SEO strategy step by step: how to do SEO and rank a website on Google in 2027

30 min read

If I had to design the SEO strategy for a website starting from scratch tomorrow, with no history, no links and not a single visit, the first thing I'd do wouldn't be opening Semrush. I wouldn't pull 500 keywords either, and I wouldn't ask an AI for “a complete SEO strategy for my company.”

All of that would come, but later. Before that, I'd make a series of decisions that no tool can make for me, and they're the ones that separate a website that brings in revenue from a website that simply publishes.

The most common SEO mistake has always been creating content without knowing why each URL exists. Artificial intelligence hasn't fixed that: now the same mistake just gets made ten times faster.

This is how I'd rank a website on Google today, step by step and already thinking about 2027, with AI Overviews and AI Mode built into everyday search.

Definition

What is an SEO strategy?

An SEO strategy is the plan that decides which searches a business wants to win, with which pages and in what order. It defines the website's architecture, the money pages, the supporting content, the technical foundation, the external authority and the metrics that prove it's working.

It isn't a keyword list or a publishing calendar. It's the map that connects real demand with the services you want to sell, and the order in which everything gets built. You'll also see it called an SEO plan or a search strategy: it's the same thing. What follows is that order, step by step.

What are the 4 pillars of SEO?

The four pillars of SEO are technical SEO, keywords and search intent, on-page SEO and off-page SEO. It's the split everyone uses, and it works well for understanding the pieces, but it leaves out the most important part: the order they're put together in, and which one depends on which.

Pillar	What it solves	Where it fits in this strategy
Technical SEO	Making sure Google can crawl, index and understand the website	Step 7, although it's done from day one
Keywords and intent	What your customer needs and the words they use to search for it	Steps 1 and 2
On-page SEO	Making each page answer that search better than the others	Steps 3, 4 and 6
Off-page SEO	Proving, outside your website, that you are who you say you are	Step 8

There's a fifth pillar that almost never shows up on those lists, and it decides whether everything else is worth anything: the business. What you sell, to whom and where. It's step 0 in this article and, by far, the one people skip most often.

SEO vs SEM: what's the difference, and which is better?

The difference between SEO and SEM is how you get onto Google: SEO works on organic rankings, without paying for each click, and SEM (often called PPC in the US) means paid ads on the search engine. Neither one is better: they solve different moments. A well-planned SEO and SEM strategy uses ads to sell from the first week and organic rankings to stop depending on them. SEO takes months and then keeps bringing in visits; SEM brings in visits on day one and stops bringing them the moment you switch off the budget.

	SEO	SEM (ads)
When it starts bringing in customers	Months	Hours
What happens if you stop	It drops slowly	It cuts off at once
Cost per visit over time	Goes down	Stays the same or goes up
What it works best for	Steady demand and long-term trust	Testing messages, campaigns and seasonal peaks

On a new website, the sensible move is to combine them: Google Ads campaigns on the searches with hiring intent while SEO matures, and a gradual cut in ad spend as those same searches are won organically. Ads also show you within two weeks which words actually convert, and that saves you months of SEO heading in the wrong direction.

What is SEO, and is it the same as organic search?

SEO (short for search engine optimization) is the work of getting a website to show up in the results of Google and other search engines without paying for each click. And yes, it's almost always the same thing: SEO, organic search, organic SEO and search engine rankings are different ways of naming that work. “SEO” is what digital marketing calls it; “how to get my website on Google” is how people outside the industry usually search for it.

Two nuances are worth keeping in mind. Some agencies use “search marketing” or “SEM” for packages that also include ads, so if someone offers it to you, ask whether paid search is included. And an SEO strategy isn't the same as rankings: rankings are the result, and the strategy is the plan to get there.

Step 0

Every SEO strategy starts with understanding how the business makes money

An SEO strategy starts with knowing which services make money, which customer you want to attract and where you sell; keywords come later. It sounds obvious, and yet it's the step that gets skipped the most. Before I look at a single search volume, I need answers to these questions:

With those answers, search volume becomes what it really is: a data point. A keyword with 10,000 searches can be worth less to the business than one with 80.

