There are so many elements that go into making up a solid SEO strategy these days, and it seems that only a few of them really get discussed among professionals; some elements simply come and go and are no longer considered as important as what they used to be. Meta keywords are one of these tags, but while others ignore certain tags, there are certain members of SEO who will spend time still editing and including them just in case Google or other engines still value them.

Understanding these different elements and how they fit together to form a cohesive SEO strategy is really how you beat the search engines and manage to get that number 1 ranking that you or your client have always dreamed about. This usually takes a tonne of time, effort and creativity on your part, but having some understanding of the important elements of SEO is how to get started. This way you can formulate the correct method and execute the winning moves and also find tags and edits that you can make that your competition has not yet spotted.

Here are 7 different categories that you can edit to make up a solid overall SEO strategy:

• Content
• Architecture
• Code
• Credibility
• Links
• User
• Performance

So let’s start at content, understanding that content was one of the original SEO building blocks and is still extremely important. We should put quite a bit of focus on this element; just because it’s been around since day one, that doesn’t mean we should overlook it for whatever new element or SEO trick has recently become popular. Instead, we should pour even more attention on it since we know it’s stood the test of time.

With regard to content, what we really want to focus on is the fact that it is the lifeblood of all websites online. Without good content and a wide range of it covering multiple topics, you can forget about ranking highly in the search engines. Search engines love to promote large-scale websites that offer up thousands of pages of content that they can crawl and promote.

Large-scale websites often become resources because they have a huge amount of information about a wide range of topics and often contain very generic topics that make it easy to understand for the average person. This often leads to a lot of smaller websites providing backlinks, which increases their strength in the rankings.

Large-scale sites tend to attract larger traffic, which then increases the probability of getting more backlinks, which then continues to increase visibility. Having a solid content strategy is one of the first things you should come up with when first starting a new website. This should be done in advance, and you should always get to know the brand that you are writing the content for. You need to know the target audience, you need to know what words and language they use, and most of all, you need to understand how to make something more valuable than AI could generate on its own. You must also update your content regularly as fresh information comes around all the time.

Visiting Google Search Central (formerly Google Webmaster Central) is a great place to start and also to learn about every new update that Google makes, but perhaps the most important thing to learn about is just how Google assigns value to a website; one of the ways it does this is by looking deeper into what content you publish.

The quality of your content is one of the things it looks for; your quality should be extremely high when it comes to your content, it should be extremely helpful for the end user and answer the searcher’s question quickly and provide jargon‑free advice while writing in the correct tone for your target audience. You should re-read your content to ensure it is accurate before publishing; this is even more important if you have any kind of information that could be considered as health advice.

How often your content is published is another thing you should plan for; not updating your website often enough may mean Google sees your site as old and out of date, which means your rankings will likely fall behind those who are keeping their fingers on the pulse of the market with fresh and up-to-date breaking news within your industry. Removing out-of-date information or making corrections to it as more information becomes available is also a good idea, as this shows you haven’t just published a page and then forgotten about it. Times change, and so does information.

How well your site or page answers the searcher’s question is also something that is measured; there is zero need for a 5,000‑word article for a question that can be answered in 1 paragraph. Giving the answer upfront and then explaining the history or further information underneath saves the user a tonne of time and effort and therefore should be rewarded by Google.

Making sure your page is relevant to the search is also critical; you need to be sure to sprinkle in some keywords so that the person knows they have hit the right page and found an informational resource that they can use which not only has the right topic but will also be jargon‑free and will help to guide the user in figuring out how to get further information.

Keywords are not often talked about when it comes to creating a website, but when it comes to SEO purposes, what you really need to do is lightly add them in to keep things looking natural. Overuse of keywords is known as “keyword stuffing” and really annoys web users and also search engines. Writing good SEO copy for a website takes real time and effort to do and is a sought‑after skill that can take years to hone and master without it feeling like the keywords are being stuffed into a page to rank better in search engine results.

