In order to achieve the search ranking that leads to optimum standing in search engine results, businesses need that all-important SEO "to-do" list.
However, as search engine optimization keeps evolving, the list gets longer and longer, a seemingly endless stream of work that can overload anyone trying to grow a business.
The List's Heavy Hitters
First, it helps to examine the SEO elements in greatest demand. Generally, there are two: technical and marketing. Although each folder contains many other skills within it, site builders must create marketing plans in a technical space: a website.
If ever two characters were distinct from one another, it would be a techno-geek and a marketer. Yet a business's search engine results goals are only fully realized by fusing those demands together. Perhaps that is the best way to separate tasks: technical and promotional.
The bottom line for companies seeking better search engine results is the way users experience their sites. Of course, "experience" is guided both technically and promotionally. On the technical side, site builders work on site structure, speed, and page design.
On the promotional side, marketers craft the messaging that resonates with users and inspires action. Marketers and site masters have the same overall objective, but generally, technical people build the site infrastructure while marketers build the messages that connect with users.
Typical Technical Strategies
- Core Web Vitals and page speed
- mobile-first, responsive design
- site structure, navigation, and internal linking
- crawlability, indexing, and site maps
- canonical tags and duplicate-content fixes
- structured data (schema markup)
Typical Marketing Changes
- messaging and branding
- keyword research and search intent
- helpful, people-first content (E-E-A-T)
- market segmentation
- content built to earn featured-snippet and AI Overview placement
- data analysis and strategy
New Priorities Reshaping the List
The SEO to-do list hasn't just gotten longer; the priorities have shifted. Three changes in particular now sit near the top of most lists:
- Core Web Vitals. Google measures real-world page experience with three Core Web Vitals: how fast your main content loads (LCP), how quickly the page responds to a tap or click (INP), and how stable it stays as it loads (CLS). They're a confirmed ranking factor, which puts site speed squarely on the technical list. You can check any page with our guide to testing your website's speed.
- Helpful, people-first content. In March 2024, Google folded its helpful content system into its core ranking algorithm. It now continuously rewards content written to genuinely help people and demotes content cranked out just to rank. That makes content quality, expertise, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) a permanent priority, not a one-time fix.
- AI search. Google now answers many queries directly with AI Overviews (which grew out of its Search Generative Experience), and people increasingly use AI assistants to find information. These systems tend to pull from pages that already rank well and answer the question clearly, so the same strong fundamentals that win rankings also help you get cited in AI results.
The encouraging part: these aren't separate from the work you're already doing. A fast, well-structured site with genuinely helpful content checks all three boxes at once.
How to Delegate
The question: If you can't do it, who will? The answer: delegate. There are several ways to delegate tasks based on a company's existing work structures. Businesses use these criteria all the time with other internal tasks, and nowhere are they more applicable than to your search engine optimization objectives.
Cost of Implementation
It's a brutal business truth: a business cannot always afford everything it needs. When the monster adds six heads for every item completed on the list, cost is a great way to address the monster. It is often necessary to prioritize "to-do" items by assessing which ones you can afford to do, or, alternatively, which ones you can't afford to leave undone. Every business must be able to calculate ROI (return on investment), and this is also true of SEO and internet marketing tasks.
Ease of Implementation
Rate each item on the "to-do" list based on how easy (or not) it would be to implement. Once completed, business owners can add the cost-of-implementation factor to further clarify just how realistic each task is at this point. Some tasks are simple enough to be handled in a 15-minute session, and others will take weeks of planning, tasking, and staff hours to integrate into the overall strategy. The trick is to maintain a balance so that the small tasks do not adversely impact the larger strategies.
Off-Site Web Developers
You may be able to afford to complete the task, but not have the dedicated staff to complete it. Delegation is based on the realization that one person can't do it all. The global marketplace provides a world chock full of web development contractors with great expertise that can be brought in for specific tasks.
In-House Staff
Can in-house staff realistically take on some individual search engine optimization tasks? This may just require some tweaking to job descriptions. One staff meeting could do the trick. If your business is medium to large, adding a dedicated staff member for technical skills may be a valuable addition to your team. Alternatively, you may find that working with an external consultant makes more sense.
Integrated marketing services companies, such as i7 Marketing, provide customized one-stop services for all the logistical headaches of task prioritization and delegation. With an understanding of your resources and priorities, integrated marketing services professionals can coordinate customer objectives, strategies, and tasks. In addition, continuous connectivity makes integrated marketing services providers especially responsive to real-time business demands.
Businesses have enough headaches without considering the onslaught of "SEO," the monstrous leviathan whose heads never stop sprouting. If your business needs to focus on its day-to-day operations, integrated marketing services pros can provide a full understanding of the options available to you, both in-house and externally, to move you into the fray for optimized business.
i7 Marketing offers integrated marketing solutions, specializing in online strategies for connecting you with your customers. Identifying and implementing best practices for your business is what we do best. See how our SEO team can help, or get in touch to talk through your priorities.
This is part of our guide to marketing your small business online.
0 Comments