On-page SEO Archives On-page SEO

Mar 14 2024

Google Spam Policies, Explained

Google released this month updates to its core algorithm and spam policies. It also issued widespread manual penalties to sites with excessive AI-generated and low-grade content.

Google is prioritizing spam — manually and algorithmically. If you’ve experienced a decline in rankings but no manual actions, audit your content for potential spam violations.

Here’s where to start.

Scaled Content

“Scaled content” refers to expanding articles rapidly via automation or AI. Google has advised against scaling for years. It has now provided example violations:

Using generative AI to create content.
Scraping content — e.g., from RSS feeds, search results — and publishing it without changes.
Combining content from many sources and republishing it without alteration.

To my knowledge, Google has not to date expressly disallowed AI content, but including it now as “scaled” implies a dislike.

Expired Domains

Domains become available when their owners forget or neglect to renew them. In many cases, expired domains retain link authority, prompting some search optimizers to buy them and then publish new (vaguely relevant) content or 301-redirecting the domain to a third-party site.

Google now includes such expired-domain tactics as spam, but its examples are extreme:

Affiliate content placed on previous government-owned content.
Medical products sold from expired domains of non-profit organizations.
Casino websites hosted on domains previously owned by schools.

Apparently Google is targeting aggressive cases, but it may eventually include common uses.

Parasite SEO

“Parasite SEO” involves placing low-quality content on a trusted domain. Google calls this “site reputation abuse.”

Google’s examples mainly include content unrelated to the domain, such as:

An educational site hosting a page for payday loans.
A news site hosting automated coupons.

The guidelines also emphasize a lack of editorial oversight and include scenarios not considered spam:

Press release sites.
News publications with syndicated content from other quality publications.
Sites with user-generated content, such as a forum or comment sections.
Native or third-party ads, sponsored content, or appropriately tagged affiliate links for monetization, not rankings.
Manually selected coupons.

Unaware?

Most businesses have never participated in these tactics, but some may have done so unknowingly through external consultants. Keep an eye on Search Console notifications and organic traffic.

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Mar 13 2024

10 Steps To Grow Your SEO Authority & Topical Expertise via @sejournal, @Brian_W_Gareth

Step 1: Demonstrate Each Element Of E-E-A-T

First things first: how do you assert yourself as an authority on your chosen topic?

If you are familiar with the concept of E-E-A-T, you won’t be surprised that it’s closely tied to topical authority. Working on one is the same as working on the other. And E-E-A-T makes it very easy to understand what exactly you need to do.

What does E-E-A-T mean, and how do you demonstrate it?

Experience: what you have personally dealt with as a person and a professional, and what you can share with your audience. Example: a detailed product review where you describe how you have used it.

Expertise: a high level of skill and knowledge in your field. Example: a Knowledge Panel with an expert’s name, photo, credentials and contact information.

Authoritativeness: earning the title of an expert by creating content and gaining rankings and backlinks over a long time. Example: being referred to as a credible source of information by another website.

Trustworthiness: having a good reputation in the eyes of your target audience. Example: positive user reviews.

Each of these elements signals to Google that your website is run by a real pro who knows what the users want. This is your end goal in very simple terms; now it’s time for details.

Step 2: Stick To A Single Niche

Can you dedicate your site to multiple niches?

Sure. But as the saying goes, the person who chases two rabbits catches neither.

If your chosen niches are not closely related, then Google will not view you as a specialist. But if they are closely related, then it’s very much possible.

For example, TripAdvisor is a very well-known authority on all things related to travel: destinations, HoReCa, popular activities, and more.

If you want to be acknowledged as an expert, the best bet is to pick a single niche – and commit to it fully. But if you are feeling ambitious, then pick several related topics and start pumping out content like the Internet will shut down tomorrow.

Step 3: Start Gaining Experience & Never Stop

How do you get good at something? By doing it countless times, of course!

The more experience and knowledge you have, the more you can put into your content and show to your audience – and to Google. And the more you have to show, the more credible you appear in everyone’s eyes.

