Before I help my clients start scaling content production, there are a few requirements I need in place. Here's my new site SEO checklist.
Before I help my clients start scaling content production, there are a few requirements I need in place.
Without these things, I can't deliver. Because the site isn't set up to deliver.
Rocky foundations =
→ slow traffic growth.
→ slow revenue results.
If you're investing in creating quality content, you're simply wasting your budget if you don't have these things.
It's not a long list, but it's a fundamental one.
Miscellaneous
Here are a few odds and ends to start with:
✅ Plugin (if WordPress): RankMath
✅ Plugin (if WordPress): Wordable or DocPress.it
✅ Setup free Google My Business profile
✅ Blog post template: Design signals trust and credibility [With a header image, large-sized quotes, correctly-sized subheadings, author box, and sidebar CTA]
E-E-A-T Signals:
Especially with new sites, or those brand new to digital marketing, I find a severe lack of E-E-A-T signals. Without these fundamentals in place, traffic acquisition is half as fast.
✅ Does the blog template show the author?
✅ Does the blog template link to an author page, with full credentials?
✅ Is there author and article schema?
✅ Do authors have profiles on sites like Crunchbase and LinkedIn?
✅ Is there at least 20 domain rating? With links from at least a handful of credible sites. If not, let's get them ASAP.
✅ Does the author/owner/brand have active social accounts? Are they discoverable via the site and author page?
Here's a real doc I sent a client with fundamental additions we need to add to their blog template.
Technical fundamentals:
A lot of people slapped on a WP theme a few years back and never updated it. This is for them.
✅ Is it mobile-ready?
✅ Is it OK for speed (like not dreadful)?
✅ Is anything weird happening (like Google is indexing duplicate pages or the product pages look like blog posts)?
✅ Are the right pages crawlable and indexable?
Keyword optimization:
Sometimes sites have 20+ pages on the same topic, here is where we stop that practice and begin fresh with a more regimented SEO plan.
✅ Does every page have one focus keyword?
✅ Are there cannibalization issues we can stop quickly?
✅ Are SEO-friendly URLs being used?
Conversion Architecture:
In my article on SaaS SEO strategy, I talk about the concept of a "conversion hub". My content is helping the company build and capture demand—but this can't be done without these conversion elements.
✅ Is there a modern-looking site theme?
✅ Is there a nicely designed homepage (incl. clear offer, CTA, social proof, and credibility)?
✅ Is the landing page template conversion optimized and flexible to edit?
✅ Is the site architecture logical and easy to navigate? The nav bar should include the blog and links to key service/product pages.
This is not the longest SEO checklist in the world, but it doesn't need to be. The rest we can work on over time. But if the content strategy is going to be a success, these things need to be there.
—Benny
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