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Key Takeaways
- A good SEO strategy follows a clear order – setup, keyword research, content optimization, technical SEO, and link building.
- Start by scheduling your SEO time and picking the right tools before you touch anything else.
- Keyword research and on-page optimization are where most of your early wins come from.
- Link building remains essential in 2026 – focus on quality and relevance over quantity.
SEO is difficult when you start out and you need to prepare a bulletproof SEO strategy. Basically, you need to learn about SEO, do research, try things out, make mistakes, and gather experience all at the same time in an area that takes a long time to show results in the first place.
Honestly, many companies do not have time for this learning curve. What they (and you) are interested in is the best possible result as fast as possible without too many snags along the way.
Therefore, we skipped the learning curve and made this step-by-step manual to create an SEO strategy – or plan if you’d like – so you know exactly what to do and in which order. It describes the process that an SEO agency goes through with each new SEO client and how they plan the strategy to follow.
Follow this recipe for creating an SEO strategy and you are bound to get results and reap the benefits.
Setting up your SEO strategy
The first step of the journey is gearing up. This step will make sure that you are ready to dive into each new task without delay and you won’t get distracted or waste valuable time on setting up your analytics, tools, or anything else.
1. Make an SEO schedule
Let’s be honest. Saying “I’ll do this whenever I have a bit of time” will mean you will probably start, but won’t be as consistent or as dedicated as SEO requires, pushing it down a priority list of tasks you do on a daily basis.
And this just adds extra time to the project or, even worse, sets it up for failure right from the start.
So, take some time to make a plan for your SEO as the first thing you do.
This is way more important than you probably imagine, but take it from me – I have done this for 7 years and have worked with a lot of companies that wanted to execute the SEO themselves with only me as a sideline consultant.
✅ 1.1 Put in a couple of hours for SEO twice per week in your calendar
An added benefit of making an SEO schedule is that it puts a limit on how many hours you use and will prevent using too much time and getting lost in a single task.
To start with, you can just make general entries marked as SEO in your calendar, and when you are done with all the initial work of setting up and doing keyword research you can be more detailed and set up individual tasks as you see fit.
The dedicated SEO time set up in your calendar will make a difference and help you keep on track while also allowing you to expand your SEO knowledge slowly, but regularly.
A nice way to organize the individual tasks is to use a Trello board or another project management system of choice.
2. Sort out your SEO toolbox
There are plenty of SEO tools and software you can use to be more efficient and get insight from your data. Many of these tools do not come cheap and are only really necessary for professionals and others that deal with SEO on a more regular basis.
Morningscore is priced way under the most well-known SEO tools to fit all the DIY SEO people like yourself.
The following tools are, in my view, more than enough to get you started on your SEO journey and successfully execute your SEO strategy.
✅ 2.1 Set up Google Analytics (or other tracking tool)
Google Analytics lets you track exactly what happens with customers, where they come from, and how they interact with your site.
There are many Google Analytics guides online, so we will not touch upon exactly how to set it up here.
It doesn’t have to be Google Analytics. You can use other tools like Plausible instead, which we use in Morningscore.
✅ 2.2 Set up Google Search Console
With the same Gmail account you used for Google Analytics, set up a Google Search Console account and connect to your website.
✅ 2.3 Set up your domain in Morningscore
Add your domain to Morningscore. It’s important to do this as early as possible so our Spaceman has time to fetch all your data.
✅ 2.4 Set up a system for documentation
It would be smart to keep a log of every change you make and each link you build. This way, if you see big jumps or dips in your ranks or link rank, you will be able to figure out if it has anything to do with the changes you’ve made.
Alternatively, if this log system is just not something you will keep updated – Morningscore keeps a history of links and improvements.
3. Find competitors for your SEO strategy
✅ 3.1 Make a list of your competitors
Making a list of your biggest competitors is an important part of the early stages of the SEO strategy. These can be local companies – the ones you know are directly competing with you or for your clients if you are at an agency. Or they can be big national companies that you look up to and want to copy a bit.
Keep in mind, though, that these large companies will be difficult to overtake on ranks as they probably invest more money into SEO than you do. The key is to find less broad keywords to rank for that the big players haven’t shown too much interest in.
✅ 3.2 Add your competitors to Morningscore
By adding them to Morningscore, you will get access to all their keywords, rankings, and links.
4. Make a landing page priority list
It would not make sense to optimize every page on your website as it is time-consuming and probably wouldn’t make much of a difference.
This is especially true for very large websites.
This is why you need a priority list to know exactly what you should focus on and to make sure that important pages get enough attention.
✅ 4.1 Make an initial landing page priority list
Make a list of pages that you think are the most important. These are usually the front page plus any page that showcases the product or service you are selling or those that are informative/important for your target group.
Often, if you have a webshop, these pages are your product categories.
✅ 4.2 Download a performance report from Google Search Console
In Google Search Console, under performance, make sure that the date range is set to at least the last 3 months and then export the data in a file of your choosing.
In the file, choose the pages tab and it should give you a list of all your website’s pages with the number of clicks, impressions, average CTR, and average rank.
Sort first by impressions (largest to smallest) and delete all but 20 pages (or more if you believe that you have more really important pages or have more time for the upcoming SEO work).
Add the pages from your initial priority list if they are missing here and remove those that you feel are not relevant.
Next, sort by position (smallest to largest) and you have a list of pages on your site that are shown in SERPs the most and that rank the highest.
