00 — Master SEO + Content Strategy for Rebuilding Seminars

Status: working plan, drafted 2026-05-07. Lives at the strategy/ root and is the front door for the 9 sub-plans listed in INDEX.md.

Plain-English summary

The client's site (rebuildingseminars.com) is a sleeper. It already holds #1 for "divorce recovery workshop" — the brand-near-generic — but it ranks for only 5 organic keywords total and pulls about 20 organic visits per month. Domain Rating is 20.

That sounds bad. It isn't. It's the cleanest expansion problem in the divorce-recovery niche.

The reason: a comparable peer — Colorado Divorce Mediation, also DR 20 — pulls ~8,200 visits/month off 281 keywords. Same authority, 410× the traffic. The whole gap is content breadth. Build the right pillar pages and spokes, and the same authority moves the same multiplier.

This plan is how to do that without burning a year of content. Four phases. The first two ship inside ~12 weeks. The last two run continuously after.

What we already know (don't re-research)

Pulled from audit/ahrefs/:

• TARGET-KEYWORDS.md (top 30): composite-scored, niche-gated. Top 5 highest-leverage targets are all KD ≤ 5 with volume 200–2,300 — green-field by SEO standards.
• COMPARISON.md (9-site): confirms Colorado Divorce Mediation is the only real SEO competitor at this DR. DivorceCare (DR 72) is the breadth leader but loses on positioning angle.
• HIDDEN-COMPETITORS-NICHE.md: Reddit (DR 95) + Meetup (DR 92) + Facebook (DR 100) appear in the divorce-recovery SERP. Indie coaches at DR 20–46 also rank — beatable.
• expansion/EXPANSION-SUMMARY.md: breakup recovery (1,290 monthly volume across 51 keywords, mostly KD ≤ 5) and spousal loss (long-tail emotional queries, near-zero authoritative competition) are the two adjacent territories worth expanding into.
• expansion/SPOUSAL-LOSS-CONTENT-MAP.md: 10 widow/widower clusters scored. Three are 10/10 opportunities (identity collapse, friendships reshape, widower-specific).
• page-analysis/ (52 briefs): per-page success patterns from the 9-site set. Reusable as ranking blueprints.

Numbers in this plan trace back to those files. Anything that doesn't is flagged.

The four phases

Phase 1 — Foundation (weeks 1–4)

Why this phase exists: SEO without local + technical foundations is whistling in the wind. NAP inconsistency suppresses local pack. Missing schema makes us invisible to AI search. Get the basics right, then accelerate.

Phase 1 ships when: NAP is consistent, schema is live, GBP is fully set up, the rank tracker has 2 weeks of weekly data, and the audit fixes are pushed to production.

Phase 2 — Anchor expansion (weeks 5–12)

Why this phase exists: divorce-recovery is the territory the client already half-owns. Expanding here is the highest-confidence content investment because the brand-near-generic is already #1.

The three sub-deliverables:

2a — Divorce-recovery hub + spokes (see 04-divorce-recovery-content-map.md)

20 article briefs, each pointing at one of the top-30 target keywords. Hub page structure: pillar at /divorce-recovery/ linking out to 20 spokes. Each spoke links back to hub + 2–3 sibling spokes. The hub-and-spoke pattern is what Colorado Divorce Mediation is winning with at the same DR.

Owner: Charlie drafts everything as ghost-writer for the client. The client reviews voice + factual claims. Annette schedules the publish cadence.

2b — Front Range city pages (see 01-local-seo-checklist.md)

Per the existing seo-future-strategy.md: Boulder, Longmont, Louisville, Lafayette as Q1 targets — each 1,200+ words, locally-specific (where cohorts meet, drive times, local testimonials when available). Each page targets one geographic intent ("divorce recovery [town]"). All four pages link into the divorce-recovery hub.

Owner: Charlie drafts. The client provides any local detail that isn't public (e.g., where workshops physically meet). Annette confirms local schema + GBP service-area integration.

