SEO strategy: how to build one you can prioritize from

An SEO strategy is a plan for where your business should win visibility in the search results, and in what order you work your way there. The short answer to what it should contain: a goal tied to the business, a realistic picture of your starting point, a prioritized list of topics you want to own, and a cadence for content, technology and links. The rest is execution.

I have worked with SEO since 2016, and the strategies that work share one trait: you can prioritize from them. A strategy that says “we want to rank for everything” is not a strategy. Here is the method I use myself.

First: what an SEO strategy is not

A list of 500 keywords from a tool is not a strategy. It is raw material. A strategy only exists once you have answered three questions: Which searches lead to revenue for us? Where do we have a realistic chance of winning? And what do we do first?

Skip those questions and the work ends up as scattered content that does not support itself, and that nobody can measure the effect of.

The seven steps of my method

1. Tie the goal to the business

Start with the number SEO is supposed to move: revenue from organic traffic, leads, signups. Not rankings, and not traffic alone. When the goal is a business number, you can later answer whether the effort pays off, and you can prioritize topics by value instead of volume.

2. Know your starting point

Audit before you plan. You need to know what already ranks, what is technically broken, and where the authority sits. Search Console is your most important tool here: it shows which pages and searches already earn impressions, and where you sit on page two with content that could be lifted to page one.

3. Choose the topics you want to own

Pick a small number of topic clusters where the business value is high and the competition is workable. For each cluster: one strong main page covering the topic broadly, and a set of supporting articles answering the concrete questions around it. That is the structure I use on this site, where my SEO page is the main page and articles like this one support it.

4. Match the content to the search intent

Look at what already ranks for your most important searches before you write. Does Google show product pages, guides or comparisons? That tells you what kind of page to build. Content that matches the intent poorly rarely ranks, no matter how thorough it is.

5. Clear the technical obstacles

Technology rarely wins rankings on its own, but bad technology can cost them. Crawlability, indexing, speed and mobile rendering need to be in place before the content work can carry. My technical SEO checklist covers the ten things I check first.

6. Build authority with direction

Links still move rankings, but they need to point at the pages you want to win with, not just at the homepage. Digital PR, data people want to cite, and real partnerships beat volume link building. And in the AI era it also counts to be mentioned and cited as a source, not only to earn a link.

7. Set a cadence, and measure against it

A strategy without a cadence dies after a month. Decide what gets published and fixed every month, and review the numbers in a fixed rhythm: which pages are winning, which are standing still, and what Search Console says about new opportunities. SEO rewards the one who keeps going.

Prioritization: the hardest part and the most important

The order I usually recommend: First whatever already almost ranks, because that is the fastest win. Then the technical faults holding the whole site back. After that, the new topic clusters in order of business value. And the link work running alongside, aimed at the pages that need to win.

If you want to see how I work with the craft in practice, read my SEO page. And if you want a concrete look at your own site, a no-strings meeting takes half an hour.