SEO SOPs: Examples and Templates From Our SEO Team

An SEO SOP (standard operating procedure) is a written, step-by-step instruction for one recurring SEO task. It names the owner, the tools, the inputs, the steps and the definition of done, so anyone on the team can produce the same result. Good SEO SOPs cover the work that repeats every week or month, such as keyword research, briefs, refreshes, internal linking, technical tickets, reporting and, since 2025, AI visibility tracking.

Note from Maeva: I learned this the messy way. Two years into documenting everything at Flying Cat, we had more than 300 SOPs, nobody could find the right one and half of them described processes we no longer ran. Since what I call the big declutter, I have reviewed, rewritten or archived our SOPs every six months, and our processes started improving only once the library got smaller.

This page shows the SOPs we run today, with screenshots and steps from our own documentation. It covers the classic SEO tasks plus the AI-era procedures for AI-assisted production and AI visibility.

What an SEO SOP is

An SOP is a set of written instructions for a routine task. An SEO SOP applies that idea to search work. It turns one person's know-how into a repeatable procedure that a new hire, a freelancer or a client's in-house team can follow and get the same output.

We keep two kinds of documents at Flying Cat.

• Playbooks are longer guides that explain the thinking behind a process, such as how we choose keywords or decide between a refresh and a rewrite. They are written for experienced SEOs who need judgment more than steps.
• Task SOPs are short, step-by-step procedures for one job, such as filling in a brief template or logging a technical ticket. Someone without deep SEO experience can follow them.

Each playbook links to the task SOPs that put it into practice. Each task SOP links back to its playbook. That pairing keeps strategy and execution in the same place.

Why an SEO team needs SOPs

SEO needs creativity and consistency at once. Our strategists build sharp keyword strategies, but early on those strategies lived in Google Drive folders that only their authors understood. A master keyword sheet that only one person can read breaks every handoff.

SOPs fixed that. With them, a team can:

• Agree on what "done" looks like for every task before it starts
• Train new hires and freelancers in days instead of weeks
• Delegate work without a long call to explain it
• Grow output without a drop in quality
• Keep what works and retire what does not

SOPs have become more valuable now that AI tools sit inside the workflow. Google's spam policies name the use of generative AI "to generate many pages without adding value for users" as an example of scaled content abuse (Google Search Central, updated August 2026). An SOP is where you write down which steps AI may assist, which steps a human owns and what the editor checks before anything goes live.

An example SEO SOP template

Every task SOP at Flying Cat follows the same skeleton. You can copy it for your own team.

Here is the header of our customer desire map SOP, which uses this format.

Classic SEO SOPs every team needs

These procedures cover the foundation of an SEO program. Each section gives the sample steps we use.

Keyword research SOP

This SOP describes how to find and prioritize target keywords. The high-level reasoning lives in our SEO playbook. The task SOP covers the operational side, which includes frequency, required resources, connected processes, the people involved and the definition of done.

Sample steps

1. Pull the keywords the client and its competitors already rank for in Ahrefs or Semrush, starting with the most commercial terms.
2. Add terms from customer interviews and sales calls, which often surface language keyword tools miss.
3. Check intent on the live SERP and note whether AI Overviews appear.
4. Group keywords into clusters, where each page in a cluster serves a different search intent.
5. Prioritize by buying intent first and volume second.
6. Fill in the keyword research template and hand it to the strategist for review.

Bottom-funnel keywords often show tiny volumes. For Trevor.io, keyword tools showed 10 or fewer searches for terms that later brought in far more traffic, while "Looker vs Tableau" showed over 1,000 searches a month and brought 11 clicks. Our SOP tells researchers to keep low-volume, high-intent terms on the list for that reason.

Customer desire map SOP

A customer desire map (CDM) captures the voice of the client's customers. It collects quotes, pains, hopes and objections from sales calls, reviews, support tickets and interviews. Writers use it so the content speaks to what buyers say they want.

Sample steps

1. Gather customer insights from calls, reviews, forums and support data.
2. Sort them into categories such as pains, desired outcomes and objections.
3. Link the CDM from every brief for that client.
4. Update it each quarter or after a new round of customer interviews.