Step 1

SEO keywords: I'd look for search intent, not isolated keywords

SEO keywords are grouped by intent: if several searches ask for the same thing, they get a single main URL, not one page per variation. Imagine the research for that renovation company returns these searches: renovation company Valencia, full renovations Valencia, apartment renovations in Valencia, renovate apartment Valencia and full home renovation company in Valencia.

Five pages? Almost certainly not. It's the classic mistake when working with AI: you give it thousands of keywords, it hands you back thousands of “opportunities,” and you end up with a Frankenstein of near-identical pages competing with each other for the same intent.

One intent = one main URL, unless the SERP or the business gives you a clear reason to split them.

What are the types of search intent?

There are four types of search intent, and each one calls for a different kind of page:

Intent	What the searcher wants	Example	The page that answers it
Informational	To understand something	how much does it cost to renovate an apartment	Article or guide
Commercial	To compare before deciding	best renovation companies in Valencia	Comparison, case studies or service page
Transactional	To hire or buy now	full renovation quote Valencia	Service page with an easy way to get in touch
Navigational	To reach a specific website	DigiAcción contact	The brand's own page

A website needs pages for all four, but not on the same page. Trying to make a single page answer all of them is one of the most common reasons a page never quite ranks.

How to tell whether two searches deserve separate pages

The answer comes from Google, not from the tool. Search both queries (ideally in a private window) and compare the top 10 results:

What you see in the SERP	What it means	Decision
They share a good number of the same URLs	Google reads the same intent	A single page
They share few URLs and the type of result changes (for example, quote comparison sites vs. renovation companies)	They're different intents	Consider separate pages
One shows guides and the other shows service pages	One is informational and the other is commercial	An article and a service page, linked to each other

Rule of thumb: if they share 4 or more of the top 10 results, it's usually the same intent. It's not an official Google rule, but it works as a starting point.

How do you analyze your SEO competitors?

You analyze whoever beats you on Google for each search you care about, which isn't always your usual competitor. For each of the pages in the top five, I'd look at four things:

• What it answers and what it leaves out: its H2s tell you what Google already considers essential; what none of them explains is your opportunity.
• What format it uses: if they all have a table, steps or a video, Google expects that format.
• What it really adds: original data, case studies and prices, or just what the others repeat.
• When it was last updated: an old page on a topic that keeps changing is easier to beat.

What I wouldn't do is copy their structure. If your page looks the same as the top five, Google has no reason to put it ahead of them.

Multilingual and international SEO: the detail almost everyone misses in Andorra

In Andorra, people search in Catalan, Spanish and French. “Agència SEO Andorra” and “agencia SEO Andorra” are the same intent in two languages. The answer isn't to create two Spanish pages or to mix languages on a single one, but one version per language, with its own URL, content that's genuinely adapted (not a literal translation) and correctly configured hreflang tags.

The same goes in Spain for a Valencia company that sells in Spanish and Valencian, in the US for a business that serves customers in English and Spanish, and for the international SEO of any company selling in several countries: first you group by intent, then you create a version for each language.

What is local SEO, and when should it be your priority?

Local SEO is the work of showing up when someone searches for a service near where they are, and it should be your priority if you sell in a specific area or welcome customers at a physical location. There you compete with far fewer websites, and the intent to hire is higher. In that case, your Google Business Profile, your reviews and one page per service and area carry more weight than any blog post.

Where AI helps in this step

AI is excellent at the heavy lifting of clustering. You can give it exports from several tools and ask it to remove what's irrelevant, classify, group and flag cannibalization. This is the prompt I'd use as a starting point:

Ready-to-copy prompt

Act as a senior SEO consultant. I'm sending you a list of searches with their monthly volume.
1. Remove the ones that aren't related to [service] in [area].
2. Classify each search by intent: commercial, informational, local or branded.
3. Group the searches that answer the same user need.
4. For each group, suggest a main keyword and the ideal page type (service, guide, comparison or location).
5. Flag the groups that could cannibalize each other and explain why.
Return it as a table. Don't make up volumes or data that aren't in the list.

