.
• Internal links: First of all, check whether there are no broken internal links. If you find any, replace them immediately. Also, diversify anchor text and implement breadcrumb navigation. Additionally, establish content refresh cycles to ensure data and links stay current.

If you want to perform a comprehensive on-page SEO audit, you may rely on Semrush or Screaming Frog. The latter is excellent for bulk checking medium and large sites when used with a Google API connection to pull Search Console and PageSpeed data directly. For a deep UX audit, consider Microsoft Clarity to analyze user behavior through heatmaps and session recordings.

If you choose Semrush, pay attention to the following elements:

• Total ideas: It’ll show the number of suggested on-page optimization opportunities.
• Organic search traffic boost: The platform will also estimate how much traffic your site can gain after the improvements.
• TOP pages to optimize: As its name suggests, this element provides you with the pages that will bring you the most benefits after optimization.

It’s also great that the platform divides its ideas into several categories. It also estimates the difficulty of each action and allows you to assign tasks to other team members directly from Semrush. Using all these advantages will surely help you create a winning SEO strategy that will boost your online traffic.

10. Use Internal Linking

Internal links help visitors navigate your content, keep them staying longer on the website, and provide more context on their search intent, better satisfying it.

Internal linking is also important for crawling and indexing. Without links, Google might struggle to find or index the new pages of your website. The links also pass “ranking power” from strong pages to new ones.

A page that is not connected with any other page on a website is an orphan one. Since search engines and users can’t find them easily, they rarely rank. Always ensure your new posts are linked from at least one or two existing, relevant pages.

How to find internal linking opportunities

A simple way to find opportunities to interlink website pages is to search Google for site:yourwebsite.com “topic”. This query shows all your existing pages that mention that topic where you can naturally place a link. You can also use Screaming Frog to identify pages with zero internal links in bulk.

When placing an internal link, it is important to use descriptive anchor text explaining to users what they are clicking on.  For example, use “personal injury filing tips” rather than just “click here.”

11. Off-Page: Build Authority and a Smart Link Building Strategy

Link building will be a key ranking factor in Google’s search engine algorithm in the next five years. Considering this trend, you just can’t start the improvement of your site without a proper link-building strategy, which should include:

Work with the Broken Backlinks

Sometimes, a backlink may point to your page that no longer exists. In this case, it’ll be “broken,” as the user who follows it will get nowhere. As a rule, these backlinks affect your website’s reputation and rankings, so you should track and remove them ASAP. Also, you may contact other webmasters, offering them to replace the broken links with new ones.

Activate Brand Promotion and Digital PR

There are many efficient off-page optimization methods, including social media, podcasts, local citations, and Digital PR submissions. Implementing a brand mention strategy is also crucial; search engines now recognize mentions of your brand on authoritative sites as a signal of trust, even when they don’t include a clickable link. If you need professional local SEO services, SeoProfy is here to help you.

Link quality and diversity

Getting links from online sources is not enough. The websites referring to your content should be authoritative and relevant to your niche. Further, it’s important to ensure that backlinks come from different types of sources, such as blogs, news websites, or directories. You can keep an eye on your Backlink profile growth and diversity using platforms like Ahrefs:

Stable growth of your backlink profile is one of the main cornerstones of your site’s success. You should always look for new possibilities to promote your website, as it’s a great way not only to increase its rankings but also to reach more potential clients. At the same time, it’s not recommended to opt for black-hat techniques like link farms and PBNs.

12. Optimize for LLMs and AI Visibility

Complex SEO strategy for 2026 must consider LLM optimization, Large Language Models don’t just choose sources based on keywords; they look for structured, authoritative chunks of information they can easily summarize. If your content isn’t formatted for AI, you risk losing LLM citations and becoming invisible to a large segment of your target audience. In order to optimize your content for LLMs, follow these steps.

Use an “Answer-First” Structure

A direct, concise answer up to 60 words should appear immediately under your headings. AI models prioritize such “summary-style” blocks because they are easy to extract and quote.

Use Original Data and Insights

LLMs do not invent new facts. Publishing original statistics, case studies, or first-hand expert opinions boosts chances for AI referencing and linking to your page.

Focus on Parsability Structure

Use clear semantic HTML (H1, H2, H3) and keep paragraphs short—ideally under 5 lines. Such modular “passages” content structure helps AI stay within its processing window and increases your LLM citation rate.

Build Entity Authority

AI models crawl the web to find the proof of your trustworthiness. You need to maintain consistent brand mentions across news sites, podcasts, and social platforms. The more your brand is mentioned within a specific topic across the web, the more likely AI will cite your website.

Expand Your Schema

Use advanced JSON-LD schema (like FAQPage, HowTo, and Organization) to make your data accessible and understandable for crawlers. Data markup turns your content into a machine-readable knowledge base.