Providing accurate information is becoming so much more important in 2026 simply because it is very dangerous to just publish anything without backing it up with data and having a trusted source to confirm it, with the rise of fake AI videos, clickbait articles and slideshows, and of course completely false data given by non‑experts, which can really mess up search engine results, which results in lower trust for Google’s search results and ultimately many users hitting the back button and being unhappy with a search result.

The substance of your content also matters way more than is talked about; many content writers only ever aim for a set number of words, which makes them rush through an article and just rehash the same content that can be found in the top results pages of Google. This just clutters up the web with the same information over and over again; it still provides value but provides nothing really unique or different. This can be frustrating for the end user because they are looking for your opinion on something rather than just the same facts that they can find anywhere else online.

Finding ways to make your content stand out, unique and exciting can be done, but it takes a huge amount of additional effort. Some ways that you can go about this can be researching into forums, looking on social networks for customer feedback and even producing rich media such as video or images to illustrate your point. Product demonstrations really go the extra mile and can yield the best results because they are often not available on many sites. Putting together a real list of pros and cons of a product on a product page is also a great way to get customers to trust you.

Adding frequently asked questions to your page can also boost the content rate and page quality up extremely high. This is a great way to gain new insights into your marketplace and also allow brand new content to be added to the page at a later date. This shows that the page is active and updated and also looks at user feedback so that it can be corrected and improved upon. Perhaps build a small question box on your site or a comments section that allows people to ask questions you may not have thought about and then write another 200 words answering it.

The last thing you want to look at is languages. If your site reaches globally or you just want to improve your offerings and let people read your site in whatever language they feel comfortable with, then you should translate your pages into that language. One tip for this is to actually go the full way and hire a professional translator rather than using the Google Translate tool or AI, which may produce hard‑to‑read content or not be able to understand the needs and frustrations of a certain marketplace. This is extremely valuable if you find another country values certain tools above others or wants prices displayed in their local currency.

Another final tip is to look at linking out to other great resources. One of the classic mistakes made by websites these days is just assuming that you want to keep the visitor on your site at all times; linking out to another site within your market doesn’t mean you lose a potential customer. In fact, it can build a huge amount of trust with someone when you recommend another credible source to them to be able to answer a query that you may not be in a position to answer; they will now position you in their mind as a great place to revisit. After all, search engines themselves get used every day by linking to other great resources; your site should too.

Many companies these days dream about creating a small YouTube, TikTok or LinkedIn post that goes viral. This is perfect for any major brand or even a small business. They dream about these things happening because they know creating viral content is a great way to get traffic and sales overnight and get a great deal of attention to their website and help to make them important overnight. However, despite their best efforts, most of their content fails and doesn’t gain any traction online, let alone get thousands of views.

Finding out what makes content actually go viral needs a deep dive into the current research and finding out how to trigger people to share it online. This is usually done by observing previous content that has gained these signals and reverse engineering them.

When you do this over hundreds or even thousands of viral posts and videos, your first step is, of course, picking a platform and finding all these hidden gems and then recording them onto a spreadsheet for further analysis, which can be conducted by you or your team.

According to the latest ideas on this topic, it seems that triggering a huge emotional response from the viewer or reader is the best way to create content that will help you go viral; telling stories that your target audience can also relate to is another way, and figuring out what time of day or month to publish it also plays a huge role in creating the perfect strategy that enables you to push people into sharing your content free of charge.

The goal of any viral content is to create valuable brand coverage and help it to reach audiences that it otherwise wouldn’t have made it to. This is also done extremely cheaply since viral marketing is typically done for free, and since a retweet or repost button is very easy to use, it means that a few shares from the right people can really get the ball rolling and drive an endless stream of new engagement for your brand’s account and online presence in general. This may drive sales, but if it doesn’t, then don’t worry; sometimes it will have an indirect effect that will last for years.

An indirect effect of a viral marketing campaign can still be found online years later. While many brands may see a huge spike in traffic and sales, many brands have found that even when a campaign goes viral, it still doesn’t seem to lead to a huge rise in sales. They often underestimate the amount of indirect effect that a campaign can have, such as a rise in links to their website, new social media followers or just a vast increase in brand name recognition, which will put them top of the list of names that come to people’s minds if they ever need that product or service.

