Solo devs / small teams, how do you do SEO for any projects you launch?

SEO takes sometime to give you results, do you care about it in the beginning or its not in your TODO list generally.

I have been avoiding it as a extremely long term benefit thingy but have changed my position a little recently.

Just curious what other solo / small team folks think / do about it, is there a playbook for it which you follow and have you ever seen it give substantial results for smaller projects.