And don’t be afraid to make mistakes. A bad experience is also a valuable experience.

Step 4: Create Original, In-Depth Content – Lots Of It

Obviously, no expert steals other people’s work. Real stars create their own content and make it as good as they can.

Be original, be amazing, be productive – that’s pretty clear.

What else should you do to get the most out of your content?

Update your outdated content. It’s easier and faster than writing a more up-to-date article from scratch. It’s also more correct from an SEO standpoint, as older pages have more authority than freshly made ones.
Include links to other sources. The more authoritative they are, the better. It makes your own content look more credible too, since you clearly know the best sources.
Fill your content with relevant keywords and phrases. Only your own experience can identify the best phrases to use, but WebCEO’s Keyword Suggestions tool is a great place to start looking.
Promote your content. Social media and email outreach are your best options.

Also, quantity matters as much as quality. If you want to become a real authority, one or two articles won’t be enough no matter how great they are – you will need to make many more to cover your niche in full.

Step 5: Create Different Types Of Content

You may be sticking to one niche, but every niche can be presented in multiple formats.

Therefore, you should rely on more than just blog posts. What else is there?

Podcasts.
Graphs and diagrams.
Case studies and research reports.
Images (photos, infographics).
Videos (including shorts, streams, webinars).

The more you can make, the better. However, it’s okay to focus on only a few types of content as long as you can make them excellent.

Step 6: Use An Efficient Internal Linking Structure

When one page links to another, it shares some of its own authority with it.

Interlink your site’s pages in an efficient way, and you will achieve two important goals:

Your visitors will easily find any content they want.
Your important pages will receive as much authority as possible.

Note that page authority is not the same as topical authority. But the two are still connected, and increasing one increases the other.

How Do I Create An Efficient Internal Link Structure?

As was mentioned before, you need to create lots of content to explore a niche in full.

Some of the pages you make will be closely related by covering different aspects of the same topic. Those pages can be grouped into a topic cluster.

What Is A Topic Cluster?

A topic cluster has (usually) one page with the main topic and several others with related topics. For example:

10 Steps To Grow Your SEO Authority & Topical Expertise

Screenshot from Conductor.com, April 2018

The hub page has the most authority in the cluster and shares it with the rest, making them more visible in search, too.

So how do you maximize your page authority – and topical authority with it? For that, you need to know exactly how much authority your pages hold. Find out with WebCEO’s Internal Links tool.

Screenshot from WebCEO, February 2024

Then build topic clusters around your most authoritative pages.

Step 7: Get Backlinks From Authoritative Sites

Remember about authoritativeness? That’s the A in E-E-A-T, and it’s one of the most time-consuming parts because it requires building links to your content – the toughest part of SEO.

But before anything else, you must find trusted sites whose backlinks will boost your authoritativeness. And the best way to do it is to see where your competitors are getting their backlinks.

Open WebCEO’s Competitor Backlink Spy.

Screenshot from WebCEO, February 2024

Add your competitors’ sites in the Settings and press Save. The tool will generate a table with all of your competitors’ backlinks, with anchor texts and domain authority.

Ideally, you will want to build your own backlinks from the most authoritative sites. And yes, your competitors are fair game, too! Here are a few effective link building methods:

Create content that’s likely to get backlinks. The best examples include case studies, research papers, and statistics – users love interesting data.
Find unlinked mentions of your brand and turn them into backlinks.
Find articles with outdated information on other sites. If they have links to outdated sources, offer to replace them with a link to your own, up-to-date source.
Find broken links on other sites and offer a replacement from your own site.
Collaborate with other specialists in your niche (e.g. via podcasts).

Step 8: Grow Your Online Reputation

Gaining clout requires transparency.

People and companies cannot become authorities by staying hidden in the shadows like the infamous hacker Anonymous. At the very least, you will need to attach a name and a face to your content – for example, in an author bio.

Screenshot from Inc.com

The more professional it looks, the better.

What else can you do?

