Fix what blocks the site first
Before writing more pages, check whether the important ones can be crawled and indexed. Duplicate titles, accidental noindex tags, broken canonicals, and a sitemap full of junk URLs waste the effort you put into content. A short technical pass often removes problems that no amount of blogging will hide.
Page experience still matters. A layout that jumps while it loads, or a page that ships an enormous script for a simple article, makes the visit worse and gives search less reason to prefer it. Treat performance as part of SEO, not as a separate vanity project.
Write for a query you can answer
Keyword research is useful when it changes the page. Group queries by intent, then match them to a page you are willing to maintain. A page that tries to rank for every variation of a topic usually ranks for none of them, because it never becomes the clearest answer.
Say what is true. If you serve one city, write for that city. If you do not offer a service, do not build a landing page for it because the search volume looks attractive. Search traffic to a page you cannot fulfil is a cost, not a win.
Read the data you already have
Google Search Console shows queries, pages, and indexing issues for a property you verify. It will not tell you that you will reach a position, and neither should your agency. Use it to see which pages are seen, which queries are close, and which URLs Google is refusing to index.
Give changes time to be recrawled. Reporting the day after a title change and calling it a failure, or a success, is theatre. Agree a review point in weeks, and compare the same report each time.
This starter guide was written for the Nerix insights library. It should be updated when the advice changes. It is not a client story and it does not report results.