What SEO work should come first? Five priorities drawn from publicly shared experiences

If you can focus on only one thing first, these public discussions lean toward creating content that meets your audience’s needs, rather than putting external links first. The respondent in S8 explicitly ranks content first, followed by discussion and links from relevant websites, then site structure; S18 also puts good, relevant, frequently updated content first. The five priorities below are organized around these suggestions, but this is an arrangement of individual recommendations, not a universal consensus or a guarantee of rankings.

1. Get the content right first—length is no substitute for quality

Putting content first does not simply mean writing more. S10 recommends balancing relevant keywords, originality, and quality. A 2025 Backlinko article treats keywords as signals of demand and argues that content should demonstrate depth of expertise, including addressing exceptions and the complexity of a problem (S5). When planning content, start by asking: What are readers trying to solve? What have existing articles failed to explain clearly?

There are also differing views on what constitutes quality. Mattsaas lists being over 2,000 words, well written, and better than competitors’ content as criteria (S9). These are that contributor’s standards, however, not a search engine word-count threshold, and they should not be a reason to pad out an article.

2. Use search demand to decide which topic to cover first

Once you have set your content direction, use keyword and competitor analysis to prioritize topics. Michael Rock recommends finding phrases with higher search volume and less competition, then comparing competitors to work out how to do better (S12). Aneditor suggests filling relevant gaps that have monthly search volume with high-quality content (S13). These are approaches to choosing topics, not assurances that finding a gap will improve rankings.

• First, confirm that the topic is relevant to your audience’s needs, rather than simply chasing popular terms.
• Review the leading content in search results to identify questions and details you could add; S2 also suggests examining the top-ranking content.

3. Make the site structure clear, then assess additional markup

Technical work can begin with the basics specifically mentioned in the material: properly filling in the title, using h1, and maintaining clean, semantic HTML (S11, S14). The rationale given in S8 is to help search engines understand the site. Although site structure ranks below content and links in that response, it remains part of the task list.

As for structured data, a contributor in S1 reports that rankings improved after adding schema.org markup and strongly recommends using it. However, one event following another does not establish causation; this personal account is not enough to prove that adding markup will help a site outperform those that do not use it.

4. Seek relevant links, and keep gathering feedback and monitoring performance

The fourth priority is encouraging relevant websites to discuss your content. External links are not unimportant: S8 recommends approaching blogs and news sites covering related topics to seek coverage and links. Getting others to link to your site can therefore be a useful direction, but the material does not support always prioritizing it over content.

The fifth priority is to keep gathering feedback and observing performance. S16 recommends understanding your audience and incorporating their feedback into the site; S15 advises using Google tools to monitor site performance. The point of making both part of your process is to give future work a basis in audience feedback and performance data, rather than treating a completed optimization checklist as the end of the job.