Get positive reviews from your users. Often, they leave a review if you simply ask. Don’t be discouraged by bad reviews – having a few of them makes you look more natural than having none at all.
Create an About Us page. Describe your company and your experts, and feel more than free to brag about your successes.
Create pages on social media. Ideally, you want a page for your company and a page for each of your experts on every social network where your presence makes sense. Of course, if you work solo, then all you need is a single page just for you. Don’t forget to link to your social media pages from your site.
Engage with your followers on social media. Like their posts, follow them back when appropriate and, most importantly, reply to them as soon as possible. Setting up a chatbot can help you tremendously with the latter.
Engage with your competitors in social media. Be active on their pages, and you just might end up stealing from them a client or two (or more).

Step 9: Create A Wikipedia Page

Wikipedia is a very well-known and trusted resource. Having a page there is a huge boost to any person or brand’s image – especially if the article is filled with detailed information.

Of course, you can only create a Wikipedia page about yourself as a person if you are already famous. Otherwise, your best bet is a page about your company.

Either way, you are going to need an auto-confirmed Wikipedia account – one that is at least 4 days old and has made at least 10 edits. After that, you can start making your page. Feel free to use other, similar pages as a basis.

And remember to include citations and sources from sites other than your own.

Step 10: Provide Excellent User Experience

And of course, a true expert’s website is expected to run flawlessly. Professionals have standards – and so do users who consult experts.

What can you do to make your site a welcoming place?

Increase your loading speed. Find your slow-loading pages with WebCEO’s Speed Optimization tool and follow its recommendations for improving them.

Screenshot from WebCEO, February 2024

Ensure mobile-friendliness. Your site must be responsive and work well on all devices. In the same Speed Optimization tool, click the Mobile tab and see where your site is falling short.
Fix technical errors. Find all errors on your site with the Technical Audit tool and fix them promptly.

Screenshot from WebCEO, February 2024

Translate your content into multiple languages. If you are after a multilingual audience, this is a must.
Ensure user accessibility. Make sure all kinds of visitors can use your site, not just healthy ones. Use a tool like ARIA by EquallyAI to see what sort of additions your site needs.

Wrapping Up

If you set the goal to become an expert in your field, then gaining topical authority will be a natural part of the process. It will take years of hard, prolific work; it’s your choice whether to commit or not. But the reward for this choice is acknowledgment in your community and in search engines.

Take the first step on this long road. Arm yourself with SEO tools that will help your content reach the top rankings faster.

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Mar 8 2024

Helpful Content Recovery, per Studies

Google’s Helpful Content algorithm is now part of its core ranking system. Still, the impact of the Helpful Content component has been both severe and vague. The effect can be sitewide, with no clear recovery path.

Google states that its algorithms “are designed to present helpful, reliable information that’s primarily created to benefit people, not to gain search engine rankings.”

What does that mean? Do we not optimize for keywords?

SEO Studies

The answer may be to examine the data. A study by Cyrus Shepard, the founder of Syppy SEO, a consulting firm, examined 50 sites that lost or gained organic search traffic from Google updates in August through December of 2023.

The study found:

1. Sites with excessive ads risk being hit by a Helpful Content update. This aligns with Google’s page experience guidelines, which include a self-assessment for site owners. Google says answering “yes” to the following questions means the site is “on track in providing a good page experience”:

“Does the content lack an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?”
“Do pages lack intrusive interstitials?”

Screenshot of an illustration from Google of a mobile screen with a pop-up blocking the content.

Avoid interstitials that block content, such as this example from Google.

The guidelines also advise against using “intrusive interstitials [pop-ups] and dialogs … that obstruct users’ view of the content.”

The findings in Shepard’s study align with those of Glenn Gabe, the founder of G-Squared Interactive, an SEO firm, who revealed a strong correlation between sites heavily punished by Helpful Content updates and poor user experience, especially intrusive ads.

In short, to recover from a Helpful Content update, remove ads that obstruct a view of the content.