Depending on the niche you are in and the state of your website – it usually makes sense to find the best performing pages and then give them a little nudge and make them do even better, rather than optimizing an old page that isn’t ranking at all.
Go through the first 5-10 pages and see if they make sense to optimize (Are these the pages that could potentially bring in more clients? Or do they bring in large amounts of traffic that you can benefit from?).
If the answer is yes, you have your landing page optimization priority list sorted.
5. Set up performance measuring
✅ 5.1 Make a list of KPIs
Usually, when we talk about SEO, it’s the ranks we are after, right? But the KPIs also depend on who your users are.
If you are interested in traffic, then that is what you should be tracking. And if you are interested in users with buyer’s intent, then conversions make more sense.
You will need Morningscore and Google Analytics (or another tracking tool like Plausible) to track these KPIs, depending on which KPIs you choose, of course.
✅ 5.2 Set up missions in Morningscore
Morningscore missions come in 3 categories based on what they track – keyword rank, links, and health/on-page.
You can either choose the missions that Morningscore suggests automatically or you can make your own by adding new ones.
A keyword-focused SEO strategy 2026
6. Keyword research
✅ 6.1 Do a keyword brain dump
Open an excel file and start writing whatever keyword comes to mind when you think of your website, business, product, and service.
Start with those that you think best fit your business, product, and/or service. Example below from keywords related to a men’s clothing business (short example – you want a way, way longer list).
It’s important to be a bit critical here and really make it clear what you are selling – it’s not about getting more traffic (in most cases), it’s about getting the right traffic.
Put yourself in your client’s shoes. We all find products and services on Google, so replicate that from your client’s position.
What would you type in the search bar if you wanted to buy your product or service? Or even better, ask your customers! Which search terms did they type in to find you?
✅ 6.2 Scrape the keywords your competitors use
To get your competitor’s keywords, you can either go through their website manually and write down the words that they continually use, or you can use Morningscore.
If you add your competitors to Morningscore, you will be able to see all the keywords they rank for. You can then export the full keyword data for each competitor.
Open a new excel file (or make a new tab in the keyword file you worked on from the start) called “Competitor keywords” and copy the data from all the competitor files into the same place.
Next, delete everything that has a low search volume (what low search volume is depends on the size of your niche – for some it can be anything under 100, for a small business with a specific language/country it could be as low as 20 or 10).
Remember: Use common sense. A keyword with 0 search volume doesn’t necessarily mean 0, as no tool can show you that exact data. These keywords can have potential.
Now there are two tactics you could use, depending on how much time you want to spend on this step.
The slow, but detailed tactic:
Use the “Remove duplicates” feature and then sort alphabetically. Go through the entire list and remove any keyword that doesn’t seem relevant to your business, product, or service.
The shortcut tactic:
Sort alphabetically and keep only the keywords that appear multiple times (meaning almost all of your competitors use them).
This tactic saves you a lot of time compared with the first, but you miss finding good keywords that your other competitors might not have thought of, and those are easier to rank for because of less competition.
✅ 6.3 Get Google to help you out
You can use Google Suggest to find long-tail keywords. Pick a keyword with a ton of search volume and then do the ABC method.
The ABC method is where you take a keyword and copy it into Google’s search and take note of the suggestions in the dropdown box.
Then you type a space after the keyword followed by “a”. Write down relevant suggestions again. Delete “a” and type “b”. Note down suggestions again.
From there, you continue down the alphabet trying to get new long-tail keyword ideas.
You can also check the bottom of the SERPs for “Searches related to…” and note down suggestions there.
✅ 6.4 Set up the Morningscore keyword rank tracker
Add your lists from the keyword brain dump (6.1) and Google Suggest (6.3) steps to Morningscore’s keyword rank tracker.
Sort the keywords by search volume and delete those with too low search volume.
Feel free to sort them into folders now or mark some of the keywords as your favorites. This will make it easier for you to keep an eye on rank fluctuations and compare how your competitors are doing.
You can add keywords to folders and group by target landing page, search intent, subject, or whatever structure fits you.
✅ 6.5 Make sure your keywords match the search intent
Morningscore’s keyword rank tracker has a very handy feature that will help you determine search intent. By right-clicking on a keyword in the tool, you get a small menu where you should click on “See all ranks”.
Now you can see the exact SERPs for the keyword and delete it if you notice that the results are completely different from what you are offering.
To determine the search intent, you should look for the words being used and the type of landing page that is ranking.
If all results are product pages, the search intent is to buy a product. If you see a lot of blog posts, Wikipedia, etc., the intent is to find information about the subject.
✅ 6.6 Use your tracked keywords to find your organic search competitors
While you are checking the keywords for search intent, note down which competitors are ranking in the top 3 positions for keywords that are your favorites (those with the most potential or those that you have decided to use in optimizing your most profitable landing pages).
You might want to add these competitors to your competitor list (3.1) and do a bit of additional keyword research using their websites (6.2).
✅ 6.7 Get additional suggestions from Morningscore
If you think your keyword list is still a bit thin and you could use some more inspiration, try out Morningscore’s keyword research tool.
Add your keyword to the keyword research tool one by one and see if any relevant keywords appear.
Use the filters to customize the results by ignoring keywords with low search volume, keywords containing other brand names, and other characteristics that make the keywords irrelevant for you to target.
✅ 6.8 Combine your data
Take your landing page priority list and add your tracked keywords to them. Choose 1 primary keyword for each landing page and 1-5 secondary keywords. You should only use a keyword once and never optimize more than one landing page for the same keywords.
