SEO Set-up Check List

SEO Set-up Checklist

We use a simple SEO Set-up Checklist as part of our new client onboarding process.

Read on to get the template.

We take the client input from the New Client Onboarding form and trigger downstream processes using this checklist to complete client set-up and trigger the research phase of a campaign which is typically the first month of the campaign.

About the checklist

The checklist is just that, it’s a list to check off items that are needed to set up and start an SEO campaign. It is not a strategy, it is not the campaign, it’s just a list of housekeeping items that are part of a well-managed SEO campaign.

This is not SEXY!

But admit it, now you are reading about checklists!

This may not be a SEXY topic but it is an important part of project management and sets things off on the right foot for a well-managed SEO campaign.

How We Operate with your Accounts and your Data

Access requests and sharing of data come with many of the checklist items.

We feel quite strongly about how the digital marketing industry generally operates in this area and believe our approach is more open and professional.

We have access to your data shared with us, we have our user accounts added to your tools and data.

This leaves you in full control of who accesses your systems and data and how.

There is an unfortunately far too common practice of people setting up tools and data systems under the control of the agency. This is all fine until you move on and lose access to your data.

It is YOUR DATA – not ours – you own it, we just get access to it.

When you start with us we give you a what to expect and next steps document that explains in detail what accounts access is needed for and which accounts and to what level they should be shared.

Items in the Check List

1. Client Account Number Generated

1. Client Structure Created

1. Account Manager Assigned

1. Invoicing Setup

1. Semrush Project Created

1. Semrush Project Shared

1. Uptime Monitoring

1. Add Bing Webmaster Tools

1. Add Clarity Tracking Pixel

1. Google Analytics Account Shared

1. Google Search Console Shared

1. Google Business Profile Access Shared

1. Added to Analytics Tracker

1. Website Host Access Provided

1. Website Domain Access Provided

1. Website Backend Access provided

1. Top 4 keywords supplied

1. Top 4 competitors supplied

1. Kick-off call scheduled

1. Regular discussion scheduled

1. Keyword Research Complete

1. Competitive Assessment Complete

1. ScreamingFrog Audit Complete

1. Added keyword Focus List

1. Align Keywords to Content

1. Content Audit Complete

1. Backlink Audit Complete

1. Brand Monitoring Set-up

1. Listings Management Set-up

1. On-Page SEO Checks

1. Organic Traffic Insights

1. Marketing Strategy Completed

Client Account Number Generated

This is a basic first step, we take the next available client number in the incremental series.

Who wants to be customer ~~0139, 140, 141,~~ ….145 (as I write this)?

Yes! I want to be customer 145

OK, nobody wants to be a number, but its just part of our system and an ID number that we assign to your project to track and manage things.

Client Structure Created

Once the client number has been assigned to a new client, the client structure is created from a template structure with the necessary documents and folders in place. This structure is linked to under your client number in the SEO checkup list.

Account Manager Assigned

An account manager is assigned to each new client. This will be the main point of contact, however other team members will still be involved with your campaign. Account management is a very important part of the process and is someone you will be regularly in contact with as they help manage your campaign and work with you and out team.

Invoicing Setup

Invoicing is set up for each client. This varies depending on the size and scale of the business. We use Quickbooks for our invoicing. Our invoices go out on the 28th of every month.

We like to make things as automated as possible as this saves time which we pass back in cost savings to you through increased efficiency.

We prefer ACH but can work with a variety of different payment methods. This gets figured out in the first month.

Semrush Project Created

Next, we add your site as a project in Semrush, which is our main tool of choice for managing SEO campaigns.

The project number and link to it are added to the SEO Set-up checklist and in a few other key places so it is easily clickable allowing us to go straight to your account.

Semrush Project Shared

The Semrush project is shared with appropriate team members so the people working on your campaign have access to it.