Bizzabo is a good example of this input at work. We used sales-call insights to map its buyers' questions and evaluation triggers, then regrouped its library into topic clusters linked to product pages. Organic visits to product and solutions pages grew 67% in four months.

Sourcing SMEs SOP

This SOP covers how to find and work with expert contributors (SMEs) whose insight makes a piece credible. It sets client expectations for expert input, lists where to find experts, gives outreach templates and explains how to fold their input into the draft.

Client workspace SOP

The client workspace SOP sets up one place for everything about an account. That includes the website, product positioning, brand voice, visual guidelines, approvers, KPIs and any client-specific changes to our standard process. At Flying Cat this is a project overview page in our internal knowledge base, which we describe further down.

Link building and mentions SOP

Our link building SOP now covers two separate tracks. Classic links support Google rankings. Brand mentions target the third-party pages AI assistants cite when buyers ask for recommendations. The SOP keeps the two in separate trackers with separate targets.

Sample steps

1. Pull target pages from your link building strategy for SEO links, and from your AI visibility tool's cited URLs for mentions.
2. Score each target for relevance and quality, and note how often AI answers cite it.
3. Get approval from the strategist before any outreach.
4. Send personalized outreach that names what the publisher gets.
5. Log every response and placement.
6. Measure link building by ranking and visibility movement on the target pages.

D2L shows why the mentions track exists. Its outreach shifted from general link building to the third-party roundups that appear as sources in AI answers. D2L went from appearing in 12% to 33% of tracked AI answers.

On-page SEO SOP

The on-page SOP is a checklist for each page. It covers the primary and secondary keywords, intent match, title tag and meta description, heading structure, internal links, image alt text, canonical tags, schema where it fits and page speed. We pair the checklist with short videos for each change and leave room for page-specific judgment.

AI-era SEO SOPs

These are the procedures we added between 2024 and 2026. They cover AI-assisted production and the work of getting brands named in AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot.

AI-assisted brief SOP

Our briefs are generated through an automation in Make that pulls the target keywords, SERP structure and internal link candidates into our brief template. A strategist then edits every brief by hand before a writer sees it.

Sample steps

1. Run the brief automation from the approved topic in the deliverables tracker.
2. Check the target keyword, intent and page type against the SERP and AI answers for the topic.
3. Set every H2 and H3, the keyword placements and the internal links with their anchor text.
4. Add the customer desire map, product positioning and any approved claims.
5. Send the outline to the client for approval, which locks the structure.

For an enterprise procurement platform, our briefs go to the client's own freelance writer. They decide every heading, keyword placement, anchor text and internal link, so the writer needs to do zero research.

AI-assisted drafting and human editing SOP

This SOP draws a clear line between what AI may help with and what people own. Our writers are freelance specialists who know the client's vertical. Every piece goes through an editor before the client sees it.

• AI may assist with research summaries, outline variations, first-pass headline options and checks against the brief.
• The writer owns the argument, the examples, the product details and the final wording.
• The editor checks every statistic against its original source, every product claim against the client's approved positioning, the brand voice and the brief's keyword and link instructions.
• The client approves the final draft, with one round of edits.

Prompt research SOP

Prompt research decides which questions you track in AI assistants. Our SOP builds the prompt set from the most commercial keywords that both the client and its competitors rank for. We stick to commercial prompts in the "what are the best X tools" shape. Each prompt has to cover a different intent or feature angle, so "top tools" and "top software" count as one prompt. We add questions from sales calls, forums, support data and Search Console, then check fan-out queries to see what the assistants search for behind each prompt. Our AEO guide chapter on prompt research goes deeper on the method.

AI visibility tracking SOP

This SOP sets up and reports AI visibility each month. We track prompts in Scrunch, where each prompt runs about 75 to 80 times a month across eight AI assistants. We report how often the brand appears across the whole prompt set and skip ranking position. A SparkToro and Gumshoe study of 2,961 prompts found that ChatGPT and Google's AI returned the same brand list less than once in 100 runs (Search Engine Journal, January 2026).

