What Are the 4 Stages of SEO?

In practice, SEO moves through four stages. First is the audit, where I use tools like Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, and Google Search Console to find what is holding the site back technically, on-page, and in its backlink profile. Second is strategy, where those findings become a prioritised plan mapping keywords to the pages that should rank for them. Third is implementation, where the technical fixes go first, then on-page optimisation, then content and links, in that order for a reason. Fourth is growth and reporting, where new content and backlinks are added monthly and progress is measured against real Search Console data. The stages are sequential because building on a broken foundation wastes money.