2. Writing in the first person may prevent a Helpful Content loss. Shephard’s study found a correlation between using first-person pronouns and not losing rankings from Helpful Content updates.

This also aligns with Google’s guidelines for human search-quality evaluators (PDF), which emphasize the importance of first-hand experience on the topic.

To me, first-person pronouns are not a direct ranking factor, although they may inform Google of first-hand experiences.

Thus to recover from a Helpful Content update, personalize your content with first-hand experiences, opinions, and observations.

For example, when reviewing platforms and apps, I describe how I used each tool and the features I liked and disliked.

3. Other elements correlate with Helpful Content impacts. These include:

Cookie consent forms (positive impact),
Contact details (positive impact),
Stock images (negative impact).

I believe these may be coincidences rather than causes. Higher-authority sites with quality content tend to have cookie consent forms and contact-us details. They are also less likely to use stock images. They are unaffected by Helpful Content updates owing to their content and topical authority.

I am unaware of a Helpful Content recovery example, especially after the dramatic September update. Google claims it takes months to recover — likely in the next update. Hence, while studies are helpful, recovery strategies largely rely on theories and guesses.

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Feb 26 2024

An SEO Expert’s Playbook To Optimizing Websites For E-E-A-T via @sejournal, @fiverr

This post was sponsored by Fiverr Pro. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

It’s been over a year since Google added “experience” to its search quality rater E-A-T guidelines, transforming it into E-E-A-T.

However, many websites still struggle to establish a digital presence that follows these rules.

While most assume that optimizing for E-E-A-T is as simple as adding an author bio on their website, that’s not true.

Let’s look at what E-E-A-T entails and what SEO experts say about meeting these requirements.

A Quick Recap Of E-E-A-T & Its Relevance In 2024

Every year, Google releases an algorithm update to improve its algorithm’s capabilities in surfacing good content.

The most recent algorithm update was in December 2022, where Google’s search quality rater guidelines were modified to reflect the following:

Experience (E): Indicates whether the author and website owner have the real-life experience to offer advice or commentary on a topic.
Expertise (E): Indicates if the author has the necessary education, credentials, or market presence to speak on the topic.
Authority (A): Assessment of the author’s and website’s authoritativeness – usually measured through industry-wide recognition, backlink quality, and signals of reputation (awards, citations, recommendations).
Trustworthiness (T): Indicates if you offer a trustworthy website experience to your users. It combines the E-E-A part of the equation with the end-user experience to determine quality.

Image from Fiverr Pro, January 2024

Trustworthiness is considered the horizontal bar that nests the other elements.

Taylor Scher, an SEO consultant, explains that people take the T element too seriously – creating a contradictory effect.

“It’s a tale as old as time in SEO, but you shouldn’t hurt your website’s UX in favor of SEO.

E-E-A-T is based around page experience and displaying trustworthiness anyway, so it’s a mistake to go in with the mindset of improving it and not thinking about how to do all this while providing a better experience to your readers/website visitors.”

Let’s say you’re offering advice on YMYL topics (Your Money or Your Life) like “How to treat cold at home.”

From an on-page SEO standpoint, you might have an author bio and a high domain rating.

However, from a technical SEO and user experience standpoint, the lack of SSH encryption on the website could create a subpar experience. Users might think it’s a duplicate of another medical website.

It’s a combination of these four elements that enable your success. This is why even non-YMYL sites have to up their game to stay relevant in the SERPs.

An SEO Expert’s Playbook To Optimizing Websites For E-E-A-T

Image created by Fiverr Pro, February 2024

7 Strategies For Optimizing Websites For E-E-A-T

Optimizing for E-E-A-T requires a complete audit of technical SEO and other tactics.

Here’s what you need to optimize:

1. Create An Author Bio & Editor Schema For Each Article

A well-written author bio does two things:

Shows personal experience.
Establishes the author’s expertise.

Think about it this way. Would you like to go to a finance website and see if it’s written by the company’s team or a PhD in Corporate Finance?

