Onboarding a new SEO client: what to set up in week one

The first week with a new SEO client sets the tone for everything after it. The goal is not to fix the website. It is to leave the week with a clear picture of the business, access to the right data, and a first draft of a strategy you can discuss with the client.

Day one: get the client into one place

Create the client record and capture the basics before you do any analysis: company and trading name, the main website, who owns the account on your side, and who your contacts are on theirs. Add every website the client wants you to work on, with its platform, country and language. If a client has more than one site, record them separately from the start.

Days one to two: access and baselines

• Analytics and Search Console. Ask for access early. It is the item most likely to hold you up.
• Developer contact. Find out who can actually make changes to the site, and how long changes usually take.
• A baseline. Record where organic traffic, conversions and visibility stand today, so you can show progress later.

Days two to three: run the first crawl

Crawl the site and import the results, so technical findings become tasks instead of sitting in a spreadsheet. Do not try to fix everything at once. Group what you find, and decide what matters most.

Days three to four: agree what success means

Talk to the client about their business goals, not only their rankings. Turn those into a few SEO objectives, each with a KPI, a target and a date. If you cannot measure an objective, rewrite it until you can.

Day five: draft the strategy

Write the first version of the strategy: the current situation, the main problems and opportunities, the objectives, and the workstreams that will deliver them. Keep it short enough to be read. Then create the first set of tasks from it, so that every task can be traced back to a reason.

What to leave out of week one

Resist the urge to start large pieces of content or link building before the strategy is agreed. A week of preparation saves a month of rework.

In SEO Ops, this checklist follows the order of the product: client, website, contacts, strategy, objectives, workstreams, then tasks. See Setting up a client to get started.