This post was sponsored by Wix. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the sponsor.
For the past 18 months, the conversation around SEO has been dominated by artificial intelligence.
New ways of working for search visitors and new user journeys are coming to the forefront.
In 2024, we'll see a clear mix of old and new SEO best practices that you can implement today.
To help you stay on top of current SEO best practices, we've created the following series.
Why use an SEO checklist?
Doing SEO is often like conducting a symphony.
Each website undergoes many SEO activities, both large and small, and each SEO task, whether on-page or technical, contributes to the website's greater success.
Just as a conductor has a sheet of music, good consultants and agencies use SEO checklists, templates, cheat sheets, and other project management documents to ensure everything is on track. confirm.
An SEO checklist can range from something as simple as a few items scribbled on the back of an envelope to a dynamically generated interface within a CMS that provides AI capabilities and integration with your favorite tools. It has evolved to something as complex as
This versatility means it can be reworked to suit most requirements.
For added versatility, here are three high-level SEO checklists that can help you improve your brand's website.
1. SEO checklist for shared documents
If you've been in the industry for a while, you're probably familiar with using spreadsheets to track your SEO progress.
Currently, we live in the fast lane where shared SEO can be leveraged. It's easy to migrate, so you can make it as complex or simple as you want.
2. Dynamic, real-time SEO checklist
Go to the next generation of SEO checklists, the Dynamic SEO Checklist.
Dynamic SEO checklists respond to content updates in real time.
This means that every time a change is made to your website, you'll be presented with a series of next steps to take to help your content rank better.
Example real-time SEO checklist
Site-level SEO assistant is one new example of a real-time checklist.
This type of checklist is built directly into the CMS and includes entry points and integrations that allow users to complete the tasks in the list.
From setting up indexing to connecting to Google Search Console, you can complete important tasks from the list itself.
This kind of checklist works in conjunction with your website, with intelligent recommendations and the ability to skip tasks if needed.
Built-in features like these can help you save time and get the most out of your CMS.
3. AI-powered SEO checklist
With the help of AI, you can get dynamically generated checklists to help you perform your SEO workloads.
Additionally, this type of list is also useful for running within the list itself, just by using AI input.
For example, Wix SEO Assistant's checklist uses keyword prompts to create an AI meta description and title tag for your page.
Once these are generated, you can add them to the list and check them off directly in the CMS.
When we look at our user data, we see that adding AI to our checklists significantly improves usability.
How to properly use an SEO checklist for success
If you're not already using SEO checklists to manage your workload, we recommend trying one of the styles of checklists above.
Improve agency profitability
If you're an agency owner or account manager, checklists are especially effective because they can be reused and tailored for each client.
This saves research and development (R&D) time and makes it part of the corpus of resources available to clients and staff.
A checklist of SEO tasks can also help you onboard new clients and projects more efficiently, and help you expand your services and improve client satisfaction.
When managing clients, tools like the Wix Studio Client Kit allow account managers to upload client checklists, templates, and even video tutorials directly to the CMS dashboard.
This means that client success materials are always accessible to everyone working on the site.
If you manage an SEO team, creating a framework for SEO account management can help you acquire and retain clients over time.
Joshua George, founder of Clickslice Agency, explains that he developed his SEO project proposal template “after testing 20 different proposals,” but “ultimately found the one that converted the most.” Masu. He was able to get better results from his recommendations to his clients.
Similarly, Nick LeRoy, a freelance SEO, created a customer retention checklist to manage the touch points and habits that build customer trust.
For SEO agencies and freelancers, increased efficiency means more opportunities to deliver high-value results and increase profitability. Checklists can be an important part of that process.
Make knowledge more accessible to the entire team
Templates and checklists are also a very accessible way to easily pass on to junior colleagues or clients.
Checklists are not only designed to help your team achieve their goals, but they also serve as a knowledge base to help your team grow. This approach will help you make your drives visible in the SERPs.
Adriana Stein, founder of AS Marketing Agency, explains why she uses blogging templates: Live collaborative documentation allows your team to adapt lists to changing requirements, ensuring your team's knowledge base continues to grow, even if your account manager's role changes. can.
Improved quality assurance
People tend to think that checklists are only used by entry-level SEO specialists, but that's not actually the case.
For experienced SEOs, checklists often serve as a way to maintain implementation quality when collaborating with multiple teams and stakeholders. Experienced SEO professionals create checklists to ensure consistency when handing off day-to-day tasks to other members of the team.
Ashwin Balakrishnan, head of marketing at Optmyzr, explains that for tasks like backlink tracking, they create templated documents to reduce errors and ensure a consistent level of implementation.
Balakrishnan said: “Checklists and templates make it much smoother for everyone to transfer their knowledge and experience to junior SEOs (especially their teammates). This gives new SEOs a confident frame to work with. It allows experienced practitioners to review work more quickly and avoids giving arbitrary feedback.”
This allows senior SEOs time to work on more complex SEO and billable tasks.
So instead of dying, the humble SEO checklist has evolved.
What’s the next step on your SEO checklist?
Given the wealth of datasets, data feeds, automation, and AI tools available to marketers, the active integration of AI into SEO should continue. But beyond being able to generate input, data-driven, AI-generated guidance from checklists could become more commonplace.
Those using checklists in Google Sheets or MS Excel format can benefit from generative native apps and enhancements in the AI workspace race. While the availability of scripts, feeds, and add-ons is nothing new, and AI offers new extensibility for task completion and offers new growth opportunities, the value of an SEO checklist will continue to grow in 2024. It is still alive and well.
Download checklists, templates, and toolkits to develop a smoother SEO process and increase productivity for any project.
image credits
Featured Image: Image by Wix. Used with permission.