Sample steps

1. Pull mention rate, citation rate and share of voice against named competitors for the month.
2. Break results out by assistant, since each platform behaves differently.
3. List the pages AI answers cite most, both the client's own pages and third-party pages.
4. Check Search Console's generative AI performance report, which shows impressions from AI Overviews and AI Mode for all sites as of August 31, 2026 (Google Search Console Help).
5. Compare AI referral sessions and demo requests from AI assistants in GA4.
6. Turn the findings into next month's content and outreach targets.

The per-assistant step comes from Maeva's own research. Her analysis of 93,968 AI answers in The Search Spot found that Copilot named a listicle's publisher in 62.5% of cases and ChatGPT in 56.5%, against 37.4% for Perplexity and 28.2% for Google AI Mode (The Search Spot, October 2026). Averages across all assistants hide those differences. For the full measurement setup, see our AEO measurement chapter.

Content refresh SOP

Our refresh SOP comes in tiers. A bronze reop is a light-touch refresh that adds missing keyword variants, internal links, a title fix and freshness updates. The SOP produces an implementer spreadsheet that gives the exact heading, paragraph and sentence for every edit. Each page takes 7 to 10 minutes to implement, about ten pages a month, with no client approval needed. Heavier tiers add new sections or rewrite the page.

The SOP also bans date-only refreshes. Every refresh has to change the substance of the page. D2L ran light refreshes on 10 to 15 pages a month, since AI assistants favor recently updated pages. Traffic to pages in that monthly program doubled from March to May 2026. Our guide to a content reoptimization strategy explains how we choose which pages to refresh.

Internal linking sprint SOP

An internal linking sprint is a links-only job, separate from a refresh. The SOP scans the full site for contextual link opportunities, gives priority pages preference as link targets and outputs a sheet with the source page, the exact sentence, the anchor text and the target URL.

Sample steps

1. List the priority pages that need more internal links.
2. Find pages across the whole site that discuss the same topic.
3. Choose a natural sentence on each source page and write a descriptive anchor.
4. Check that no page links to the same target twice and that anchors vary.
5. Hand the sheet to the uploader and verify the links after publishing.

For Trevor.io, every new page got links from older pages that already ranked and got crawled often. Pages reached page one in about a month.

Technical audit ticket SOP

Our technical audits run on Screaming Frog crawls and end in a ticket workbook rather than a prose report. Developers act on tickets, while long reports tend to sit unread.

Sample steps

1. Crawl the site in Screaming Frog with JavaScript rendering on, and connect Search Console and GA4 data.
2. Log each issue as a ticket with a stable client-prefixed ID, such as AB-01.
3. Score each ticket by severity times traffic impact to set priority.
4. Assign an owner, an effort estimate and a status.
5. List every affected URL on a detail tab.
6. Record clean checks as a baseline, so the next audit shows what changed.
7. Verify each fix with a recrawl before closing the ticket.

The JavaScript rendering step catches problems a plain crawl misses. For an AI tax research platform, a rendered crawl showed 99.9% of the Canadian answer pages redirecting client-side to their US versions, even though they returned a 200 status and carried hreflang tags. Within about six weeks of that audit, two-thirds of the technical tickets were verified complete. Our technical SEO service runs this workflow for clients.

Content publishing SOP

Publishing is the step where small mistakes reach the live site, so it gets its own short SOP. Ours runs in a fixed sequence.

1. Upload the approved draft to the CMS with headings, tables and images formatted.
2. Set the URL slug, title tag, meta description and featured image.
3. Add schema where it fits and check the canonical tag.
4. Add the internal links set in the brief, plus links from existing posts to the new page.
5. Preview on desktop and mobile, then publish.
6. Submit the URL in Search Console.
7. Add the page to rank and click tracking, and mark the task complete in ClickUp.

Before this step, the client approves topics in a deliverables tracker. The client then approves the outline and the final draft. The full production flow from goal to published piece belongs to a broader content strategy workflow, which covers the decisions upstream of these SOPs.

