In short, the SEO goals stay the same, but the process is 100% changed. SEO isn’t about hard manual labor, it’s about using AI, automation, and smart workflows. Let’s dive in!
My 2014 Strategy
For me, it all started with curiosity.
I was working at a gym, and I needed to sell gym membership to whoever I could target. I looked at the term, and I realized: I absolutely had no gear or preparation to go to the gym.
So, I grabbed a pen and started answering the questions popped in my head “What do I need if I really go to the gym?
- gym bras
- gym shoes
- water bottles
- sport hair bands
- sport clothes
- gym socks
It’s been 12 years for me, so pardon me as I might forget things here…
gym bras need:
- size: S,M,L. As I would need to look for size L
- color: brown, black, red, pink, beige. I would love a beige bra…
gym shoes:
- purpose: run; walk; climb. I would need a run shoe
- brand: nike, adidas… I would buy adidas as its most well known and looked expensive (that’s all I thought)
… afterwards, the mindmap went on… I got around 100 keywords, surrounding the gym topic.
It took around 1 hour for me to complete this mindmap. Then I got bored and put that sheet away…
2 days later, a Google Adword specialist came to me to sell his service to the gym I was working for. The moment he looked at my sheet, he said that if I was ever going to leave my job, contact him, he could train me to be a better marketer.
I did contact him, around 4 months later… That was the time I started matching my mindmap with other metrics, like Search volume, Competitive score, also to actually produce advertisements… so on … ultimately to launch Google Adwords campaign successfully
Little did I know, it was just the beginning. Around 2 years after performance marketing, I started moving forwards to organic growth.
Highlight: Things started because of my curiosity, and curiosity grew to a career.
Defining Keywords
Keywords are what people type to search in a search engine, can be Google, Coc Coc, Yandex, Yahoo, Bing…
In short, keywords are people’s interests, could be about their needs of products, services, how-to or hot trending topics.
The keyword plan
The keyword plan is therefore important. For a brand, the keyword is the strategic direction to approach their active-searching consumers.
Conversion rates on a website are higher because of this reason, you’re likely to sell more for people who are already interested in your products or services.
In order to approach a customer on the web, you of course need to have a keyword strategy.
So, how was the keyword plan constructed?
[Highlight] A process of constructing the keyword plan: Building an effective keyword strategy isn’t just about picking words with high search volume; it’s about aligning your brand strategy with the genuine user intent.
Content versus Intent
Content is the core of your keyword strategy. Once you identify what your audience is searching for, you must create high-quality, relevant content that answers their specific questions.
It means that you need to match the keyword intent with the right content format, whether it’s for…
- Informative blog posts for top-of-funnel discovery
- Detailed product pages for buying user
Great content gives search engines a reason to rank your domain and gives users a reason to click and read.
Internet identity
Your brand should be existing inside a site, not a single URL. Imagine this:
- A website is like a house with a roof
- A single page is a temporary construction you’ve developed quickly to roof all your assets (aka your brand).
Internet identity – or online brand identity, is how your brand is represented across various online touchpoints, social media profiles, local listings, authority directories, and branded search terms.
Structuring your keyword plan around your identity ensures you own your brand name in search results, your brand therefore has a beautiful appearance and insight into that area of interest, to maintain a cohesive message everywhere a potential customer might encounter you.
Similarly to your real house, you will need to pay maintenance fee to your virtual home, for example:
- Recurring domain fee
- Hosting fees
- Development fee (If you’re a developer or a growth hacker like me, then this will be free)
- Other supplier fees (good to have), for example: premium plugin fee, keyword research fees and so on…
Bricks (Aka internal links)
What connects a site together is internal linkings. If individual pages are the raw materials and keywords are the architectural plan, internal links are the physical bricks mortared together to build a functional digital structure. Without them, your content exists as isolated, disconnected islands, namely orphan pages.
