Why you need this
SEO requires constant research, content optimization, technical audits, and competitive analysis—tasks that traditionally consume dozens of hours per week. Meanwhile, search algorithms evolve constantly, making it nearly impossible to stay current while also producing content at scale.
The problem: Most marketers and content creators lack the time or expertise for comprehensive SEO. They publish content without proper keyword research, ignore technical issues, and miss optimization opportunities. The result: valuable content that never ranks, traffic stagnation, and lost business to competitors who optimize better.
This checklist solves that. It provides AI-powered workflows that automate tedious SEO tasks—keyword research, content optimization, technical audits, competitor analysis—helping you implement professional-grade SEO in a fraction of the time.
Perfect for:
- Content marketers optimizing blog posts and landing pages for search
- SEO specialists managing multiple sites and clients efficiently
- Small business owners handling their own SEO without agency support
- Digital agencies scaling SEO services without expanding headcount
What's inside
Keyword Research & Strategy
AI Keyword Discovery:
- Generate keyword variations and long-tail phrases from seed keywords
- Identify question-based queries people actually search (featured snippet opportunities)
- Find low-competition, high-intent keywords others miss
- Cluster keywords by topic for comprehensive content planning
- Analyze search intent (informational, commercial, transactional, navigational)
Competitive Keyword Analysis:
- Prompt templates to analyze competitor ranking keywords
- Gap analysis: keywords competitors rank for but you don't
- Opportunity identification: easy wins vs. long-term targets
- Content mapping: which keywords to target in which pages
Search Intent Matching:
- Determine what type of content ranks for each keyword
- Understand user expectations (guides, comparisons, tools, definitions)
- Align content format with search intent for better rankings
- Identify SERP features to target (featured snippets, people also ask, image packs)
Content Optimization Checklist
On-Page SEO Audit:
- Title tags: Keyword placement, length optimization (50-60 chars), CTR appeal
- Meta descriptions: Search intent match, CTA inclusion, 150-160 character optimization
- Headers (H1-H6): Keyword integration, logical hierarchy, readability
- Content analysis: Keyword density, semantic variations, readability scores
- Internal linking: Related content connections, anchor text optimization
- Image optimization: Alt text, file names, compression, lazy loading
Content Quality Signals:
- AI prompts to enhance E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness)
- Adding data, statistics, and authoritative sources
- Improving content depth and comprehensiveness
- Creating unique insights and original research
- Structuring for featured snippet capture
Readability & Engagement:
- Simplifying complex explanations without losing accuracy
- Adding examples, analogies, and use cases
- Creating scannable content (bullets, short paragraphs, subheadings)
- Improving transition flow between sections
- Optimizing for mobile reading experience
Technical SEO Automation
AI-Powered Site Audits:
- Crawl analysis interpretation: identifying critical vs. minor issues
- Prioritization prompts: which technical issues to fix first
- Schema markup generation (JSON-LD structured data)
- XML sitemap optimization recommendations
- Robots.txt configuration guidance
Performance Optimization:
- Core Web Vitals analysis and improvement suggestions
- Page speed bottleneck identification
- Image optimization opportunities
- Code minification and caching recommendations
- Mobile usability issue detection
Technical Issue Resolution:
- Duplicate content identification and canonicalization
- Broken link detection and redirect mapping
- Orphaned page discovery (pages with no internal links)
- Index bloat analysis (pages that shouldn't be indexed)
- Crawl budget optimization for large sites
Competitor & Market Analysis
Competitive Content Analysis:
- Analyze top-ranking competitor content structure and depth
- Identify what makes their content rank (word count, sources, format)
- Find content gaps your competitors haven't covered
- Reverse-engineer their keyword strategy
- Monitor new content and keyword targeting changes
SERP Feature Opportunities:
- Identify which queries trigger featured snippets, people also ask, or image packs
- Format content to capture featured snippets (definitions, lists, tables)
- Optimize for "people also ask" questions
- Target local pack for location-based queries
- Structure data for rich snippets (reviews, recipes, events)
Backlink Strategy:
- AI analysis of competitor backlink profiles
- Identify link-worthy content types in your niche
- Generate outreach email templates for link building
- Find broken link opportunities on authoritative sites
- Suggest internal linking improvements
Content Creation Workflow
SEO Content Briefs:
- AI-generated outlines based on top-ranking content analysis
- Recommended word count, headers, and topics to cover
- Questions to answer based on "people also ask"
- Suggested images, examples, and data points
- Internal and external linking recommendations
Content Refresh Prompts:
- Identify outdated statistics and claims to update
- Add new sections based on emerging search queries
- Improve existing content to match current top-rankers
- Update title/meta to improve CTR
- Add schema markup for rich results
How to use it
- Content planning — Use AI keyword research to identify high-opportunity topics before writing
- Page optimization — Run existing content through the checklist to identify quick wins and optimization opportunities
- Technical audits — Automate site auditing and prioritize fixes based on impact
- Competitive analysis — Monitor competitor SEO strategies and identify gaps to exploit
Example optimization workflow
Target keyword: "AI for small business"
AI-powered SEO process:
- Research: AI generates 50+ related keywords and questions → identify "how to use AI in small business" as lower competition
- Analysis: AI analyzes top 10 results → reveals 1,500-2,000 word guides with case studies perform best
- Outline: AI creates content brief with required sections (benefits, use cases, tools, getting started, costs)
- Optimization: AI suggests title "How to Use AI in Small Business: 7 Practical Applications (2025 Guide)" for CTR
- Schema: AI generates FAQ and HowTo structured data for rich results
- Monitoring: Track rankings, refine based on performance
Result: Comprehensive, optimized content created in hours instead of days, with data-driven decisions at every step.
Want to go deeper?
This checklist covers SEO fundamentals. For comprehensive guidance on AI content tools:
- Guide: AI at Work Basics — Best practices for AI tools in professional settings
- Guide: AI Writing Assistance — Improve content quality with AI
- Guide: Prompting 101 — Get better results from AI SEO tools
- Glossary: Automation — Understanding SEO automation
License & Attribution
This resource is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY). You're free to:
- Share with your marketing team or agency
- Customize for your industry and SEO strategy
- Integrate into SEO workflows and processes
Just include this attribution:
"AI SEO Optimization Checklist" by Field Guide to AI (fieldguidetoai.com) is licensed under CC BY 4.0
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