What I don't delegate is the final decision. AI clusters; I decide, with the SERP in front of me.

Step 2

Website architecture for SEO: I'd design it before writing a single page

Website architecture for SEO decides which pages should exist and how they link together before a single line gets written, so that no URL is redundant or competes with another. First you decide what should exist; then, what gets written. Doing it the other way around is expensive, because every URL you don't need ends up having to be redirected, merged or maintained.

Sticking with the renovation company, the architecture could look like this:

Each URL has a job: some capture demand, others answer questions and others build trust. And they all link to each other whenever it makes sense for the reader.

And if the plan says “we'll publish eight articles a month,” the question you have to ask is: eight about what, to support which page and at what point in the buying process? If there's no answer, you don't need eight articles.

Step 3

I'd build the pages that can drive revenue first

The first pages should be the money pages, because they answer searches from someone who already wants to hire. I like traffic, but I like revenue more. Someone searching “renovation company in Valencia” is much closer to hiring than someone searching “kitchen renovation ideas.” Both queries can make sense, but they don't carry the same weight for the business.

It's what we do on our own website: each industry has its own money page, like the one for web design for lawyers or the one for web design for clinics. A law firm and a clinic don't search with the same words, and they don't hire for the same reasons.

• 1 · Money pages
• 2 · Supporting content
• 3 · Topic expansion

A good money page isn't a keyword in the H1 with 1,500 words underneath, either. Within a few seconds, it has to make these eight things clear:

The visitor's question	What they need to find
What do you do?	The service explained in one sentence, no jargon
Who is it for?	The type of customer you work best with
Where?	A clear service area, consistent with your Google Business Profile
What problem do you solve?	The customer's situation before and after
Why should I trust you?	Reviews, projects, track record, certifications
What makes you different?	Something specific and verifiable, not “quality and commitment”
What proof do you have?	Case studies with data, before-and-after photos, testimonials
What's the next step?	A visible, easy call to action (short form, WhatsApp, phone call)

SEO and conversion work together. A number-one ranking that doesn't generate leads is a minor win.

Step 4

SEO content strategy: I'd build content around the pages I want to strengthen

A good SEO content strategy uses the blog to strengthen the money pages by answering the questions around them, not to publish for the sake of publishing. This is where the blog comes in, not as an article factory but as a content network that demonstrates expertise and pushes the money pages forward.

If the goal were to rank an SEO service for online stores, the supporting content could be:

• SEO architecture for online stores.
• How to handle filters and faceted navigation without generating thousands of junk URLs.
• Cannibalization between categories: how to spot it and fix it.
• What to do with out-of-stock or discontinued products.
• Store migrations without losing rankings.
• International SEO and hreflang for stores in several languages.

Each piece solves something specific, links to the related pieces and links to the service page when that's useful for the reader.

In SEO, this is called a topic cluster: a main page, the money page, surrounded by articles that answer the neighboring questions and link to it. That way Google sees that you've mastered the whole topic, not just one keyword.

Why this matters even more with AI Mode

Google explains in its guide to generative AI features in Search that its systems use a technique called query fan-out: starting from the user's question, they run several related queries to gather more information. Its own example: if someone asks how to fix a lawn full of weeds, the system also searches for the best herbicides, how to get rid of weeds without chemicals and how to prevent them.

In business terms: a website that covers a topic well, with pieces that answer those neighboring questions, has a better chance of showing up as a source than a website with twenty unrelated articles.

