What’s the first step in the search engine optimisation process for your website?

Keyword research is the foundational first step in SEO because it identifies the terms and phrases your target audience uses to find products or services like yours. Understanding these keywords allows you to strategically optimize your website content to match user intent, increasing visibility in search results. Without keyword research, subsequent SEO efforts like writing fresh content or off-site optimization would lack direction and might target irrelevant terms, leading to ineffective results. Off-site optimization and writing fresh content are crucial but come after you know what topics and keywords to focus on.