SEO reporting SOP

Our reporting SOP gives every role a date and a task. Project managers gather KPI data on day one. The strategist analyzes it and writes the report with a Loom walkthrough. The account lead approves it. The client receives it before the monthly meeting.

The SOP has changed in three ways since that screenshot.

• Business KPIs come first. Our two primary KPIs are the visitor-to-demo or trial conversion rate and the SQL-to-opportunity conversion rate. Rankings, CTR and engagement are secondary, leading SEO metrics.
• AI search has its own section. Leapsome is an example. We set up tracking for traffic and demo requests from AI assistants, so the team could see AI search in its pipeline numbers.
• Every number must be reproducible. For one client, each reported metric carries its CRM field name and exact filter. The client must be able to reproduce it in two minutes or it stays out. Each report also includes a standing section on what did not work and what we are changing.

Our digital analytics service sets up this kind of reporting for clients.

How Flying Cat keeps SOPs in ClickUp

All our SOPs live in ClickUp Docs. In October 2026 we split our single knowledge base into two Docs, because freelancers given access to one page could see everything.

• The Freelancer Knowledge Base contains what writers, editors and designers need. That includes how to work from a brief, how to write silver reops, the graphics process and our writing standards. Page icons make it quick to scan.
• The internal knowledge base contains client project overviews, uploader procedures such as bronze reops, pricing and internal communication rules.

Each client project overview links to the freelancer SOPs that apply to that account, along with any client-specific rules. A deliverable task in ClickUp links to the SOP for its stage, so nobody has to search for the right procedure.

Why SEO SOPs fail

Note from Maeva: I used to buy a beautiful bullet journal every January, complete with matching pens, and by March I had filled one page. SOPs fail the same way. Writing one is easy, and getting people to use it is the hard part.

The failures we see in teams and in our own past library are consistent.

• SOPs are too long and detailed to follow.
• SOPs are too generic, so only their author can apply them.
• People without hands-on experience write them.
• Nobody owns them, so they go stale.
• The team was never told why they exist.
• They live in a folder nobody opens during the task.

How to create effective SEO SOPs

Pick the processes to standardize first

Start with tasks that repeat, involve handoffs or cause the most rework. Good candidates include work a senior person does that someone else could take over, processes that look different every time and tasks that block other people when they run late. Define the outcome of each SOP before you write any steps. For a keyword research SOP, the outcome is a prioritized list of keywords tied to the client's buying journey.

Document the current process and its bottlenecks

Ask the people who do the work to walk you through it. Note what consistently produces good results and where errors or delays creep in. We keep an improvement log where anyone can note a process mistake as it happens. The team reviews it weekly and assigns an owner to each issue.

Record the process, then let AI draft the SOP

The fastest method we know is to record a Loom of someone doing the task while explaining each step. We then give the transcript to an AI assistant to produce a first draft in our template. The person who recorded the video edits the draft for accuracy, and a second person tests it by following it cold. That test surfaces every step the expert skipped because it felt obvious.

Build in quality checks

Mark the checkpoints where a reviewer signs off, and write criteria a reviewer can verify. "All keywords relate directly to the client's product or category" works as a criterion. "Keywords are good" does not give the reviewer anything to check.

Review on a schedule

We review the library every six months. The first check is usage. If nobody has opened an SOP in six months, we find out why before we archive it. Sometimes the process changed. Sometimes the SOP was so detailed that people gave up, or so general that only its author could follow it. We ask the people who run the task what would make it usable, then rewrite or retire it. AI search changes fast, so our AI visibility and prompt research SOPs get a lighter check every quarter.

How Flying Cat uses SOPs on client accounts

Flying Cat is founder-led. Maeva Cifuentes, Flying Cat's founder, leads strategy on every account. Freelance specialists who know each client's vertical write, edit and implement. SOPs are what let that model work across English, French, German, Italian and Spanish programs without every handoff going through her. When a client's in-house team takes over a task, we hand them the SOP along with the work.

If you want a team that already runs these procedures, our full-service SEO program covers strategy, content, technical SEO and AI search optimization in one engagement. You can book a call to talk through your current process.