The click-through rate on position one is not what it was three years ago. Answers now sit above the results, and a page that only repeats what everyone else says gets summarised rather than visited. That doesn't make SEO dead: it makes it narrower. Here's the workflow I run for the pages I care about.
Start with the queries a summary can't finish
If a question can be closed in two sentences, it will be. Aim instead at queries where the reader needs a decision, a comparison, a template or a number that applies to their own situation. Those still send traffic because the summary can only point at the answer.
Write the page a practitioner would bookmark
- Lead with the conclusion, then justify it.
- Show real inputs: screenshots, spreadsheets, the actual budget split.
- Name the trade-offs. Pages that admit what doesn't work get linked to.
- Keep one idea per H2 so the structure matches how people skim.
The best ranking signal I have ever seen is a page someone sends to a colleague.
Fix the boring technical layer once
Crawlable HTML, one clear title per page, descriptive internal links, fast images, and a sitemap that reflects reality. None of this wins on its own, but every one of them can quietly cap a good page.
A short checklist before publishing
- Does the title match the query, not my internal naming?
- Is the first paragraph useful on its own?
- Have I linked to two or three related posts of mine?
- Is there one thing here nobody else has published?
Measure the right thing
Impressions tell you whether you are in the game; clicks tell you whether the title works; assisted conversions tell you whether any of it matters. I look at all three monthly and ignore rank trackers almost entirely.
More on the reporting side in the five metrics I report every month.