That said, your authors don’t need a PhD, but rather a modicum of success in the industry.

How To Create An Authoritative Author Bio

Showcase your author’s credibility by adding their:

Years of experience.
Areas of focus.
Education (if applicable).
Professional accomplishments.
Social media/website links.

Add schema markup for editors and reviewers, even in non-YMYL industries like SaaS and renewable energy.

It goes a long way in showing the editorial integrity of your brand.

It also sends trust signals to Google’s quality raters, even though author bylines are not a ranking factor.

Pro Tip: Hire experienced freelance SEO experts to build this in your CMS’s backend.

2. Don’t Forget To State The Obvious

“Wirecutter does an incredible job at stating the obvious: each of their product reviews typically begins with a short paragraph describing the lengths they went to to produce the review,” says Jamie Sutton, Marketing Lead at HeadshotPro.

In Wirecutter’s example, they explain how they tested each one and their differences.

They also cite their sources for each interview and bedding example, adding trust in the product.

Screenshot from Wirecutter, January 2024

Similarly, you can explain your review process, criteria for data selection, or expert invitation.

3. Source Expertise To Improve Your Reputation

Internal expertise is not always easy to come by. That doesn’t mean you can’t look beyond your own company.

This is especially true if you’re a newer brand still working on improving your E-E-A-T.

Collaborate with industry experts and ask them to contribute when possible.

Here’s how you can do that:

Send quote requests via HARO, Help a B2B Writer, Qwoted, etc.
Participate in LinkedIn or Facebook groups.
Invite thought leaders for an interview.
Ask subject matter experts to contribute a guest post.
Source insights from podcasts or webinars (with attribution).

Alternatively, you can pitch your brand and internal experts to get featured.

4. Write High-Quality Content With Attribution

Content lies at the center of it all.

The better the content quality, the better your reputation (with users and search raters).

Even Google has published clear-cut guidelines around this:

“People-first content means content created primarily for people, not to manipulate search engine rankings. We recommend that you focus on creating people-first content to be successful with Google Search rather than search engine-first content made primarily to gain search engine rankings. (Google)”

So, create helpful content that has depth – not breadth.

With artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT raising the bar for the bare minimum, you need to go above and beyond with your content.

Here are a few best practices to keep in mind:

Stick to core topics relevant to your business.
Collaborate with other experts or companies.
Develop topic clusters that indicate your authority.
Avoid surface-level insights that even SGE can provide.
Distribute content on other channels to provide external signals.
Conduct regular content audits to identify gaps & refreshing opportunities.

Google’s algorithm prefers fresh content — published recently.

Screenshot from search for [productivity management], January 2024

Additionally, cite your sources. Google’s algorithm monitors inbound and outbound links. So, cite and link to high-authority websites in your industry.

For instance, Medical News Today cites scientific journals like The Lancet in every piece.

Image from Fiverr Pro, January 2024

5. Build Backlinks From Relevant Websites

It’s 2024, and backlinks are still relevant.

A Backlinko study analyzed 11.8 million search results and found that top-ranking web pages have more backlinks than lower-ranking ones.

But there are two things to remember:

The number of referring domains.
Backlink quality.

The links should come from relevant websites. For instance, ecommerce fashion websites should get links from fashion and clothing publications.

Also, create valuable content that acts as link magnets.

Anurag Surya, SEO specialist at Freshworks, explains that he uses research articles to do this.

“I’d invest in creating industry-research articles that’ll have metrics based on primary research. No other websites would have these numbers, which means anyone searching for them would visit my page and hopefully link to it.”

So, build links, but build them strategically.

Pro Tip: Work with experienced link builders who can identify such opportunities for your brand.

Image from Fiverr Pro, January 2024

6. Focus On Your Online Brand Reputation

Audit your brand’s presence online.

Survey your customers, monitor incoming reviews, and observe public forums. These are common sources for getting feedback and understanding how people view your brand.

You can also use tools like UserTesting or Maze to determine if users actually consider your site trustworthy. Display social proof to appear credible in the eyes of users.

