Task playbooks
Weekly health check
What every SEO does first thing Monday — catch ranking drops, indexing issues, broken pages before clients notice.
- Review GSC for sudden traffic dropshigh
- Check Coverage / Pages report for new errorshigh
- Re-check rank tracker for tracked keywordsmedium
- Run a fresh site audit on key pagesmedium
Monthly content refresh
Find decaying pages, update them, and re-promote. The single highest-ROI ongoing SEO activity for content sites.
- Identify top 5 decaying pages from GSChigh
- Audit each decaying page against current SERPhigh
- Rewrite intro + add 1–2 new sections per pagehigh
- Update internal links pointing into refreshed pagesmedium
- Re-submit refreshed URLs in GSCmedium
Monthly technical audit
The technical SEO health pass — broken links, redirects, schema, CWV, indexability. Catch debt before it accumulates.
- Run a full broken-link scanhigh
- Audit redirect chains (>1 hop)medium
- Validate schema on key page typesmedium
- Review Core Web Vitals trendmedium
- Check robots.txt + sitemap.xml healthlow
Monthly competitor watch
What your top 3 competitors did this month — content, backlinks, ranking gains. Steal what works.
- List new content competitors published this monthmedium
- Identify keywords competitors gained on this monthmedium
- Check competitors for new high-quality backlinkslow
- Note any major page changes on competitor key pageslow
New client onboarding
First 14 days with a new client — get GSC/GA4 connected, baseline measurements, quick wins, and trust built.
- Connect Google Search Consolehigh
- Connect Google Analytics 4high
- Run baseline full-site audithigh
- Identify and fix top 3 quick-win issueshigh
- Build initial keyword tracking list (20–50 keywords)medium
- Document goals + first 90-day strategymedium
Traffic drop recovery
Run when GSC shows a sudden drop. Diagnose the cause systematically before guessing — most drops have one of five causes.
- Confirm the drop is real (not a tracking issue)high
- Check if a Google algorithm update overlaps the drop datehigh
- Identify which pages and queries dropped mosthigh
- Audit the dropped pages for technical regressionsmedium
- Compare dropped pages to current top 3 in SERPmedium
- Build the recovery plan + assign to content workflowhigh
Quarterly strategy review
Step back from the daily grind every 90 days. Review what worked, kill what didn't, plan the next quarter.
- Review the past quarter's wins and losseshigh
- Audit your tracked keywords — drop the dead onesmedium
- Review topical authority — which clusters compound, which don'tmedium
- Set next quarter's 3 priorities + measurable OKRshigh
Why playbooks vs. niche templates?
Playbooks are workflow-based — what you do every week / month / quarter regardless of the client. Niche templates (auto-applied when you add a client) cover the launch checklist specific to local SEO, ecommerce, SaaS, blog, or services. Use both — niche for the kickoff, playbooks for ongoing rhythm.