I try to do things the easier way because if you're going to follow Google's steps for SEO, it's going to take forever and it's too easy to make mistakes.
What I do is reverse-engineer sites that are already ranked for my target niche.
I enter the most obvious keywords for my target niche into Google.
Next, I collect the domains of the sites that rank within the top 5 for my keywords.
I would then use an SEO software tool like Ahrefsor SEMrush to check both the traffic profile and organic results of my competitor's domain names.
I would zero in on lower-difficulty keywords. Of course, I will cross-reference this with likely search volume.
Ideally, using this process, you'll be able to find at least a handful of easier-to-rank keywords that pull in a decent amount of traffic.
This is where you begin. This is your "starter base" for your new website.
The next step is to look for related questions to those keyword topics.
Don't get excited. These are long-tail questions and they don't get much traffic.
Your strategy should be to quickly rank for these easy topics and then to gather domain authority.
And pretty soon, the content you produce for your main keyword targets will also start to rise.
You have to be patient though.
This is a purely white hat technique that doesn't rely on backlinks. At the bare minimum, be prepared to wait 6–9 months depending on how competitive your overall target niche is. You should be ready to wait for over a year.
Still, if you produce content at a steady rate, this will allow you to build a solid asset.