Add social proof not just from users but industry publications too.

Also, respond to good and bad reviews pleasantly. It’ll improve brand perception over time.

Ultimately, the better the brand perception, the better your overall authority.

7. Attract & Use More User-Generated Content (UGC)

User-generated content is an excellent way to increase your website’s E-E-A-T.

Why? Because an unsolicited or unpaid review does the heavy lifting for your brand’s perception.

Examples of UGC include:

Case studies.
Forum posts.
Public comments.
Ratings & reviews.
Videos on social media.
Personal blog posts.

Google’s crawlers can access social sites like Reddit and Quora. Make sure your reputation has a positive feel to it.

It gives you much-needed social proof and tells Google your site is a trusted resource.

Image from Fiverr Pro, January 2024

It’s Your Time To Become Relevant

Optimizing your website for E-E-A-T requires a strategic approach.

The process can be a massive undertaking, but it doesn’t have to be. Consider outsourcing your operations to SEO experts who monitor these changes and adapt to secure their search rankings.

Ultimately, it’s a strategic decision that brings you one step closer to improving your website’s E-E-A-T.

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Image Credits

Featured Image: Image by Fiverr Pro. Used with permission.

In-Post Images: Images sourced by Fiverr Pro. Used with Permission

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Feb 21 2024

Top 3 SEO Checklists For On-Page & Technical SEO In 2024 via @sejournal, @WixStudio

This post was sponsored by Wix. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

In the last 18 months, conversations about SEO have been dominated by artificial intelligence.

New ways of working and new user journeys for search visitors have come to the forefront.

In 2024, we can clearly see that there’s a great mix of “old hat” and “new hat” SEO best practices that you can start implementing right now.

To help you keep up with the current SEO best practices, we’ve created a series of:

Why Use SEO Checklists?

Doing SEO is often a bit like conducting a symphony.

There are lots of SEO activities, big and small, taking place across each website, and each SEO task, whether it be on-page or technical, contributes to the larger success of your website.

Just as a conductor has their sheet music, the best consultants and agencies use SEO checklists, templates, cheat sheets, and other project management documents to make sure everything is on track.

The medium of the SEO checklist has evolved from being as simple as a few items scribbled on the back of an envelope to something as complex as a dynamically generated interface within your CMS, offering AI functionality and integration with your favorite tools.

This versatility means that they can be reworked to suit most requirements.

In the sake of versatility, here are three, high-level types of SEO checklists that can help you elevate your brand’s website.

1. SEO Checklists On Shared Documents

If you’ve been in the industry for a while, you’re probably familiar with using a spreadsheet to keep track of SEO progress.

Now, we’re living in the fast lane, with the ability to leverage shared SEO. Easily transferrable, this can be as complex or simple as required.

Image created by Wix, February 2024

2. Dynamic, Real-Time SEO Checklists

Fast forward to a next-generation SEO checklist: The Dynamic SEO Checklist.

A dynamic SEO checklist responds to updates in content in real-time.

This means that anytime a change is made to your website, you get a series of next steps to execute to make your content rank.

Examples Of Real-Time SEO Checklists

Site-level SEO Assistant is one new example of a real-time checklist.

This type of checklist is built directly into your CMS and includes entry points and integrations that allow users to complete tasks in the list.

From setting indexability to connecting to Google Search Console, you can complete important tasks from within the list itself.

With intelligent recommendations and the ability to skip tasks as necessary, this kind of checklist works in tandem with your website.

Built-in functionality like this can help you save time and get the most out of a CMS.

Top 3 SEO Checklists For On-Page & Technical SEO In 2024

Experience created by Wix, Feburary 2024

3. AI-Powered SEO Checklists

With the assistance of AI, you can get a dynamically generated checklist to help you execute your SEO workload.

Plus, this type of list can also help you carry out within the list itself, simply by using AI inputs.

For instance, the checklist in the Wix SEO Assistant uses a keyword prompt to create AI meta descriptions and title tags for a page.

