Honestly, if you're starting from zero today, I'd argue SEO is a distraction if you're chasing ROAS. The playbook you laid out is fine if you've got six months to burn and zero revenue pressure. But most people starting out don't.
What actually worked for me when I was grinding from scratch? Ignoring the "build for search engines" mantra entirely for the first 90 days. Instead, I planted flags on third-party platforms where the intent was already high: Reddit, niche Slack groups, and YouTube comments. You don't need backlinks if you can get your name next to the answer before Google even indexes your site.
Those long-tail problem posts you mention? I'd take that further - I'd reply directly to specific threads with a screenshot or a template link, no blog involved. That's instant trust and referral traffic. Comparison pages are dead once people ask "best for [specific use case]" - they want a human verdict, not a table.
And AEO/GEO? Sure, if you're building a brand. But for cold traffic with zero authority, optimizing for ChatGPT means literally nothing unless you're already cited by a dozen other sites. That's a chicken-and-egg problem.
So my honest take: skip the "SEO strategy." Find where your audience is already asking questions and answer them as a person, not a site. That's how you get the first 1,000 users. Everything else scales later.