If a keyword has multiple search intents, you can succeed by creating 2 different landing pages targeting each intent.
This list will speed up your onsite optimization process.
Export your keyword details in Morningscore and check if a keyword is already ranking on Google and use the same landing page to further optimize.
✅ 6.9 Make a “Future content” list
There might be keywords that seem really promising, but you don’t really have a landing page that you can use them on. Keep these keywords for content you will make in the future. (This list will come in handy in step 8.1).
Content-driven SEO strategy 2026
7. Content optimization
It’s time to get your landing page priority list (keywords included) and start optimizing these landing pages one by one. Pick a landing page and go through steps 7.1 to 7.6. This is where your SEO strategy 2026 really starts to take shape on the site.
✅ 7.1 Check your URLs
It’s important for your URLs that they are user-friendly. What I mean by user-friendly is that they should be readable and easily memorable. With an optimized URL, your users will know what to expect right away and will be more likely to click the link.
Instead of having a URL that looks like this: https://www.example.com/blogarticle.aspx?ID=11526&IT=5f7d3d your URLs should contain keywords.
So if you are an SEO specialist and want to optimize your blog article for the keyword “SEO strategy”, then that is the best string to use for your URL: https://www.seospecialist.com/blog/seo-strategy. Use your keywords and hyphens “-” (not underscores “_”) to separate words. Underscore is not a valid space separator for Google.
Do not use your entire blog article title either; try to sum it up instead.
Don’t overdo it either. Stuffing as many keywords in as possible will not do you any good: https://www.sportshop.com/shop/57-sweatshirt—hoodies-sweatshirts—kids/926-sweatshirts—sweatshirt-for-kids/
The URL should be as short as possible (memorable, remember?).
Always keep this in mind when making new pages and have a good search engine optimized URL from the start.
If you are changing the URL of a landing page that has been in use for a while now (and you have internal links and are getting backlinks for it), you shouldn’t forget a 301 redirect. This is crucial if you want to keep the existing ranks and link value of the landing page.
Creating a new landing page without setting up 301 redirects will make Google see your new landing page as a new separate landing page and not a replacement for the old one.
✅ 7.2 Optimize the title tag
The title tag is the clickable headline of your listing in the SERPs. It is important for both CTR and SEO that you include the keyword here. It’s also best if the keyword is placed as close to the start of the title tag as possible.
The title tag can be too long and if yours is, Google will cut it off and replace a part of your title tag with “…”. This way you could have important words omitted, so keep your title tags between 55 and 70 characters long.
Check the landing page in Morningscore’s SEO checker; you will get a warning if the title tag is too long (or too short).
✅ 7.3 Optimize meta description
The meta description is the text displayed right under the title tag in the SERPs. This text does not play a big role for SEO, but it does have an effect on CTR. So make sure to write it as appealingly as possible and include the keyword to get more users to click on your listing – which in the end can affect your SEO.
Keep the meta description under 160 characters, so you don’t risk Google cutting it and omitting important information. Or even worse, Google could pick random content to display as your description if the page content doesn’t match your description.
✅ 7.4 Optimize your H tags with your SEO strategy
As a rule, always include the main, primary keyword in your <H1> tag and use the H1 tag only once. If your landing page has only one <H2> and one <H3> tag, I would be careful of using the primary keyword in all of them – and only use them if it makes sense for the content that follows, but it should be relevant as you create content for that exact subject.
If your page has multiple <H2>, <H3>, and even <H4> tags, then you can be more liberal with using the main keyword in one of each and then use the secondary keywords in the rest.
A rule of thumb is to use your keywords in about 70% of your H-tags and always in your H1.
H tags are meant for marking content hierarchy, not for setting font size. Think of it as reading an important text and using a highlighter to mark what is most important. Mark the content with H tags from H2 to H6 appropriately and do not skip tags – so don’t use H5 if you are not using an H4 anywhere on the page.
If the only tag your landing page is using is H1, you should consider adding at least the H2 and H3 tags (Morningscore will report not having H2 or H3 tags as an issue).
Why is this an issue? Firstly, readability. If you have a large block of text that is not broken up, it will be hard for the user to read and search engines will not rank it properly.
Look at this very post and see the heading structure and also the line breaks which I use often to increase readability and headers to mark the hierarchy.
✅ 7.5 Add the keyword to the first content paragraph
Ideally, your primary keyword should pop up naturally through the entire content of your landing page. Naturally means that it follows the content and you are not just trying to shove it in just for the sake of it.
This will happen automatically if you focus on covering the whole subject around your keyword. You need your keyword to create content around it, so don’t force it in where it doesn’t belong.
It is, however, good SEO practice that it appears as soon in the content (under the <H1> tag) as possible. This is usually the first block of text within the <p> tags or within the first 100 words.
✅ 7.6 Add semantic/related words to your content
You can’t keep using your keyword over and over, but you still need to be very clear on your subject to serve quality content that is original, helpful, and adequate.
By using semantically related keywords in your content, you help Google understand the context and the subject in general, as Google is well aware of words, their meaning, and what they are related to.
This will at the same time make you cover more areas in your content that users might find interesting.
✅ 7.7 Add internal links
Internal linking is an important and often underrated SEO factor. Internal links are guiding users around your website as well as search engine crawlers.
Make sure to link to relevant and important pages to boost them. Do not overdo it, so choose the most relevant ones.
Link with the anchor of the keyword the landing page you link to is optimized to rank for, and never the keyword that the linking page is optimized to rank for.