This is a fairly easy and obvious action item, but when working in a team with multiple team members it is not always immediately obvious who has access to what. The best way to deal with this is to have a process step where access is shared with the appropriate people.

There is also information sent to clients on “What to expect and next steps” from initial onboarding that deals with getting and sharing appropriate access to accounts.

Uptime Monitoring

We have a lot of active monitoring available and set up all new client accounts on an uptime monitoring service. This alerts us to any downtime. We have a 1-minute check-in window and an alert will be received and acted upon. The reason we care a lot about this is that anything that affects Google’s ability to crawl your site can hurt your organic search performance. It is rare that we recommend changing hosts but it does happen from time to time if there are consistent periods of downtime and outages.

When we see issues in uptime we look more closely at the Crawl Stats in Google Search Console (GSC). You will learn we have many processes that leverage Google Search Console – GSC.

Google Search Console will report when it has had issues crawling a site and this is something that we check as one of our recurring processes. If there are two periods within a month where Google has been hindered this causes us to start discussions on moving host.

NOTE: Moving hosts is not something that we take lightly. We do offer hosting as a service but will only recommend moving hosts if it is absolutely necessary or if it is part of the plan and services that you do with us.

Add Bing Webmaster Tools

Bing Webmaster Tools is often overlooked (as is Bing itself) however it offers useful features and adds to the value that you can get from Google Search Console.

Ironically we create and link a Bing Webmaster Tools property by verifying the Google Search Console Access that we get.

Add Clarity Tracking Pixel

We utilize Microsoft Clarity combined with Bing Webmaster Tools for all new clients unless they have an existing session-tracking solution. Microsoft Clarity is an excellent free tool that we leverage to gain insights into user experience (UX) factors on your site. This can help with conversion and optimization as well as SEO and is also a useful tool for any web development activities.

This software records user sessions and gives a heatmap on mouse focus and other useful features on the usability of your site.

This is perhaps not a traditional SEO activity, but we care about it a lot as good user performance naturally helps with other optimizations and ultimately helps generate more revenue for your business.

Google Analytics Account Shared

Google Analytics is pretty much the defacto industry standard analytics tool. It is one of the main measurement tools used and gives useful insights and performance reporting. We synchronize Google Analytics with several of our tools.

Google Search Console Shared

Google Search Console is one of the most valuable tools there is.

I refer to it often as “a Window into Google’s soul”

We have several systems and processes built around Google Search Console.

We integrate with it, we take data from it regularly and we have several recurring processes that leverage the tool.

If you don’t have this set up we will help you get it set up.

Google Business Profile Access Shared

This is necessary mainly for Local SEO campaigns, there is an integration e do with this tool and sync it to some services that allow us to do location based tracking and reporting. There are also some processes that regularly use the business profile and it is something that is regularly maintained as part of some services.

It is also used as a social media channel for clients that have social media management with us. We treat the Google Business Profile as another social media channel not a static set it and forget it approach.

Added to Analytics Tracker

We have an Analytics Tracker that pulls in info from Google Analytics to give us a high level overview.

This has been largely superseded by some other tools, but its still useful to integrate and add new clients to this tracker as a high level overview.

This data is tracked elsewhere and with other tools, but its nice to have overview data across all sites that shows their performance and can flag an issues.

We have a specific process that regularly looks at analytics data and identifies any issues as well as finding insights from the data.

Website Host Access Provided

This is not always needed, however we like to have access to the web hosting as some of the technical SEO items require this access.

NOTE: We will always communicate major changes to any plan, account or set-up.

We can work with your IT team if this is preferred. We do not need the access, it is just often most efficient this way.

Website Domain Access Provided

The domain name access is not always needed either, but it is useful for setting up some configurations and verifying some properties.

Typical uses are adding a DNS TXT string for verifying a Google Search Console Domain Property or changing name servers when moving to and configuring a Content Delivery Network (CDN).

We can work with your IT team if this is preferred. We do not need the access, it is just often most efficient this way.