2c — GEO / AI-search structured pages (see 02-llm-seo-strategy.md)

About-the-facilitator structured page (Person schema). Bruce Fisher framework explainer (FAQPage + HowTo schema). Workshop curriculum page (Course + Event schema). Goal: get cited in ChatGPT / Claude / Perplexity / Google AI Overviews when someone asks "what is the Bruce Fisher rebuilding workshop" or "where can I find a non-religious divorce recovery program."

Owner: Charlie drafts the content. External dev or Charlie implements the structured data.

Phase 2 ships when: 20 divorce-recovery spokes live, 4 Front Range city pages live, 3 GEO pages live, all linked into the hub, ranking-tracker showing 60+ ranking keywords.

Phase 3 — Territory expansion (weeks 13–24)

Why this phase exists: the 19-block framework was always more general than divorce. The client knows this. So do the workshop alumni who report it helped them through breakups and widowhood. The ahrefs expansion data confirms the SEO opportunity.

3a — Breakup-recovery hub + 12 spokes (see 05-breakup-recovery-content-map.md)

Anchor: "The 19 blocks of breakup recovery — why your breakup feels like grief (because it is)." Targets the 1,290 monthly volume in the breakup territory the client currently captures zero of.

3b — Spousal-loss hub + 12–16 spokes (see 06-spousal-loss-content-map.md)

Phase-keyed by widowhood phase (shock 0–3mo, identity collapse 3–12mo, reentry 1–2y, rebuilding 2y+). Three flagship clusters: identity collapse (P0), friendships reshape (P0), widower-specific (P0). Anchor pillar: "Who am I now? A widow's guide to rebuilding identity using the 19 blocks."

3c — Bridging pillar (one piece, three audiences)

"The 19-block framework — works for divorce, breakup, and widowhood. Here's why." Ranks for rebuilding life, how to start over, self after [divorce/breakup/loss]. One piece of content captures three upstream audience streams and routes them all into the workshop funnel.

Phase 3 ships when: ~30 new pieces live across the two new hubs, the bridging pillar live, ranking-tracker showing 200+ ranking keywords, attributed workshop signups from non-divorce traffic streams visible in analytics.

Phase 4 — Authority building (week 25+, continuous)

Why this phase exists: content alone caps at a ceiling DR-20 sites can't break. Backlinks + AI-citation density move the ceiling.

This is the phase that imitates what Annette did at BoneVoyage to get to 700 referring domains. The playbook: editorial backlink magnets (research, data, frameworks the press picks up), mission-aligned outreach, authentic Reddit/Quora participation, podcast appearance pitches.

Detail in 07-link-building-outreach-plan.md.

Phase 4 ships when: 100+ new referring domains, DR 30+, cited as primary source on Wikipedia / academic-syllabus pages / clinical-resource lists. This phase doesn't have a hard end — it's continuous after the content layer is built.

Ownership map (top-level)

Hard rule (per the client's confidentiality requirement): no public output names the city the client lives in, his partner, or the rent arrangement. Output refers to "the client," "the facilitator," or "Rebuilding's site." This applies to every deliverable in this folder.

Cross-phase success metrics

These are the numbers we report on. Comparison benchmark: Colorado Divorce Mediation does ~8,200 visits/mo at DR 20. That's the proof the upper bound is real, not invented.

What's deliberately NOT in this plan

• Paid ads. This is an organic + content + GEO plan. Paid is a separate question.
• Social media organic posting. Not in scope here. Reddit/Quora participation is in scope (Phase 4), but it's not "post on Instagram three times a week."
• Email list building / nurture sequences. That's a CRO question downstream of getting the traffic first.
• The workshop product itself. We're not redesigning curriculum, pricing, or delivery format. Those are the client's decisions.

Read-next

1. 01-local-seo-checklist.md — the Phase 1 foundation work
2. 02-llm-seo-strategy.md — the GEO play (Phase 2)
3. 03-content-cluster-architecture.md — hub-and-spoke topology
4. 04-divorce-recovery-content-map.md — Phase 2a content briefs
5. 05-breakup-recovery-content-map.md — Phase 3a content briefs
6. 06-spousal-loss-content-map.md — Phase 3b content briefs
7. 07-link-building-outreach-plan.md — Phase 4 ongoing
8. 08-parallel-execution-plan.md — what gets dispatched when
9. INDEX.md — full navigation