Following the checklist above will give you a well-optimized page that looks something like this:
✅ 7.8 Check if the content of your landing pages needs to be expanded
Use Morningscore’s keyword rank tracker and click on the keyword you are using to optimize the landing page. Click on “See all ranks” in the menu that appears. This will bring up the SERPs for this keyword.
Open the first 3-5 results and check their content. How does your content match up to the top-performing websites? Can you expand your content to make your landing page better? Can you write something better than what the top websites have? Add this content expansion to the “Future content” list.
The idea here isn’t to rephrase what they are already saying. You need to figure out how to make sure you cover what they do and additional helpful information.
✅ 7.9 On-page SEO strategy checklist
On-page optimization is a big deal and is very important to rank on your selected keywords. To do so, make sure that you have done a good job with all of the points above. Here are additional elements to optimize:
✓ Use short, precise, and meaningful URLs and use hyphens as a separator
✓ Add your keyword first in the page title, add a call-to-action, and keep it under 70 characters
✓ Write appealing meta descriptions that make users interested in your page and keep them under 160 characters
✓ Always add your main keyword in the H1
✓ Make sure that your main keyword is in around 70-80% of your H2s
✓ Include semantic (related) keywords to add context and help search engines understand your content
✓ Add internal links to boost other important pages
✓ Add your keyword within the first 100 words (above the fold)
✓ Make sure to have 1,000 words in your content targeting the subject (or even 2,000 words for blog posts)
✓ Check grammar. Grammar is a ranking factor so make sure to double-check or use tools to help you with correct grammar.
✓ Use keyword variations for image alt tags
✓ Rename image files to have relevant names
✓ Compress images using TinyPNG or other tools
✓ Use awesome images and videos to increase time spent on page
✓ Write engaging content that keeps users reading – be original and helpful
✓ Add outbound links to relevant and authoritative pages
✓ Optimize for conversions. Don’t make the user think; make it easy to convert and show the way
✓ Use a good caching service
Read our comprehensive SEO checklist, which includes off-page, technical, LLMO, and more.
8. Finding new content opportunities
✅ 8.1 Pinpoint missing content
Remember the “Future content” list from step 6.9? Time to make use of it.
Copy the keyword list over into an excel sheet (or Google Sheet) and for each keyword plan out what kind of page would be most appropriate. Is it a landing page explaining a service? Maybe a blog post talking about a product that you are selling? Or a case study?
Do a Google search for the keyword you are planning for and look through the pages that pop up in the first 5 results. What kind of content is it? Can you make something that is better and more informative?
If all results are product pages, it seems that Google has found that the search intent is to buy something. If all results are blog posts, it’s more likely to be informational searches – and whatever the intent is, you need to match it to be able to rank.
Google will never show a product page for an information search and will never show an informative blog post when a user searches for “buy Nike trainers”.
✅ 8.2 Check out the competition
Do a detailed analysis of your competition. Take a competitor from the list you’ve made in step 3.1 and go to their page.
Read through each of their pages thoroughly (at least those that seem relevant to you) and note down any content you might feel your website is missing. This can be either a whole page or small pieces of content that could improve your existing landing pages.
✅ 8.3 Make a detailed content plan for the next 6 months
A detailed content plan will help you stay consistent and structured and can save time rummaging through multiple files.
Write if it’s a new landing page, blog article, or a content expansion of an existing page. Note down the URL (existing or a proposal for a new one), the keyword, who is writing it, the deadline, how long it should be (how many words?), and any other important information (like where did you get inspiration from – a competitor?).
You can even choose to create a content brief or add content outlines if you already have an idea of what content the page is supposed to cover.
A bit about the deadline: small additions to already existing landing pages should be done as soon as possible as they will help you rank.
New landing pages are second priority, and how soon they need to be up depends on your business. If it’s a new product or service that is not on sale yet, then the page needs to be ready a few weeks before the product is.
If the new landing page uses a keyword with a big potential for getting you conversions, then it should be done sooner rather than later.
And lastly, blog articles (if you have a blog) should be done regularly and continually. Depending on your resources, anything from once per month to 2 per week is fine.
And how do you know how long the content should be?
This depends purely on what type the content is. Usually, it’s “the more, the merrier,” but it can be difficult to reach more than 200 words for a (let’s say) contact page that only has the address, phone number, and email.
As a rule of thumb, ideally, blog articles are between 800-1500 words. Your landing pages describing products and services should follow the same rule with an absolute minimum of 300 words.
Often, you need quite a lot more content on your category pages as well. Check your competitors’ pages and aim to have more content than the top 3 ranking websites.
Technical SEO strategy 2026
9. Technical SEO
If you don’t feel at home with doing detective work in your code and you are not an “Inspect” native, you should probably use a tool that will help you keep track of all the SEO issues.
Morningscore gives you a good overview of the health of your website in both general and landing page views.
9.1 Global website issues
Use the health tool in Morningscore and check the Technical factors in General performance. If Morningscore is reporting any of the following issues – fix them. If not, feel free to skip to step 9.2.
We call these issues global because they are not bound to a specific landing page, but instead affect the whole website. You will only need to fix them once.
✅ 9.1.1 Add schema markup
Schema markup is a way of informing the search engine about what your website (or landing page) is about.
The most important type that you should concern yourself with is the “Organization” schema and it should be added inside the <head> tag of your homepage and About page.