From a study conducted on viral marketing campaigns, there was a discovery that positive emotions seemed to have more of a response than negative hateful ones; this is good since if we include a brand name, we really want to associate them with positive emotions.

In certain studies they also figured out that surprises were also a big talking point; it appears that any type of content that divides opinion on someone or something was enough to get people to like, share and engage. Certain emotions, such as someone breaking an obscure world record, curiosity over a study and also a high-profile person doing something out of character, were usually highly shared and debated.

AI can also be used to analyse the viral code; it can be used to give you some new seed ideas for your content and also may be able to give you some new words to use inside your copy which can attract brand new eyeballs and be able to tap into the emotional trigger points of the audience that you are aiming for. One great idea for this is to take a look on social media websites such as X, Facebook and Instagram to find out what kind of content generates the most shares and gets attention; this may take some time, but once you understand the algorithm, you can reuse it over and over. However, it’s vastly important to discover that initial data and work it into a small bullet point so that you can use it again and again.

Emotional content is among the top shared content, which is no real surprise; if you look at viral sites and even major news websites, you can see that a lot of stories revolve around some kind of major story about an everyday hero or someone who is suffering because of something happening in the world. Emotions are, after all, at the core of what drives humans to respond to something; we all want to see a good story with a happy ending, but sometimes the negative reactions can also draw many eyeballs. Picking what is the right move for your brand requires careful consideration, so think it over before uploading any content.

The theme of your post is also of critical importance; sometimes it can get you in real trouble, and this goes even more so if you outsource your content creation to someone else. Content can be planned out in advance and then set to schedule. Sadly, world events can really impact the message you put out that day, and you can find yourself on the end of a real firestorm which damages your brand and even causes a loss of revenue. Before posting, please check the current news items to ensure that you are avoiding anything that may conflict.

Timing is also a critical component of a good viral marketing campaign. Your content should be short but also posted at a time when people check the platform you are posting to. Posting at 4am in the morning is likely never going to reach the maximum number of people. Even though it might filter out the noise and make you gain more traction, it’s simply not a good timing strategy. The big brands also do this by timing their advertising spend. A lot of big brands, for example, really ramp up TV ads at Christmas time, as they know most people spend the most money on consumer items at this time of the year.

When planning your marketing budget, you should try to plan further in advance and use it to your advantage. As your competition spends forever trying to gain traction in a crowded marketplace, why not pick the second or third most popular time slot so that you can reach eyeballs much cheaper to view your content and possibly work your way up? After all, you can get feedback for your ideas from a smaller audience before you scale them to thousands of people.

An emotional response means that you will get great engagement with your post, and now you are seeing a huge driver of what people respond to online. Despite technology taking over the landscape, we can still see that human evolution has not changed over time, and we still have the same old emotional trigger buttons that elicit an emotional response from us. Advertising is a great way to display this and also gain engagements such as shares, comments and likes; however, your content needs to produce super powerful emotions rather than just interest. Your content must not sit on the fence and must get people talking. Creating content that will get people talking about their opinion is always a winning move.

High levels of emotions, especially surprise, curiosity and genuine excitement, are great needle movers; a prime example of this would be the announcement of Ronaldo coming back to Manchester United. When it was announced online, many people were surprised, and when they posted it, they received a bundle of curiosity clicks just to verify that it was in fact the truth and not just some clickbait title. Many fans were left completely in shock at this announcement since United had been on a bad run of form and Ronaldo was still seen as a valuable player who would command a hefty price tag. The publicity that United got just by signing him was likely worth far more than the transfer fee.

Studies have shown that content that produces curiosity or laughter can boost engagement higher than 20%, so it’s best to take your time to come up with a good idea and make sure it doesn’t backfire on you by being misinterpreted or is just too generic to be remembered.

Overall, the best way to produce viral content is to study already successful content that went viral. Most of these went viral by accident and just captured the perfect moment in time for ordinary people, so really you want to study any viral content from brand names and find out how they managed to weave in both a viral message and image but also weave in their brand’s logo and core values without making it too obvious. A good rule of thumb is to keep the main message clear, but remember that most people hate ads and being sold to; they do, however, love stories, so learning to craft a good story is something you should put some time and effort into if you want to be successful.