Step 5

AI SEO: I'd use AI to multiply judgment, not to replace it

AI speeds up research and production, but the decision about what to do and what to publish still has to be human. Tasks that used to take days now get done in hours, and not just in SEO: you can see it in our 13 real websites designed with AI, all reviewed by the team. The risk has grown too: it has never been this easy to produce mediocre content at scale. That's why I draw a clear line between what I delegate and what I don't:

Google is explicit in its guide: it asks for unique content that doesn't just recycle what's already been said online or what an AI model could produce effortlessly. It calls this non-commodity content: expert or experience-based insight that goes beyond what everyone already knows.

AI to research, organize, detect and accelerate. People to decide.

Step 6

On-page SEO: I'd make it easy to understand for people and for machines

Good on-page SEO means answering quickly and clearly: descriptive headings, the answer up front and a structure that's easy to scan. Depth doesn't mean length. Google's own guide says it bluntly: there's no ideal page length, and there's no need to chop content into tiny pieces for AI to understand it. Pages should be made for your audience.

What works is answering first and adding nuance afterward. If someone searches for how long SEO takes to show results:

And then, everything that makes the content easier to read and interpret:

• Headings that describe what's underneath them.
• Direct answers at the start of each section.
• Tables when you're comparing options.
• Examples, processes and data with their source.
• Original images and videos when they explain better than text.
• A visible author with demonstrable experience: it's what Google calls E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness).

Step 7

Technical SEO: the foundation, from day one

Technical SEO makes sure Google can crawl, index and understand your website, and on a new website it gets done properly before launch. It isn't a step that comes at the end: it's the ground everything above is built on. That's why, if a new website is born with WordPress web design that's already set up for SEO, you save months. And on a website that already exists, if you're wondering how to improve your website's SEO, it's the first thing I'd check before blaming the algorithm. It's common to try to fix with links a problem that lives on the server, with more content an indexing problem, or with new URLs a cannibalization issue.

What to check	Why
Indexability and robots.txt	So Google can crawl and store what matters, and not what doesn't
Canonicals and duplicate content	So each piece of content has a single reference version
XML sitemap	So important URLs get discovered quickly
Redirects and HTTP status codes	No redirect chains, no linked 404s, no server errors
Performance (Core Web Vitals)	Fast, stable loading, especially on mobile
JavaScript rendering	So the important content is in the HTML Google processes
Internal linking	So money pages receive links from related content
Mobile version	Google indexes based on the mobile version of the website
Languages and hreflang	So each market sees its own version
Structured data	Where it applies (local business, articles, products…) and always faithful to what's visible on the page

What is an SEO audit, and how often should you do one?

An SEO audit is a full review of a website to find what's holding back its rankings: crawling, indexing, content, internal links, speed and languages. On a website that already exists, it's the logical starting point, before touching anything. After that, reviewing it once a year is enough, plus a check every time the site is redesigned, changes servers or migrates URLs.

You can write the best article in the world, but if Google can't crawl and interpret it, the problem comes before the copy.

Step 8

Off-page SEO: I'd build authority beyond my own website

Off-page SEO covers the external signals, such as reviews, mentions and links (backlinks: links from other websites to yours), that prove outside your website that you are who you say you are. You can write on your website that you're the best. That doesn't prove it. You need external signals, and they make even more sense when an AI system tries to summarize what's being said about a brand online.

The key is where. It's not about showing up on any website, but on the sites where it makes sense for a company like yours to exist. Google also warns in its guide that seeking artificial mentions across the web isn't as helpful as it might seem: its systems focus on quality, and other systems block spam.

Step 9

SEO KPIs: I'd measure classic Google and the new AI layer

The KPIs of an SEO strategy are now measured through two lenses: classic performance in Google and visibility inside AI Overviews, AI Mode and AI assistants. Search Console now gives every website in the world performance reports for generative AI features: AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover's AI features. It's a big step forward, but it's worth knowing exactly what they measure:

If your website still gets few impressions in these features, the report may not show up.