Once you upload it, test the page URL with the Rich Results Test. If you are unsure of what to write, check out your competitor’s schema by using the Schema Markup Validator and get some inspiration.
There are several types of markups you can use depending on your type of business. You can markup products, prices, stock, opening hours, restaurant menus, courses, and a lot more.
If you are uncomfortable with this (I understand, it can look scary) you can use simple plugins for WordPress, Shopify, and others like Rank Math so you don’t have to even enter your site’s code to add Schema to your pages.
✅ 9.1.2 Check your 404 page
When the Morningscore health tool reports that the 404 page is missing, it actually means that the 404 page is not customized.
You can check your website easily by adding /is-my-404-customized right after your domain name (www.domainname.com/is-my-404-customized). As it is highly unlikely that you have a page with this URL, this should trigger a 404 error and you can now see what your page looks like.
If it looks similar to your website (your website header and footer are included with all the menus, links, and info), then you are all good.
If the page looks weird and there are no links back to your site, you will need to make a customized 404 page.
Each page on your website needs to provide a good experience to the user and encourage them to try another page on your website and continue browsing. Without a customized 404 page, the user will most likely bounce.
✅ 9.1.3 Sitemap
A sitemap is an XML file that lists all the URLs on your website. By using a sitemap, you can inform the search engines about the pages present on your website, any latest updates, and the frequency of the updates.
If your website is missing a sitemap, the fix is quite easy. You can find official guidance on how to create sitemaps on Google Search Central. Just follow their instructions to list your pages.
This file should now be added to your website (preferably with the standard URL path www.yourdomainname.com/sitemap.xml) and its location should be added to the robots.txt file.
You will need to keep the sitemap updated and add any new landing pages you create. Alternatively, you can use a plugin that will generate a sitemap automatically and keep it updated for you.
For non-technical users, I recommend using a plugin to handle this. For example, you can use Rank Math or Yoast depending on your CMS.
Instead of adding your sitemap location to robots.txt, you can upload your sitemap to Google Search Console. However, you will need to do this each time you add a new landing page.
✅ 9.1.4 Add a favicon
A favicon is a small image (16×16 pixels) that represents your website and is used in the URL bar, browser tabs, bookmarks, and next to your URL in the SERPs when displayed on a mobile. Pages without a favicon will have the default icon (a grey globe) displayed.
The favicon has no impact on SEO, but it increases brand awareness and makes it easier for the user to jump back to your page when browsing many websites at the same time (which is typical for the so-called consideration phase in the buying process).
✅ 9.1.5 Check for H tags in the footer
H tags are used to mark up content on your website pages. They are used in order 1-6 and include keywords to make it clear to both users and search engines what the page is about (and which search term you want to rank for).
Using H tags in the footer messes up the structure of your content as they are topically unrelated.
It is also a problem if you use H3 tags in the footer and H4 tags in the content, as the search engine won’t understand that the H4 tags in the content are more important for both you and the user.
Change the footer content from H1-6 to <p> or <span>.
Remember, H tags are not for controlling font size but for marking the content hierarchy and optimizing readability.
✅ 9.1.6 Do you have SSL enabled?
SSL is a standard security protocol for establishing an encrypted link between your website and the user’s browser.
You can make sure that your SSL is enabled by typing https:// in front of your website URL in the browser search bar. If you get a warning, your website doesn’t have SSL enabled.
Even if your site doesn’t collect sensitive customer information, search engines suggest that switching to HTTPS is a good idea and may help improve rankings.
✅ 9.1.7 Use redirects to your advantage
When you have an old page that you are not using anymore and you want to get it removed from the SERPs, there are 2 options.
For pages that have backlinks and where a new relevant page with improved content was made to replace them, you should use a 301 redirect.
This will pass the link equity to the new page and you will be able to keep some of the SEO benefits. This is usually the recommended way of removing a page.
Alternatively, you can set the page status to 410, marking it as deleted permanently. Any existing backlinks will return a 404 error which means that they will probably be removed. So use this option only if the page has no internal or external links.
✅ 9.1.8 Check your About, Privacy, Contact & ToS pages
About, Privacy Policy, Contact, and Terms of Service pages are pages every website is expected to have. This expectation is shared by users and search engines alike as it gives a signal of trustworthiness and increases Page Quality.
Check if you have all these pages (or pages that combine the content – e.g., ToS + Privacy Policy). If not, you need to make them.
✅ 9.1.9 Optimize crawlability
Depending on the number of your website pages, Google’s search engine will not always crawl your entire website. According to Google, making so many requests to the server would slow down your website significantly, so they use something called a crawl limit or crawl budget.
Because of this, it is crucial that you set your website up to get the maximum out of each crawl.
First and foremost – prune your website and remove old, outdated pages that are of no use to you. Don’t forget to set the right status code (301 for redirects and 410 for deletion).
The second thing you can do is to make sure your website has a flat architecture. Basically, follow the rule that the user doesn’t have to click more than 3 times to reach any page on your website when starting from the home page.
Third – use internal linking and make sure there are no orphan pages that no other page (on your website) links to. An orphan page is a page that isn’t linked to anywhere on a website.
9.2 Landing page specific issues
Use your landing page priority list and start with that instead of trying to fix every general performance issue that the Morningscore health tool reports for your website.
Check each of your priority landing pages in the Morningscore health tool, but also follow through each of these steps to make sure you get everything optimized to its full potential.
✅ 9.2.1 Check the page speed
Page load speed is a ranking factor. Search engines favor fast websites and will place them higher when compared to a website that has very similar content but is slower.
