SEO Optimization Plan

Who this is for

13 tasks covering a full pass over an existing site: technical audit, keyword research, on-page fixes, content gaps, internal linking, and off-page work. It's for a site that already exists and isn't ranking, rather than a new one — the diagnostic tasks assume there's something to diagnose.

Do the technical audit first

It's tempting to start with keywords, because keywords feel like progress. But if pages are slow, blocked, duplicated, or missing canonicals, better keyword targeting just gets you better rankings for pages that can't be indexed. Fix the plumbing, then chase the traffic.

Search Console is where this starts. The coverage report tells you what Google has actually done with your pages, which is regularly not what you assumed — pages discovered but never crawled, pages indexed under a URL you didn't expect, pages dropped without notice.

Internal linking is the cheapest win on this list

It requires no new content, no outreach, and no budget: it's rearranging what you already have so the important pages are reachable in fewer clicks and described by the text pointing at them. Orphan pages — reachable only from a sitemap — are the usual finding, and the usual fix is one afternoon of linking.

Expect a slow feedback loop

Nothing here shows results in a week. Ranking changes take weeks to months, so avoid making several large changes at once and losing the ability to attribute the result. Change, wait, read the data, then change again.

Timing

Four to six weeks for a first pass, then quarterly. Due dates help mainly for the recurring re-audits.