Putting together a cheat sheet of sorts is always a good idea. What you can do with this is to create a spreadsheet or word document that is a swipe file of successful campaigns. This is a great way to generate new ideas if you get stuck, but you must never copy and paste an idea; instead, you should take the core elements of it that you like and take out the parts you don’t like, then come at it from a new angle.

The real skill set is making it fit into your company’s culture and creating a whole new tagline, wording and humour, so you must always get your creative cap on and come up with a brand-new way while collecting and harvesting great ideas that you see on the web. Copying and pasting ideas is straight theft and can get you and your business in serious legal hot water, so instead, create something from scratch with the core elements to make it unique to your business.

There are many lessons and core pillars when it comes to finding a solid SEO strategy that really works. These days it is becoming harder to carve out some traffic using SEO because most of the big-name brands are ranking and producing so much content with AI or just getting so many high-quality backlinks that smaller sites simply can’t compete with them. However, if you understand the basics, you could find yourself in a very good spot to find a weak keyword and establish some revenue for your site.

The most important part of any site is ensuring that you get the right setup from the outset. If you have a very slow framework and bloated coding, then your site will be extremely slow and not rank well for search terms in Google. Having a poor website design and navigation is really something that Google wants to avoid promoting simply because a site that takes a long time to load usually makes users feel very frustrated, which promotes a poor user experience and makes them more likely to hit the back button on their browser or use another search engine.

Having a really solid knowledge of how a website is crawled by Google is perhaps the best overall strategy for SEO. Once you begin to really understand how search engine technology works, you can start to improve your process piece by piece and gain massive traction over other search engine optimisers because you have gone deeper into researching the fundamentals and started to understand how to start things off correctly. Getting a solid foundation with an established set of rules is a great way to ensure a good start with Google and other search engines.

Website crawlers are built so that they can gain access to your site and crawl the content. Search engines then look at certain signals within that text to determine where your site should rank from the outset, so what you need to do is make your site extremely well designed and make it easy for search engine spiders to find what they need and navigate your website.

Being able to fully render your content is the name of the game, and it’s something you need to focus on when it comes to creating a good site structure. Having a good site structure is vastly important for search optimisation but also for users in general. If your site is confusing to navigate and contains too many subfolders or a terrible search function, then finding the content they need will take too much time, and they will likely bounce off your website.

In terms of helping users out, it’s always a good idea to think about how to spin off each of your content sections. For example, a major news site like BBC News has separate sections for each topic, such as business news, trending news and major breaking news topics such as current cycles about the economy and general elections. Getting your site topics and themes right from the outset and leaving room for your site to grow is a good idea to plan for ahead of time.

As your site becomes more established, you might have a meltdown when you realise that you need to create a whole new site structure because you never planned on having thousands of pages on your website, and you can also see that there are so many new areas you could expand into and even new ways of creating content. New content mediums could be added to your site, such as presentations, infographics, videos and audio. Again, a good framework and correct site design will prevent indexing and crawling issues when you start to venture into richer media.

Getting a good balance between the content is very difficult these days; some sites are ruined by having too many adverts or content that is sponsored or heavily biased against certain companies. A good website should provide impartial content that is both informative but also has some good structure and a readable format to it. Ensuring that search engines can pick up and easily read your content is all part of your investment in getting a good site structure established from the outset so that you can start off on the right foot.

Getting this kind of balance will take practice, and you should always be very careful to strike a good balance. Search engines like a good blend between good informative content and ads or commercial content which should be labelled. You should avoid filling your website full of product pages and instead focus on the user first, promoting good quality information and trying to really think about what kind of questions a marketplace might want answering. Then you can really build a content resource very quickly which will give you a unique reason for a visitor to come back to your website.

Ensuring that you have correct labelling for commercial content is also critical; the law is different for each country, but you must label any ads or disclose any compensation that you may receive if someone makes a purchase from any of your links.