You can check your page speed with either PageSpeed Insights or with WebPageTest.
Either will give you a good idea of your website speed and will also give you suggestions on how to fix issues.
Most likely, you will need help from a web developer to fix the recommended issues, but what you can do to keep page load down is optimize images (9.2.6), place them below-the-fold, and reduce the amount of plugins you use on your site.
✅ 9.2.2 Is your landing page mobile responsive?
Google has been using mobile-first indexing for a while now. What this means is that Google prefers to crawl the mobile version of your website. And you won’t like your results if your website isn’t mobile-friendly.
By using Lighthouse to test for mobile-friendliness, you will get the most reliable result for obvious reasons.
If your result is green, you can continue down this checklist.
If not, look through the improvement suggestions. You’ll probably need a web developer to help you in fixing the issues.
✅ 9.2.3 Remove duplicate content
You should avoid duplicate content throughout your website. Search engines want unique, original, and relevant content.
The most commonly duplicated content blocks are the title tags, meta descriptions, H tags, and text sections used on more than one page with minimal variation.
Sure, having a single slider that is shown on all pages isn’t counted as duplicate content and won’t punish your performance. But having several similar content sections can potentially harm your SEO results.
Make sure that all of your content is original and isn’t duplicated from your own pages or other websites’ content.
✅ 9.2.4 Optimize the H1 tag for your SEO strategy
Every page should have one and only one H1 tag. This is the most important H tag on your page and it should contain the main keyword, preferably at the beginning.
Check if your H1 tag is missing or if you maybe have more than one, in which case you need to change one to an H2 (or whichever tag makes more sense in the structure).
✅ 9.2.5 Check for broken links
Morningscore’s health tool will give an error if you have a broken internal or external link. This is especially common for landing pages with older content.
For internal links – make sure that the link is correctly written if the page you are linking to still exists, and replace it with a link to another internal page if the original page has been removed.
For external links – again, first check if the link is written correctly. If the website you are linking to has removed the page, simply find another relevant source to link to instead.
✅ 9.2.6 Optimize images
Images are important for user experience. They make visual breaks in the content, improve readability, and make the content more memorable and understandable.
Usually, the larger the page is, the more images it has, and this can have a negative effect on page speed and SEO if they are not properly optimized.
There are three things we can optimize when it comes to images:
- Image file name
Image file names are one of those places where you can get a few keywords in without it affecting the content your users can read. It is so often that images have names like img3434937.jpg or image07.jpg, and that’s a good opportunity for optimization. Have the image file name tied into the content that surrounds it. Look at the closest H tag and paragraph and what they are about, and name the image something similar but short. So if you are writing an SEO strategy and you are including an image of an SEO schedule excel sheet, then you can name the image seo-strategy-schedule.jpg or seo-schedule.jpg. - Image file size
If you are changing the file name and reuploading images, you might as well do some speed optimization while you are at it. The easiest way to do this is to use https://tinypng.com/ and let the panda sort everything out. The resulting images will be smaller without compromising the image quality. - Alt tag
Most CMSs will not give you trouble adding alt tags. In most WP themes it’s as simple as adding them to the image in the media library. However, web developers like to make our lives complicated sometimes and not include the code for alt tags or set all the images as backgrounds. There you will need to get a hold of one of these elusive creatures and get them to help you out. Hopefully, this is not your case and you can add them in easily. Alt tags should be descriptive. What Google means by this is – describe what’s in the image. But if you just wanted something visually nice and the description has nothing to do with your content, then you might have to be a bit creative. There, “Man looking at chart” becomes “Man plans SEO strategy”. Please be mindful of not abusing this, though. People often think they can stuff whatever they want in an alt tag because only spiders will ever “see” it. But this is not true; alt tags are used to make website pages accessible for people with disabilities and are read out by voiceover software. This is also a reason not to write gibberish or a string of keywords.
✅ 9.2.7 Be mindful of keywords in the anchor tags
The focus keyword that you are using for a specific landing page should only be used as anchor text somewhere else if it links to that exact landing page.
Example: If you are optimizing your page for the keyword “SEO strategy”, then including an external (or internal) link with the anchor “Read more about SEO strategies” is a bad idea. It gives a signal that the page you are linking to is the one that should rank for the keyword, not the one you are optimizing it for.
✅ 9.2.8 Internal links – do you link to the page you are optimizing?
Get your landing page priority list and all the keywords you are using to optimize a specific landing page. Now search through your website for the main keyword and the secondary keywords and link to the page you are optimizing from each page where the keywords are mentioned.
You can use Google to find this by searching:
site:domain.com “keyword”
Each page should have a good amount of internal links from other pages. In case you don’t use the keywords on other pages, add small pieces of content to pages from similar categories and link from there.
Or, instead, you can search to find other pages from your website ranking for the keyword by searching for the term, which isn’t necessarily mentioning the exact keyword:
site:domain.com keyword
✅ 9.2.9 External links – do you link to other websites?
External links are important for Page Quality. By adding a link to a relevant, authoritative website to your content, you are showing both the user and search engines where you got your information from and where the user can go to read more about the topic.
Pages that link to external sites rank higher than those that don’t, but link only to relevant content on trustworthy websites.
✅ 9.2.10 Optimize for featured snippets, Q&As, and reviews
We won’t go in-depth here, but schema markup can be used in many ways to mark up your page content and get you shown in featured snippets above the top-ranking websites or in the related questions box.