That's why I'd measure in three layers:

Layer	What I'd measure	With what
Classic Google	Clicks, impressions, CTR and rankings by page and query	Search Console (performance report)
Generative AI	Impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode by page. Presence and mentions in ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity for the business's key questions	Search Console (AI reports), AI visibility tools and regular manual tests with the same questions
Business	Organic leads, conversions, branded searches and sales	Analytics, CRM and how branded searches evolve

The end goal isn't being able to say “we moved up for 14 keywords.” It's being able to say “more and more people discover us, remember us and get in touch.”

Summary

How to do SEO step by step: the strategy in short

To build an SEO strategy, you follow ten steps, from the business to measurement, and the order matters as much as the work inside each step.

How much does SEO cost? SEO pricing to rank a website on Google

SEO pricing doesn't come down to a single rate: it depends on the website's starting point, how competitive the industry is, the number of languages and how much content has to be created each month. An agency or SEO consultant usually works on a monthly retainer, with a heavier workload in the first months, when the foundation gets fixed and the money pages get built. Before comparing quotes, ask them to spell out what gets delivered each month and how it's measured. A low price with vague deliverables ends up being expensive.

Example

SEO strategy example for a small business, step by step

This is the plan for the Valencia renovation company from the earlier examples, with the decisions already made. It works as an SEO strategy template for small businesses and service companies: change the service and the area, and the framework stays the same.

Step	Decision made	What gets delivered
0 · Business	The margin is in full home renovations and retail spaces. A standalone bathroom job is accepted, but not promoted	Services ranked by margin, not by search volume
1 · Intent	Full renovations Valencia, renovation company Valencia and renovate apartment Valencia share results: a single page	The search groups, with one main URL for each
2 · Architecture	Four services, two neighborhoods where the company has completed its own projects (Ruzafa and Campanar), four guides and three trust pages	The URL and linking map, before writing anything
3 · Money pages	Kitchens, bathrooms and retail spaces go live first, because they already have hiring demand	Three pages with the company's own projects, real timelines and a clear next step
4 · Supporting content	Only the questions that hold back the decision: price, duration and building permits	Four guides, each one linked to its service page
5 · AI	Used to group searches and spot what the competition doesn't cover	Days of work saved; the decisions are still the team's
6 · On-page	Each page answers in the first two sentences and gives ballpark prices per square meter	Direct answers, tables and before-and-after photos
7 · Technical	The foundation is done before launch, not after	Crawling, indexing, mobile speed and local business structured data
8 · Authority	Reviews from real customers and a presence in the renovation directories and comparison sites its customers check	A well-managed Business Profile and mentions where it makes sense to appear
9 · Measurement	What gets tracked is quote requests, not visits	A monthly report with leads by page and the key questions tested in AI assistants

What matters in this example isn't the list, but that each row is a decision someone had to make before writing a single word. That's the work nobody sees, and it's what separates a website that brings in revenue from a website that just publishes.

What changes in an ecommerce SEO strategy?

The order is the same; the pieces change. In an online store, the money pages are the categories and product pages, and technical SEO carries much more weight: filters, out-of-stock products, duplicate content and speed with large catalogs. That's why the architecture and the technical foundation are locked in before the catalog goes up.

What I wouldn't do

• Publish a hundred auto-generated articles.
• Create a URL for every keyword variation, or one page per neighborhood or town with the same text.
• Buy links in bulk.
• Write 4,000 words because “Google likes long content.”
• Pay for a supposed “secret GEO schema” or for magic files for AI.
• Chase high-volume keywords that have nothing to do with the business.
• Let an AI decide the strategy. I'd use it every day, but as a copilot, not as the pilot.

The bottom line

If I had to start an SEO project from scratch today, this would be my order for 2027:

• Business
• Intent
• Architecture + technical foundation
• Money pages
• Supporting content
• Authority
• Measurement

And on top of the whole process, artificial intelligence to execute it better and faster. In that order, not the other way around.

Having AI doesn't turn a bad strategy into a good one. It just gets you to the wrong result sooner. I'd rather spend a few more days deciding where we're going, and then speed up.

Frequently asked questions