Set up the audit, prompt, fix, re-audit loop

Using an assistant for SEO goes wrong in one way: you ask it what to fix, it gives a confident list, and you work through the list in the order it chose. The better method is a loop where the audit decides what matters and the assistant does the typing.

1. Audit. Run an audit on the client site.
2. Prompt. Take the highest-value findings and write a prompt for each, using the client brief.
3. Fix. Read what the assistant gave you, change it where it is wrong, and publish it yourself.
4. Re-audit. Run the audit again. The score and the issue list say whether it worked.

Pick an assistant

Any of ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini will do. The prompts in this guide are plain text and work in all of them. Pick one that has a project, folder or memory feature, so you paste the client brief once per client instead of once per chat. If your assistant can browse, you can use that for checking one page at a time. Do not rely on it for a whole-site view.

Check your tool's data and training settings before you paste any client material, and check that your client contracts allow it.

What never goes into a prompt

• Admin passwords, SSH keys, application passwords or API keys, for the site or anything else.
• Customer data: names, emails, order details, anything from the client's database or contact forms.
• Anything the client told you in confidence.

A page's public HTML, its visible text, its title and its URL are public. Paste those freely. If a task needs a login, do that part yourself and paste only the result.

Write the client brief once

The brief is a short preamble you paste at the start of a chat, or save in the assistant's project. It stops the assistant guessing who the client is, and its rules stop the worst habits from the last chapter. Fill in the braces, keep it under half a page, and keep one per client.

You are helping me with SEO for one client website. Read this brief, reply "ready", and wait for my next message.

Business: {business name}, a {type of business} in {city, region}.
Services, most important first: {3 to 6 services that earn the money}
Customers: {who buys, and what they type into a search box when they need this}
Tone: {plain / friendly / formal}
Site: {WordPress / Webflow / other}, hosted on {host}
Pages that matter most: {home, services, contact, and the pages that bring in work}
Never say or claim: {licences we don't hold, prices, guarantees, competitors by name}

Rules for everything you write for me:
1. Use only facts in this brief or that I paste later. If you need a fact you don't have, ask me. Do not invent addresses, prices, awards, reviews or years in business.
2. A length limit is a hard limit. Count characters, including spaces.
3. Say when you are unsure.

Order the work by points

Ordering is the part most people skip, and the part the audit helps with most. In Bluprent's scoring, each issue takes points off its category: a critical issue takes 15, a warning takes 5, and an info issue takes 0. An issue counts once however many pages it affects, so fixing it on one page or on forty clears the same points. That gives you three rules:

• Fix criticals first. One critical costs as much as three warnings.
• Fix at the source. A duplicate title that comes from one template is one fix, not forty.
• Treat info issues as housekeeping. They cost nothing, so do them when they are cheap.

Five checks are critical: a missing title tag, a broken internal link, a redirect loop, a server error, and HTTPS that is not enforced. If your audit shows any of these, they go first.

Paste the issue list into the assistant and ask it to do the grouping, since it is quick at spotting that six issues share one cause:

Below is the issue list from an SEO audit of {site}. Each line has the issue, its severity (Critical costs 15 points, Warning costs 5, Info costs 0) and the number of affected pages.

{paste the issue list}

Plan the work. Group issues that one change would clear together, for example one template edit or one server setting. For each group give me:
- the issues it clears and the points it recovers
- the kind of change: template, server, content or plugin setting
- a rough effort: small, medium or large
Put the most points for the least effort first. Don't write the fixes yet.

The effort estimate is a guess, so overrule it where you know better. The points are arithmetic, and the assistant gets those right more often than not. Add them up yourself once.

Check what comes back

Treat everything the assistant returns as a draft from a fast junior who has never seen the site. Read it. Count characters with a counter. Test redirect rules on a staging copy. Publish nothing you have not read. Then re-audit: a fix is done when the issue is gone from the next audit, not when the assistant says it is.

Don't bother with

• Asking "what should I do about this site's SEO?" with nothing pasted. You get generic advice. Paste the findings.
• Fixing every issue. A score of 100 is not the goal. Info issues are worth zero points, and some will never be worth the time.
• Re-auditing after every single fix. Batch the group, then re-audit once.

Next

• Chapter 3: Keyword research for a local client with AI
• Where a monthly audit fits in a care plan
• Google's SEO Starter Guide (Google Search Central)