Many marketing experts consider AI-generated content to badly affect brand authority.  Here you can learn what results you can get with AI content for SEO.

13. Adapt to SEO Trends and Search Changes

A strong SEO strategy is impossible without following the best practices. While some trends may lose their relevance and effectiveness, others stay impactful for years! If you want to keep your rankings in 2026, you definitely need to get acquainted with top SEO statistics collected from our most recent research. Plus, we’ve prepared a list of the practices you should certainly consider this year:

Content Is King

The creation of top-quality product descriptions and blog posts is undoubtedly the heart of all SEO practices. At the same time, it’s not enough to only focus on quality and uniqueness. To rank in 2026, you must provide E-E-A-T proofing, enhancing your content with helpful tips, useful case studies, and real-life examples

Impact of AI and LLMs

You must adapt your strategy to the growing influence of AI Overviews, LLMs, and GEO. High SERP volatility is the new norm, so focus on a brand mention strategy; search engines now value brand visibility and mentions across the web even when they don’t include a direct link. Contact our experts to discuss the generative engine optimization (GEO) services for your website.

Opt for visuals

Tables and infographics can significantly enhance the perception of your content. Moreover, the pages with relevant visual elements tend to get more backlinks than those without them.

Provide additional value

Many modern users opt for watching videos and listening to podcasts instead of reading, and you should consider this trend. For example, you can embed relevant YouTube videos into your pages and add the possibility of listening to the blog posts. Plus, from time to time, you may offer your target audience the opportunity to download useful PDF files with trend overviews, checklists, or industry reports.

Mobile indexing

Modern search engines prioritize mobile-friendly websites. You’ll never reach high rankings if your site doesn’t meet the Core Web Vitals criteria, which include loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability. Of course, all these elements should also be optimized for people who use smartphones and other portable gadgets.

14. Track and Measure Your Results

You can’t say whether your SEO strategy is successful if you don’t track it. Without proper management, you won’t be able to spot your mistakes and fix them timely.

Ideally, you should develop systematic control over the implementation of your SEO practices. Of course, the level of management you need directly depends on your site’s size, the number of competitors, and your industry. If you run a relatively small online resource, only a few hours of maintenance each month will be enough. Use this time to focus on the result of the most essential updates and plan minor optimization tasks. Considering it, Google Analytics is just enough to monitor essential metrics like total clicks and impressions:

For a deeper oversight, you can create customized dashboards in Looker Studio to unify data from various sources into a single view of your progress.

On the other hand, large websites in highly competitive industries require much more detailed maintenance to stay on top. It’s better to track and measure your performance weekly, as even the tiniest omission may ruin all your SEO efforts. Surely, you won’t be able to manage everything using only Google Analytics. You’ll need to opt for paid plans in Ahrefs, Semrush, Majestic, and other advanced tools to manage your website. For large sites, connect Screaming Frog to Google APIs to instantly see technical errors alongside your real traffic and speed data.

For success in 2026, you also need to track how often AI cites your brand, as being recommended by AI is now just as important as traditional rankings. You can use Share of Model to handle this SEO task.

15. Update Your SEO Strategy

Even if you create an effective SEO strategy, it still needs to be reviewed later. You may want to change your approach or implement new trends. Plus, even thorough planning doesn’t prevent you from failure. If you see that your current approach doesn’t provide you with the desired results, you should stop and comprehensively analyze your current strategy or opt for advanced SEO techniques.

But don’t rush to change your plans if you don’t see results in a day! Search engine optimization is a complex process that may take months before you see the first results.

Craft high-quality content, expand your backlink profile, and fix your website’s technical issues — stay consistent in these actions, and you’ll surely be pleased with the results. If you feel stuck in the SEO labyrinth, you’re always welcome to get in touch with our team so we can guide you through all the issues.

Final Thoughts

An effective SEO strategy for your website may require more than a week, especially if your business operates in a highly competitive niche. Although this process may seem unnecessary at first, you’ll surely be thankful for planning everything ahead when you start the optimization process.

To succeed, follow the “Strategic Pyramid”: start with your business objectives, translate them into specific SEO goals, use the right technical and creative tactics, and track performance to measure your ROI.

With clear goals and checklists, you won’t get stuck on any of the site’s improvement stages. Moreover, you’ll be able to avoid your competitors’ mistakes, which will eventually lead to higher rankings, more organic traffic, and, of course, increased sales.

Author

Andrew Shum

Andrew Shum is the Head of SEO at SeoProfy with 10+ years of experience in SEO and digital marketing. He has been part of the company for over 6 years and has led the SEO department for the past 3.5 years, managing a team of 15+ specialists. He works with competitive and international multi-language projects across eCommerce, SaaS, and enterprise niches, focusing on practical SEO strategies that deliver measurable results.