r/SEOTips101

Starting SEO on a brand-new website can be challenging, especially when there’s no existing traffic, authority, or backlink profile.

I’m curious how others approach those first few months.

Do you start with keyword research and content, focus on technical SEO first, or build backlinks and authority early on?

For me, the biggest questions are:

• How do you choose the first topics to target?
• How long do you wait before building backlinks?
• What SEO task gives you the best early results?
• What mistakes should a new website avoid?

What’s your go-to SEO strategy when starting from zero?

SEO has changed a lot in 2026, especially with AI search becoming a bigger part of how people find information.

I'm curious to hear about the strategies that are actually producing results—not just the ones everyone is talking about.

Maybe you:

• Recovered traffic after a major drop
• Grew organic traffic significantly
• Ranked for competitive keywords
• Built a successful content strategy
• Earned some high-quality backlinks
• Started getting visibility in AI-generated answers
• Improved an existing site's performance

What's your biggest SEO win this year, and what do you think made the biggest difference?

It would be great to hear some real-world examples and lessons others can learn from.

I’ve been thinking about an SEO problem that seems harder to diagnose now:

A page can keep roughly the same rankings and impressions, while clicks slowly decline.

A few years ago, I would immediately look at the title tag, meta description, competitors, or search intent.

Now there seem to be more possibilities:

• AI answers taking attention before the organic results
• Featured snippets answering the query directly
• More video, Reddit, shopping, or other SERP features
• Competitors using much stronger titles
• Search intent gradually changing
• The keyword still having impressions but becoming more “zero-click”
• Users getting the information they need without visiting a website

Because of this, I’m starting to think rankings alone are becoming a weaker way to judge SEO performance.

If you see stable rankings + declining clicks, what do you check first?

Do you try to improve CTR, change the content angle, target different queries, or accept that some SERPs simply have less click potential now?

Would be interested to hear how other SEOs are diagnosing this.

I'm curious how people approach link building for large websites with hundreds or thousands of pages. Enterprise SEO seems to require a different approach because building links at scale while keeping them relevant and high-quality can be challenging.

Do you focus on digital PR, industry partnerships, guest contributions, linkable assets, resource pages, or something else? How do you decide which pages should receive backlinks and measure whether the links are actually improving organic performance?

I'd love to hear what strategies have worked for you, what hasn't, and any lessons you've learned from managing link building at an enterprise level.

SEO has traditionally been about ranking pages on search engines. But with AI Overviews, voice search, featured snippets, and AI-powered search becoming more common, it feels like the goal is shifting from ranking for keywords to becoming the answer.

That’s where Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) comes in.

Instead of only targeting keywords, AEO focuses on creating content that directly answers questions, provides clear information, and is easy for search engines and AI systems to understand.

But is AEO really the next stage of SEO, or is it simply another SEO tactic with a new name?

I'm curious to hear what others think:

• Are you actively optimizing content for AEO?
• Have you noticed traffic or visibility changes from AI-powered search?
• What AEO strategies are actually working for you?
• Do you think traditional SEO will remain just as important?

Is AEO the future of search optimization, or are we overcomplicating SEO with another acronym?

I'm curious how much impact image optimization can have on organic search performance. There are several things to consider, such as file size, image format, descriptive filenames, alt text, responsive images, and image dimensions.

For those who have optimized images on their websites, which techniques have made the biggest difference? Have you noticed improvements in Google Images, overall rankings, page speed, or organic traffic?

I'd also be interested to know whether anyone has tested newer formats like WebP or AVIF, lazy loading, or adding structured data for images. What has worked best for you?