This article, sponsored by Wix, reflects the sponsor’s own views.
In the past 18 months, discussions around SEO have been heavily focused on artificial intelligence. New methods of working and fresh user journeys for search visitors have emerged prominently. As we approach 2024, a combination of traditional and innovative SEO best practices is evident, and it’s something you can begin applying right now.
To help you stay updated with the latest SEO best practices, we’ve developed a series of checklists for your reference.
Why Use SEO Checklists?
Conducting SEO is akin to orchestrating a symphony. There are numerous SEO activities, both large and small, occurring across each website. Every SEO task, whether it is on-page or technical, contributes to the ultimate success of your site. Much like a conductor relies on their sheet music, the most effective consultants and agencies use SEO checklists, templates, cheat sheets, and other project management documents to ensure everything stays on track.
The format of the SEO checklist has evolved from simple notes scribbled on envelopes to complex, dynamically generated interfaces within your CMS, complete with AI functionality and integration with your preferred tools. This adaptability means they can be modified to meet most requirements.
Here are three high-level types of SEO checklists that can help elevate your brand’s website:
1. SEO Checklists On Shared Documents
Experienced industry professionals are likely familiar with tracking SEO progress via spreadsheets. Today, we have the ability to harness shared SEO, which can be as intricate or straightforward as needed and easily transferable.
2. Dynamic, Real-Time SEO Checklists
Enter the Dynamic SEO Checklist: a next-generation SEO solution. A dynamic SEO checklist updates in real-time with content changes, offering a series of actionable steps to boost your content’s ranking whenever your website undergoes modifications.
Real-time SEO checklists like the Site-level SEO Assistant exemplify this. Integrated directly into your CMS, they include entry points and integrations that enable users to complete tasks within the list. From setting indexability to connecting to Google Search Console, vital tasks can be executed directly from the checklist itself. This built-in functionality allows for time-saving and optimizing CMS use.
3. AI-Powered SEO Checklists
With AI assistance, dynamically generated checklists help manage your SEO workload effectively. This type of list facilitates task execution directly within the checklist through AI inputs. For instance, the Wix SEO Assistant checklist uses keyword prompts to generate AI meta descriptions and title tags for a page, which can then be added and marked off within the CMS.
Incorporating AI into a checklist can significantly enhance usability.
How To Properly Use An SEO Checklist For Success
If you’re not already using an SEO checklist to manage your tasks, we recommend trying any of the above styles of checklists.
Increase Your Agency’s Profitability
For agency owners or account managers, checklists are particularly efficient as they can be reused and customized for each client, saving time on R&D while becoming part of the resources available to clients and staff. SEO checklists aid in efficient onboarding of new clients and projects, expand service offerings, and improve client satisfaction. Tools like the Wix Studio Client Kit allow account managers to upload client checklists, templates, and even video tutorials directly into the CMS dashboard, ensuring materials for client success are always accessible.
Creating frameworks for SEO account management can help in gaining and retaining long-term clients. Agency founder Joshua George developed an effective SEO project proposal template after numerous trials and found success in client pitches. Similarly, freelance SEO Nick LeRoy designed a client retention checklist to foster habits that build client trust.
For freelancers and agencies, better efficiency translates to more opportunities for delivering high-value outcomes and improving profitability — a checklist becomes a crucial part of that process.
Make Knowledge More Accessible Across Your Team
Templates and checklists facilitate easy handovers to junior team members or even clients. Designed to aid team goal achievement, these checklists can also function as a knowledge base to promote team growth, driving visibility on the SERP. Adriana Stein, founder of AS Marketing agency, uses a blog writing template to structure content effectively, providing helpful information and following SEO best practices to optimize ranking potential and conversions.
Collaborative documents allow teams to adjust lists according to changing needs and ensure knowledge continuity within the team, even amidst role changes.
Improve Quality Assurance
It’s often assumed that beginners in SEO primarily use checklists, but this isn’t necessarily true. Seasoned SEO professionals also employ checklists to maintain implementation quality across multiple teams and stakeholders. Experienced SEOs use checklists to ensure consistent delivery when delegating tasks within their teams.
Ashwin Balakrishnan, Head of Marketing at Optmyzr, uses templated documents for tasks like backlink tracking to minimize errors and maintain consistent implementation levels. Checklists smooth the knowledge transfer process for junior SEOs, providing frameworks and confidence, while allowing experts to review work more efficiently.
This approach frees senior SEOs to engage in complex, billable tasks, preventing the checklist from becoming obsolete.
What’s Next For SEO Checklists?
With access to data sets, feeds, automation, and AI tools, the integration of AI into SEO is likely to expand. Beyond input generation, data-driven, AI-crafted guidance from checklists is expected to become more prevalent. Users of Google Sheets and MS Excel formats will benefit from advancements in generative native apps and AI-enhanced features, enabling new scalability in task completion and growth opportunities.
Therefore, the value of the SEO checklist remains strong in 2024. By downloading checklists, templates, and toolkits, you can streamline SEO processes and boost productivity for any project.
Image Credits
Featured Image by Wix. Used with permission.