This is a nice way to bypass the ranks and be displayed above everyone else.
Other than using schema markup, you can optimize your content for featured snippets.
If the content contains questions, you should make it clear that there is a question and what the answer is. Make sure to have an objective answer to the question without “ifs” – be confident, straightforward, and neutral.
✅ 9.2.11 Is your content long enough?
If Morningscore is marking your landing page as having a low word count, you should probably add it to your “Future content” list under content expansion.
The problem with a low word count is that your page will have difficulty ranking if there are fewer than 400 words. Not because of the word count itself, but because you most likely don’t cover the full subject around the keyword with only 400 words.
Be critical of this issue, because some pages are not meant to rank and it is not necessary to put too much energy into content expansion (most commonly we see this problem with the “contact” page).
If the content on your category pages and blog posts is 400 words or less, I can almost certainly say that your content is way too thin.
Get inspiration from outside of your niche and check category pages in competitive niches to find out what they do.
A clue: scroll to the bottom of the page and see the content.
The exception is if the ranking pages are huge brands. Amazon, Nike, etc., often don’t need that much content because of their website authority, so don’t use huge brands as inspiration for content.
Look for the websites competing with the huge brands.
For category pages, you should aim for at least 800 words or more. For blog posts, it might take as much as 1,000, 2,000, or 3,000 words depending on the subject.
Link building SEO strategy 2026
Link building is still an important part of your SEO strategy in 2026 and it will be very difficult for your website to rank without any backlinks.
What you are interested in are “dofollow” links from websites with a high Domain Authority (DA) and/or high relevance for your niche.
10. Link analysis
It all starts with a proper analysis. Here you find out what your current backlink profile is and find link building opportunities to support your SEO strategy 2026.
✅ 10.1 Prepare a file for link building opportunities
Make an excel file or Google Sheet where you will add the link opportunities you find. Name the columns: URL, DA (for Domain Authority), Contact (to add the email or link to the contact form), Status (color-coding for easier overview – red for dead end, yellow for in progress, green for link received), and Notes.
The types of links we will be adding are mentions, lost links for reclamation, easy competitor links, and outreach suggestions.
✅ 10.2 Check out your mentions
There are plenty of SEO tools that help you track down your mentions. Here we explain how to do it with Morningscore.
If you haven’t already, add your brand name to the Morningscore keyword tool.
Right-click on it and select “See all ranks”. Look through the SERPs and try to find websites that mention your company/brand but do not link to your website.
For now, just add the URL to your link building opportunity list.
Another option is to head to Google and search “your brand name” – remember to add quotation marks before and after your brand name to search for results mentioning that exact phrase on their page.
✅ 10.3 Reclaim your lost links
In Morningscore, set the time period to show data for the past two months (or another timeframe you want to work with).
Check the domains listed in the lost links list and note down those that have a high DA or are highly relevant no matter the DA.
It is easier to contact a website and have them put your link back than it is to reach out to a website that has never heard of you before and have them link to you.
Make sure to verify that the link to your page is actually gone by clicking into the page that was linking to you. In some instances, it’s a false positive and the link isn’t lost in reality.
✅ 10.4 Get the low-hanging fruit from the competitors
Add your competitor’s website to Morningscore as a competitor.
Go to “All links” and export the complete data.
Do this for as many competitors as you want.
Put all data in the same file and sort by DA. Then, remove any entries with a DA below 10 (or whatever limit you want). Sort afterwards by the Nofollow column and remove all entries where “nofollow” is TRUE.
Use conditional formatting to change the background color of the data field in the URL column if the data is a duplicate.
This should mark all the duplicate URLs in your list and give you an overview of websites that more than one of your competitors are getting links from. Chances are that these are company or profile directories and very easy to get.
✅ 10.5 Get the outreach opportunities from your competitors
After you have added all the low-hanging fruit from your competitors’ link data, feel free to remove the duplicates (you can also make a copy of the file before you do so you keep all the data).
The next step is a bit labor-intensive but well worth it.
Check each link and try to find out how you could get a link from the same site.
Is it a newspaper article, and could you contact them when an important event happens in your company? A blog article whose owner you might be able to contact? Maybe it was a website that likes to post guest articles that you could write?
Add all these opportunities to your list for future outreach.
✅ 10.6 Scrape the SERPs
This step depends on what kind of business you are running and what your product is.
As an example, a hairdresser will focus on local influencers writing about hairdressers in the area (“best hairdresser in Plymouth”), local newspapers, and local directories, while a company that sells a WP plugin to the global market can go after any blog doing plugin reviews or comparison lists in the last year or two, among other link building opportunities.
So, try and figure out where you fit in and how to find people who are writing about the product or service you are selling.
When you find these articles, make sure that the link is “dofollow” before you put energy into trying to contact the writer. Right-click on the page and choose “Inspect”. Clicking on the link should highlight its code, and if you see rel=”nofollow” written inside the <a> tag, don’t bother with this link. All the rest you should add to your list.
✅ 10.7 Manual SERP searches
Another way to research and find easy and free link building opportunities is the old-school manual way using Google commands.
Head over to Google and simply search for “add link”, “add website”, “add company”, and similar ideas you can think of to find websites – often directories and maps – that you could get a link from. Or simply search for “free link building opportunities” to find guides and PDFs containing exact links to pages where you can easily create links yourself.
11. Outreach
✅ 11.1 Reach out to reclaim lost links
Write an email saying you noticed that the link went missing and offer them help in fixing the problem.