User experience is simply not talked about enough when it comes to actual site design and technical SEO. Having a good user experience is essential for your website because it allows Google and other engines to continue to promote you. If a user had a bad experience and they have to visit another website, then that reflects badly on Google based on the fact that they have to serve up another option, which is a real waste of time for consumers.

Part of the user experience these days is getting a mobile-first design. This means that you should test out and code your website onto various mobile devices first because mobile is now overtaking desktop, laptop and tablet searches and has created a wider range of different searches online, such as more localised searches and way more long-tail variations, such as questions and answers. If you have a fast-loading, mobile-friendly website, then you can really gain some trust with Google, as it likes to see investments being made in the future of search and how users display your site.

With more searches being done by voice and sites being viewed on mobile phones, it’s vastly important to learn how to code a good mobile design, and it will become more important to really focus on building a strong mobile design which may display certain parts of your website so that you can make it easier for the user to do things quickly and easily when travelling around.

You should also put some emphasis on design for mobile and make sure to include a phone number so that they can contact you quickly if they need to be on the move. Part of the reason mobile-friendly sites are being pushed is because so many sites failed to adapt and think about how site interactions would vary across things like different screen sizes, mobile operating systems and different resolutions. Making a clutter-free design that loads quickly and has standout calls to action is the way to win with technical SEO.

While you should go for a mobile-friendly approach first, you should always have a site that functions the same for all users; you don’t want a completely different experience. But what you should do is focus more on how you can make life easier for mobile users; by thinking about the most difficult device to design for, it will often be easy to then use the site on desktop, tablet and laptops.

URL structures are another important step when it comes to technical SEO; making sure that your URLs are kept clean and actually contain your keywords and other descriptive words is one of the best practices when it comes to SEO. Don’t just stuff your keywords into the URL; instead, create a description containing your keywords. You should also have a very structured approach which may include named folders or subfolders which are accurately named so that search engines can understand your content structure.

The use of canonicals is one of search engines’ latest developments when it comes to technical SEO. Canonicals can be used to avoid having a duplicate content penalty by having multiple versions of the same page indexed by search engines. You can think of this as a way to avoid having 3 pages that all have the same content but a different address. With a canonical, you just serve up one page for each rendition, which helps both users and search engines to find the correct URL.

Site redirects, or redirects in general, are another way that you can help signpost and shuttle traffic in the right direction. An example of this would be a business that has had a name rebrand and wants all traffic that types in the old address or finds the old website in a search to be sent directly across to the new brand name business.

Companies can spend so much time building up a brand name, and they can invest heavily into a good domain name or building up a brand via social media. After a while, they might change ownership or want to purchase a shorter domain name to make the name more consumer-friendly or easier to spell. This could spell disaster if the company doesn’t use a redirect, as the traffic is still going to the old site with the old name, or even worse, the site has been taken down. A good redirect structure prevents lost traffic.

The last 2 components to consider are pagination and site security. When dealing with large-scale content or e-commerce websites, you really need to break up your content or product search results into faster-loading blocks. An example of this would be placing hundreds of thousands of products onto one scrolling page; it would slow loading time down to a crawl and likely crash so many browsers because the data is displayed all at once. A good pagination structure can help prevent this, as it breaks the content down into nice digestible chunks.

Website security is really the last piece of the puzzle when it comes to solid site structure. Having a safe and secure website is absolutely essential these days, so you need to ensure you have a safe SSL security certificate installed on your domain name, which tells Google that all information that is being passed from your browser to the site you’re visiting is secure and protected from hackers and thieves. SSL used to be used on payment pages to enable credit card transactions, but since then users have addressed greater privacy concerns for their data, so Google has ensured that SSL is now the standard.

A valid SSL certificate can be displayed by clicking in the top left of the screen, located next to the website address. If you run across a site that has no SSL certificate, you will usually get a warning from many modern browsers that any data you submit is not secure. Having a valid SSL certificate is essential even if you don’t sell anything online. If you want to rank in Google and other engines, you need to show them that your site values a visitor’s privacy and also shows to the visitor that you can be trusted and provide a safe website which is not prone to data leaks, hacker attacks or malware installation.