Fortnightly reviews and the monthly SEO maintenance checklist

We explain how we run 15‑minute “hygiene” reviews twice per month for every active service and share our monthly SEO maintenance checklist that any team can apply. Written by Roger Bas, Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) at ARTIC. The goal: detect early, escalate fast, and keep momentum without long meetings.

Key takeaways

• Two 15‑minute hygiene reviews per month for every active service.
• Each review follows a checklist; anything bigger is escalated as a task.
• Our monthly SEO checklist covers performance, technical health, content, links, and local/competitors.
• Items include crawl errors, indexation, Core Web Vitals, low‑CTR queries, cannibalisations and orphan pages.
• The cadence prevents surprises and keeps progress steady across SEO, Ads, Social and CRM.

What our hygiene reviews are and why they work

We keep quality high with short, repeatable hygiene reviews: 15 minutes per fortnight for every active service. That’s two passes per month, per service. The format is simple on purpose: we run through a predefined checklist; if something needs deeper work, we escalate it as a task within the service and plan it properly.

This rhythm gives us three advantages: 1) early warning when something drifts, 2) a steady flow of small fixes, and 3) operational clarity by separating fast detection from planned execution. We don’t try to solve everything in the review; we make sure nothing is left to decay.

We apply this across SEO/GEO (local SEO), Google Ads, Meta Ads, social media and CRM. In SEO, these reviews sit alongside deeper work when needed, such as a fuller SEO positioning audit or focused Technical SEO and Core Web Vitals. I’m Roger Bas (CCO), and this is how we run it day to day at ARTIC.

A 15‑minute review, minute by minute

To make 15 minutes count, we follow a micro‑agenda:

• Preparation (2–3 min): open dashboards and the checklist document for the service.
• Checklist pass (8–10 min): mark each control as OK/pending; note signals or anomalies.
• Decisions (2–3 min): anything that needs work is logged immediately as a task with owner and date.
• Close (1–2 min): save the review log; confirm what will happen outside the review.

Discipline matters: we run the list, not an open‑ended meeting. Two reviews per month, per service, create a safety net without long sessions. If a point needs deeper analysis (for example, a meaningful organic drop), we don’t extend the review: we turn it into a planned task or a separate work block.

The same pattern applies to SEO/GEO, Google Ads, Meta Ads, social and CRM, ensuring consistency across teams. For broader context on our approach to organic growth, see our B2B SEO approach.

The monthly SEO maintenance checklist (use it as is)

Here is the SEO checklist we use monthly, split across the two fortnightly passes if needed:

1. Performance

• Trend of priority keywords.
• Organic traffic month‑over‑month and year‑over‑year.
• Pages gaining or losing traffic.
• Queries with many impressions and low CTR.
• Average position of strategic pages.

2. Technical health

• Crawl errors: 404, 5xx, soft 404.
• Coverage and indexation; sitemap.xml and robots.txt.
• Core Web Vitals (LCP, INP, CLS).
• HTTPS and SSL certificate.
• Redirects without chains or loops; broken links.

3. Content

• Low‑traffic or thin pages (update, merge or deindex).
• Refresh ageing content.
• Cannibalisations between URLs.
• Title, meta description and H1 on new pages.
• Images missing alt text or not optimised.

4. Linking and authority

• New and lost backlinks.
• Toxic links.
• Internal links to strategic pages and orphan pages.

5. Local and competitors

• Google Business Profile and review responses.
• Consistency of name, address and phone.
• Competitor moves, new search intents and Google algorithm updates.

Use an SEO positioning audit when repeated signals point to deeper causes.

What to do now: implement the fortnightly review in your team

Stand it up in one week with this checklist:

• List your active services and assign owners.
• Schedule two fixed 15‑minute slots per fortnight and per service (same day and time, recurring).
• Create a simple checklist document per service (SEO, Ads, Social, CRM) with fields: date, reviewer, status, notes and derived tasks.
• For SEO, copy the monthly checklist above and adapt strategic pages and KPIs.
• Set the golden rule: reviews detect and decide; execution always happens as separate tasks.
• Keep a historical log of reviews to observe trends and support decisions.
• Each month, review the percentage of OK items and the task backlog; if work piles up, plan a focused block or a one‑off audit.

If your site needs foundational fixes, plan dedicated Technical SEO and Core Web Vitals time outside the hygiene slot.

How this fits bigger projects and AI‑aware search

Hygiene reviews don’t replace deeper projects—they feed them. When the checklist surfaces patterns (e.g., sustained drops, indexation issues, cannibalisations), spin up a larger work stream: an SEO positioning audit to diagnose and prioritise, or a technical sprint to remove structural blockers via Technical SEO and Core Web Vitals.

This cadence also keeps content and site signals aligned with how we think about SEO for search experiences that use AI, as outlined in our B2B SEO approach. The hygiene pass protects the basics—crawlability, content quality, linking and local signals—while deeper changes are reserved for data‑justified initiatives.

We use this split between maintenance and structural improvement at ARTIC because it sustains momentum without firefighting every month.

Frequently asked questions

Why only 15 minutes per review?

Because the review is for detection and decision, not execution. In 15 minutes you can run the checklist, record findings and escalate anything that requires real work as a task within the service.

How often should we run these reviews and where do they apply?

Run them twice per month for every active service. We apply them in SEO/GEO (local SEO), Google Ads, Meta Ads, social media and CRM. The fixed frequency is crucial for early warning and steady control.

What if a serious issue appears during the review?

Log it immediately and escalate as a service task with an owner and priority. Do not extend the review: use it to detect and plan, not to solve on the spot.

Do we need special tools to follow the SEO checklist?

No. Use your existing data sources and project documentation. What matters is a written checklist and the fortnightly discipline to run it and convert findings into executable tasks.

Shall we talk?

If you want your marketing to work like this, meet the ARTIC team, see our case studies or tell us about your project.

Sources

• SEO Agency
• Technical SEO Agency
• SEO Positioning Audit

Informative article with the sources linked, up to date on the publication date.