After all, it might be a mistake that they didn’t know about, and you might even notify them about a website issue they need to fix.
✅ 11.2 Reach out to mentions
I like to start the email by thanking them for mentioning us, writing a review about us (bad or good), or naming our product. It is important to start the email on a positive note and make them feel appreciated. Then, continue by asking if they mind including the link.
This type of email is a bit more personal than the other outreach email types.
Do not act spammy, though. Your email will surely end up in the trash if it sounds the tiniest bit like an automated email.
✅ 11.3 Cold mail outreach
This type of outreach has the lowest chance of being successful. So, I like to put in sufficient time to write a nice but universal email that I can send out one by one with minimal change.
This will speed up your outreach as it can take a while to come up with a perfect angle to approach people with a cold email.
You can also send these emails in waves and adjust the content based on the reactions.
Again, spend time on perfecting your email and make it sound like an actual human writing it. Your email will end up in the trash if it sounds automated, generic, or over-personalized.
✅ 11.4 Be mindful of the anchor text
Hopefully, the outreach gave some positive results. Now you have one more thing to be mindful of – the anchor text.
When building links, don’t use too many exact match anchor texts. Exact match anchor texts are those that are exactly the same as your main keyword for the landing page you are building a link to.
Similar to that, you have partial match anchor texts that use a part of the keyword (a keyword can be made up of more than one word) in combination with other words. Exact and partial match anchor texts shouldn’t be used in more than 15% of your link profile.
Most of the links you build should have generic anchor texts (URL, brand name, “click here”, “read more”, etc.).
Why do you need to be aware of the use of anchors?
The anchor text is what Google sees on the link and expects the page to be about. The thing is that active link building basically goes against Google’s guidelines.
One of the ways to expose manipulation is through anchors. It’s unnatural that everyone would link to your site naturally using the keyword. In most cases, the link would be a plain domain link and not on any specific anchor – especially not the keyword.
12. Ongoing SEO strategy maintenance
Once you are done with the previous optimization steps, you will be combining link building, continual content optimization, and maintenance.
✅ 12.1 Keep an eye on new updates
Google comes out with new algorithm updates regularly and these updates can shake up the ranks.
You can be proactive and follow various blogs that will write about the changes as they roll out, or you can play detective when you notice a drop in ranks and try to fix any collateral damage the update might have caused.
✅ 12.2 Changes in keyword search volume
Keyword search volume depends on the number of people searching for a specific keyword, so of course, there will be some fluctuation in the number.
Big changes can also happen following search trends and, no matter the reason why the search volume has changed, you will possibly need to adjust your content or make a new landing page for a keyword whose search volume suddenly jumped.
✅ 12.3 New competitors entering the market
Companies come and go. There might be companies going bankrupt and leaving a hole which you might want to fill.
But there might also be new companies that invest more in SEO than your old competitors. Be sure to use their data with the strategies we mentioned previously and monitor the upcoming competitors closely.
✅ 12.4 SEO of new content
Any new landing page you make as a part of your content strategy will need to be optimized and checked before and after publishing.
It is, of course, best if the content is fully optimized before publication because once the search engine has crawled and indexed it, there will be a while before another crawl.
If you have made changes to a page and want it to be crawled faster, you can go to your Google Search Console account, search for the landing page, and request indexing.
✅ 12.5 Keep updating existing content
Keep your content fresh by adding new info, images, new links, etc.
Make sure that the existing information is accurate and up to date.
Make sure to edit the update date when you edit pages. If you radically change the content, you can even change the publish date.
✅ 12.6 Keep an eye on recently lost links
Lost links will keep popping up, so keep an eye on Morningscore so you can reclaim them as fast as possible.
✅ 12.7 Keep an eye on Morningscore health tool
Just because you are done now doesn’t mean new issues won’t pop up. You should run onsite SEO checks regularly.
External links can break, you may delete an image in your media library by accident, or we might add more issues to track in a next update.
FAQ
What is SEO?
SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization. SEO is the process of getting higher rankings on Google by having a technically good website, great and relevant content, and authority. SEO is the name for the optimizations on and off a website that make you rank on Google when people search for information, products, or services.
Does my company need SEO?
Almost every company needs SEO. Google is the most used search engine and this is the place where most people start – and end – their buying journey. To take part in that and get sales and leads, you need to be visible in the search engines.
How does SEO work?
SEO is simple and complex at the same time. In reality, it’s quite simple. SEO is about making your website aligned with what Google and the users are looking for – and how they look for it. Google uses web crawlers to scan the entire internet; hence it is an important part of your SEO strategy to make sure that your website is accessible for crawlers so they can access your content. There are a lot of factors that Google counts, but you simply need to match the intent that users have, give a nice user experience, and establish authority for your website.
What can I do to get more traffic from search engines?
To get more traffic, you can either optimize your current pages, make sure to be more helpful, answer more questions, and cover the subject in depth. On the other hand, you can research and find new keywords and create new dedicated landing pages targeting those keywords.
How long does SEO take?
SEO kicks in after a few days or weeks in the beginning, but to see the full results of your SEO work, you can expect 6-12 months. Sometimes you reach the top for certain keywords quite fast, while others take some time and ongoing optimization, but generally speaking, SEO takes up to a year – at least to see the full effect.
How long should my content be?
How long your content should be depends on the type of page and the user’s intent – what are they looking for? For category pages, I aim for at least 800 words, and blog posts are often triple that amount or more depending on the subject.
