You don’t need an internal drive to do this!
Get a USB thumb drive 32 GB at least. Plug it in and restart your system holding the Command (⌘) and R keys. Your system should connect to the internet accessing the internet recovery files from Apples servers.
Once you get to the menu you want to first format the thumb drive to GUID Journaled file system do the drive can be setup as a boot drive. Then install the OS, when it finished you should be back to the macOS release your system had before,
Make sure your system is able to boot up under the thumb drive restarting your system.
Now open the Apps store and upgrade to the latest version you want. Before you install the update exit out and then make a copy of the installer file which is in your app folder. That way you have it to install the OS onto your new internal SSD drive. That will upgrade your systems firmware so it has the needed update.
Install the internal SSD you should then just follow the same process onto your new SSD.
Reference:
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crwdns2934113:0crwdne2934113:0
crwdns2915270:0crwdne2915270:0
crwdns2889612:0crwdne2889612:0
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