Website Backend Access provided

The website backend is sometimes necessary to have access to for enabling certain technical SEO activities and some other configurations for performance and monitoring.

We can work with your IT team if this is preferred. We do not need the access, it is just often most efficient this way.

Top 4 keywords supplied

As part of the new client onboarding process we request your top 4 keywords of interest. These are then used as seed keywords for the keyword research process which is triggered as one of the first actions as part of the new client onboarding process.

We utilize your website, Google Search Console and other avenues for Keyword Research, which is avery important part of the process. The initial 4 keywords supplied by you are just triggers to get the ball rolling on keyword research.

Some of our packages list a specific number of keywords that are tracked.

Top 4 competitors supplied

We look at a variety of avenues for competitor discovery and monitoring. The new client onboarding process takes your top 4 competitors which forms the basis of a competitive assessment. Again, this process is triggered by the new client onboarding process and is an important step.

One of the main reasons we decided not to be a niche specific agency is that we put a lot of faith into our competitive assessment process. We debug what does and doesn’t work in your nice. We look at ratio metrics and gaps and determine the main factors that are important for your campaign.

Kick off call scheduled

It is important to get a kick-off call schedule. We like to do this 1-2 weeks into the campaign.

By this time we wilk have sent quite a lot of emails, requested a lot of access and set up our tools and systems.

This is a good opportunity to introduce team members, deal with any open action items and field any early questions that clients have.

We review the full research stage at the beginning of the second month, which includes;

- Keyword Research

- Competitive Assessment

- Full Site Audit

Regular discussion scheduled

After having the initial kick off call and reviewing the research materials we like to set a regular recurring meeting with clients. During these meetings we talk about how the campaign is going, performance, open items, goals and any other points of interest.

Keyword Research Complete

The keyword research phase is one of the first major research pieces to your SEO campaign.

We conduct detailed keyword research with deep analytics and insight into different clusters.

We look for the total picture and identify the most appropriate keywords to target.

Competitive Assessment Complete

The competitive assessment is another major research item in the initial set up phase of an SEO campaign.

We put a lot of faith into our competitive assessment process and it’s the main reason we chose not to be a niche specific agency.

ScreamingFrog Audit Complete

We use screaming frog SEO audits in many of our processes. We take the data and put it into our tools.

This gives a good technical picture of your site and use this as the basis for the necessary structuring of your site and keyword to content alignment:

Added keyword Focus List

We take the focus list of keywords from your campaign and add them to the necessary tracking tools for visibility and performance monitoring.

Align Keywords to Content

Using the screamingfrog audit data and the keyword research we align the keywords to your content.

Content Audit Complete

A content audit of your existing site is very important as it helps us understand what content is performing and what isn’t.

A site-wide quality score is an important metric and sometimes it’s necessary to do some house cleaning.

Backlink Audit Complete

A backlink audit is another important setup step.

It allows us to monitor the links that you have, understand the nature of your backlink profile, and compare this to your competitors.

Brand Monitoring Set-up

Brand monitoring is set up so we get notifications any time your brand is mentioned.

This serves several purposes.

If there is something particularly positive or negative we will alert you.

We also use this monitoring to identify any unlinked brand mentions so we can reach out and get a link.

Listings Management Set-up

We use a business profiles listings management service that makes sure all of your info is distributed across major listing services

This also ensures all information is present and correct across all platforms.

Google refers to this as NAP consistency.

On-Page SEO Checks

After technical and content audits we do the regular on page checks of all of your content.

Organic Traffic Insights

Once all audits have been completed and monitoring setup we get insights from the current pages and performance.

Marketing Strategy Completed

Once all of these checklist items and associated actions have been undertaken and completed the marketing strategy will be formulated.

Summary

This is our initial set-up check list to help get your campaign up and running. After signing with us and filling out the new client onboarding form there is a flurry of activity and access requests as we get things set up and get properly acquainted with your site.