Appendix C — The SEO Strategy Workbook

This is the workbook for the book's running project: building a complete, executable SEO strategy for a real site. Use it on your own site (the most valuable version of the exercise) or follow along with the constructed practice site, Rivertown Home Services. Each worksheet corresponds to a chapter's Strategy File checkpoint; fill them in as you go, and by Chapter 40 you will have assembled a documented strategy you could hand to a client or execute yourself.

These are templates to copy, not forms to fill in the book. Recreate each in a document or spreadsheet. Every Rivertown example is illustrative.

Worksheet 1 — The stage-labeled problem list (Chapter 1)

Your starting diagnosis. One line per symptom, tagged with the pipeline stage.

Symptom Pipeline stage (discover/crawl/render/index/rank) Chapter that fixes it
e.g. New service pages take weeks to appear Discovery (orphan pages) 14, 15
(add your own)

Worksheet 2 — Keyword & intent map (Chapters 3, 7)

Keyword Est. volume Difficulty (tool) Intent (info/nav/comm/trans) Target page Priority (value × winnability)
e.g. furnace repair [city] — — transactional-local /furnace-repair/[city] High

Worksheet 3 — Content plan & editorial calendar (Chapters 8, 10, 12)

  • Pillar: _ Cluster pages: _ (one primary intent each)
  • Content-gap list (what competitors rank for that you don't): __
  • Audit decisions for existing pages: keep / update / merge / delete
  • Calendar:
Month Topic / working title Format Primary keyword Owner Status

Worksheet 4 — On-page checklist (Chapter 9), per priority page

  • [ ] Title tag matches the query and is compelling (~50–60 chars)
  • [ ] Meta description written as click-earning ad copy
  • [ ] One H1 that states the topic; logical H2–H3 hierarchy
  • [ ] The answer appears early (no burying it)
  • [ ] Comprehensive — covers the follow-up questions the SERP implies
  • [ ] Natural keyword use (no stuffing); related terms/entities present
  • [ ] Internal links in from relevant high-authority pages
  • [ ] Images have descriptive alt text (Chapter 11)

Worksheet 5 — Technical audit (Chapters 14–21 → use Appendix G for the full checklist)

Top findings, prioritized by impact × effort:

Issue Category Impact Effort Chapter

Worksheet 6 — Architecture & internal-linking map (Chapter 15)

  • Hierarchy: home → _ → _ (every important page ≤3 clicks from home)
  • Hubs: _ Orphan pages to fix: _
  • Priority internal links to add (from → to, anchor): __
  • Linkable asset idea: __
  • Prospects:
Site/contact Type (local/resource/PR/mention) Relevance & authority Status Outcome

Worksheet 8 — Local SEO checklist (Chapter 25), per location

  • [ ] Google Business Profile claimed, complete, correct categories, photos, posts
  • [ ] NAP (Name, Address, Phone) identical across website and every directory
  • [ ] Review generation + response workflow in place
  • [ ] A genuinely useful location page (not a thin doorway)
  • [ ] Local citations and relationship links

Worksheet 9 — Analytics & KPI setup (Chapters 27–29)

  • [ ] Search Console verified; weekly review scheduled
  • [ ] GA4 installed; conversions defined (calls, forms, bookings, sales)
  • [ ] Baseline recorded (organic sessions, conversions, priority rankings, indexed pages)
  • Priority KPIs to report monthly: __
  • Vanity metrics to ignore: __

Worksheet 10 — The 12-month roadmap (Chapters 39–40)

Quarter Focus Key actions Milestone KPI target (range, not a promise) Owner
Q1 Foundation Technical fixes, GBP, measurement Crawl/index clean; GSC+GA4 live —
Q2 Content & on-page Pillar+cluster, priority-page rewrites N pages published/optimized —
Q3 Authority & local Linkable asset, local pack, reviews Local pack presence; N referring domains —
Q4 Compound & measure Update/prune, report, plan year 2 Documented results vs. baseline —

The capstone (Chapter 40)

Assemble Worksheets 1–10 into a single strategy document with: the diagnosis, the keyword and content plan, the on-page and architecture plan, the technical punch list, the local playbook, the link-earning plan, the analytics setup, and the 12-month roadmap — with honest, ranged expectations and no promised rankings. That document is the deliverable this whole book builds toward.