Word of mouth (Aka backlinks)
Keywords tell search engines what your site is about, but the backlinks tell them whether you can be trusted.
Backlinks are the influence you have on your neighborhood (aka other websites). A robust keyword plan targets high-authority topics in your niche, making it easier to earn quality backlinks.
12 years later – It’s now 2026
Here I am again, writing down what I have been up to for the last 12 years of building a keyword plan.
The key areas haven’t changed, but the process is 100% different.
We’ve been flooded with data for the last decade, doing SEO is no-longer by guessing, but to find the right tool to get most data out of the internet, to achieve a higher percentage of wins.
The competitors are much stronger now (as we’re of course more mature than 12 years ago!).
So what have I been doing differently compared to 12 years ago?
Competitor watch
Perhaps this is becoming the most important step of the 2026-strategy. Just like your business, your competitors grow as well. All the uncivilized marketing practices has been done for the last 12 years, so instead of asking What is it, now we’re looking at the questions: How to do it and perform better than our competitors.
A 2026-marketing questionnaire for SEO-ers when creating a keyword plan:
AI and search engine visibility
- When people ask about AI tools (like Gemini, Perplexity, or SearchGPT), does our brand stand out, or do our competitors get all the mentions?
- Does our content strategy actually answer the specific, detailed questions our customers are asking right now, or are we still writing generic, fluff-filled articles?
Proofs (E-E-A-T)
- Is our content unique and delivering real human stories, local details, or expert opinions that an AI could never copy?
- Do we sound like a real, relatable person/brand, or do we sound like every other corporate competitor using the exact same AI tools?
Workflows
- Speed and smart tools: Are we using code and smart automation to handle boring, repetitive tasks (like site checks, formatting, and data updates) so we can focus on strategy?
- Are our website updates and deployments running smoothly, or there are technical bugs and outdated tools we are not able to manage?
Business Results
- Is our search traffic actually bringing in real leads and sales, or are we just tracking “clicks” which don’t convert?
- What is one thing our top competitor is doing better than us right now, and how can we execute it better or faster?
Modern Internal Workflows
Before, I used to have 2 writers, 1 designer and 1 technical senior SEO executive in my team. Now, only me! Sounds horrifying right?
But that’s the ugly truth about the labour market right now. After OpenAI launched ChatGPT, things changed. No more waterfall organizational model, no more big teams; everyone becomes a ‘full-stacker’ worker in their own field.
So, what has changed in our keyword planning process?
Plans need much faster output
The investors now need answers quickly, not by annual, but to monitor weekly and monthly. Therefore, every decision is data-driven, you will need skills to read, analyse and collect data. People look at facts now, no more hallucination
Births of AI tools
These are for me (personally), I hope you find the below tools helpful:
- Keyword research: Mangools or any tool is fine (as long as they have API)
- Workflow, Write and publish process: Claude Code
- UX/UI and web design: Stitch Google (for testing) and Claude Design (actual design process)
- Monitors: Google Search Console and Google Analytics
- Random questions and data-summary: Gemini and Claude app
Ranking Factors: 2014 versus 2026
Back in 2014, on-page SEO was mostly about repeating the exact same keywords and filling out basic title tags, while off-page SEO was just a numbers game of getting as many cheap links as possible (often using network sites).
By 2026, the game has completely changed to focus on user intent, brand authority, and real trust. Today, on-page SEO means organizing your content deeply so AI search engines can easily read it and cite your brand in their answer summaries.
Meanwhile, off-page SEO has shifted from buying links to building a real online reputation, earning genuine mentions, proving expert knowledge, and getting trusted sites to talk about your brand.
In summary
At the end of the day, SEO hasn’t lost its purpose, it has simply evolved. The core goal remains unchanged: helping brands connect with real human intent.
Honestly, you will have to work much harder to keep your job and to adapt with the modern machinery. We have shifted away from brute-force keyword stuffing and manual grinding toward intelligent, data-driven workflows powered by AI and automation.