Once these are generated, you can add and tick them off your list, right in the CMS.

Experience created by Wix, February 2024

Looking at user data, we see that the addition of AI to a checklist can increase usability significantly.

How To Properly Use An SEO Checklist For Success

If you aren’t already using an SEO checklist to manage your workload, we urge you to try any of the above styles of checklist.

Increase Your Agency’s Profitability

If you’re an agency owner or account manager, checklists are particularly efficient because they can be reused and adapted for each client.

This can save time on research and development (R&D) and become part of the corpus of resources you make available to clients and staff.

Checklists for SEO tasks can also assist with more efficient onboarding for new clients and projects, and help you expand your offering and improve client satisfaction.

When managing clients, tools like the Wix Studio Client Kit mean that account managers can upload client checklists, templates, and even video tutorials directly into the dashboard of the CMS.

This means that materials for client success are accessible to everyone working on the site, at all times.

Image created by Wix, February 2024

If you’re managing SEO teams, creating frameworks for SEO account management can help you gain and retain clients for the long term.

Joshua George, founder of Clickslice Agency explains that he developed his SEO project proposal template “after testing 20 different variants of proposals,” but once he “finally found one which converts the best,” he was able to get better results from client pitches.

Similarly, freelance SEO, Nick LeRoy, developed a client retention checklist to manage touch points and habits that build client trust.

Image created by Wix, February 2024

Better efficiency for SEO agencies and freelancers means more opportunities to deliver high-value outcomes and increase profitability – a checklist can be an important part of that process.

Make Knowledge More Accessible Across Your Team

Templates and checklists are also a highly accessible way to hand off to juniors and even clients easily.

As well as being designed to help your team accomplish goals, checklists can also serve as a knowledge base to help your team grow. This approach can help you get drive visibility on the SERP.

Image created by Wix, February 2024

Founder of AS Marketing agency, Adriana Stein, explains that she uses a blog writing template because, “when you use a particular structure, provide helpful information, as well as follow SEO best practices, that gives your content the best possible chance to rank, drive organic traffic, and when scaled out, drive conversions.”With live collaborative documents, teams can adapt lists to changing requirements and ensure that the knowledge base of the team continues to grow, even if account managers change roles.

Improve Quality Assurance

It is often assumed that it is beginner-level SEO specialists who use checklists, but this is not exactly the case.

For more seasoned SEOs, checklists often serve as a means of maintaining the quality of implementation when working with multiple teams and stakeholders. Experienced SEO professionals create checklists to ensure consistency of delivery when handing off day-to-day tasks to other members of their teams.

Ashwin Balakrishnan, Head of Marketing at Optmyzr, explains that for tasks like backlink tracking, he creates templated documents to reduce errors and ensure a consistent level of implementation.

Balakrishnan says that, “transferring knowledge and experience to junior SEOs (especially teammates) goes a lot smoother for everyone when you use checklists and templates. It gives newer SEOs confidence and frameworks to work off, and it allows more seasoned practitioners to review work faster and avoid giving arbitrary feedback.”

This can free up time for senior SEOs to pursue more complex SEO, billable tasks.

So rather than dying a death, the humble SEO checklist has evolved.

What’s Next For SEO Checklists?

Given the wealth of data sets, data feeds, automation, and AI tools available to marketers, the active integration of AI into SEO should only continue. But as well as being able to generate inputs, we are likely to see data-driven, AI-crafted guidance from checklists become more common.

Those who use checklists in the format of Google Sheets and MS Excel will benefit from generative native apps and enhancements in the AI workspace race. Being able to harness scripts, feeds, and add-ons is nothing new, but AI offers new scalability for task completion, offering new opportunities for growth but the value of the SEO checklist is alive and well in 2024.

Download checklists, templates, and toolkits to develop smoother SEO processes and ramp up productivity—on any project.

Wix SEO Resource Center

Image Credits

Featured Image: Image by Wix. Used with permission.

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