Specialist Lanes L1–L14

Lanes activate from intake flags. A client can run several lanes at once. Each lane adds tasks to the delivery plan in Week 2–3 and follows its own QC line.

Which lane applies? 10-second test: Physical location or service area → L1. Sells products online → L2. Multiple countries or languages → L3. Site, domain or CMS change planned → L4. React / Vue / SPA or content appears only after JavaScript → L5. Roughly 100k+ URLs → L6. Template-generated pages from data → L7. Time-sensitive editorial → L8. Video is a core asset → L9. Image-led discovery → L10. User-generated pages → L11. Health, money, legal or safety topics → L12. Traffic collapse or manual action → L13. Ugly brand SERP → L14.

L1 · Local SEO local / multi-location

  1. GBP: correct primary category (biggest single lever) + valid secondaries, full services, accurate hours, 10+ real photos, weekly posts, seed Q&A with the 10 real customer questions, booking links.
  2. Citations: exact NAP match on GBP, Bing Places, Apple Business Connect, Facebook, top 5 industry directories. Manual audit first; BrightLocal only at 2+ local clients.
  3. Reviews: honest post-service asks by SMS / email, steady velocity, reply to all within 48h. Never incentives, never gating, never fakes.
  4. Local landing pages: one per REAL location — unique local content, LocalBusiness schema matching GBP, map, local phone.
  5. Local links: chamber, sponsorships, local press, community, partners.
  6. Track: GBP insights + DataForSEO local pack; Local Falcon geo-grid only for competitive map-pack clients.
QC: no doorway city pages; NAP matches GBP character-for-character; review gating = instant stop.

L2 · E-commerce SEO ecommerce

  1. Category pages are the money pages: intro copy, optimized title / H1, category FAQs, links to top subcategories.
  2. Faceted navigation: index only filter combos with real demand + inventory; canonical or noindex the rest.
  3. Products: unique descriptions (no manufacturer copy-paste), specs, Product schema with price / availability / GTIN, real-review markup.
  4. Variants: canonical to parent unless a variant has its own search demand.
  5. Out-of-stock: returning = keep 200 + alternatives; permanent = 301 to parent; keep seasonal category URLs live year-round.
  6. Merchant Center: feed-page price parity sampled weekly; resolve restricted-category certifications FIRST (pharma / supplement products block everything until certified); target disapproval rate under 5%.
  7. Internal search results: noindex; mine site-search terms monthly for gaps.
QC: weekly price-parity sample; no indexable zero-inventory category; GMC diagnostics in every monthly report.

L3 · International international

  1. Subfolders (/de/, /fr/) by default; ccTLDs only for legal or brand necessity.
  2. hreflang reciprocal + self-referencing + x-default, generated by the CMS, validated after every release.
  3. No automatic IP redirects — suggestion banner only.
  4. Localize, do not translate: currency, payment methods, legal, support, examples. No machine translation published without native review.
  5. Per-market keyword research and SERP observation — never copy the EN keyword map.
QC: hreflang errors in GSC = P1 finding; a locale without a localized conversion path does not launch.

L4 · Migration / redesign migration

  1. Benchmark everything pre-launch: full URL inventory with traffic, rankings, conversions, backlinks.
  2. 1:1 redirect map to closest equivalents — never mass-redirect to home; test top 100 pages individually.
  3. Staging vs production crawl diff: titles, canonicals, schema, analytics, internal links preserved.
  4. Launch checklist: robots not blocking, sitemaps submitted, GSC change-of-address if domain change, analytics live.
  5. Monitor daily for 30 days; rollback plan documented; keep old redirects 1+ year; never launch on Friday.
QC: launch blocked until the redirect map passes; communicate temporary volatility — never promise zero loss.

L5 · JavaScript / SPA javascript

  1. Raw vs rendered diff on every template — verify primary content and links exist in GSC URL Inspection rendered HTML.
  2. Prefer SSR / pre-render for essential content; History API URLs; real anchor links; correct status codes for empty states.
  3. Test failed-API and slow-API states — content must not vanish.
QC: primary content missing from rendered HTML = P0.

L6 · Large site / logs 100k+ URLs

  1. Log analysis: verify real Googlebot, segment hits by template / status / response time, quantify crawl waste.
  2. Segment XML sitemaps by template; monitor indexed-ratio per segment.
  3. Crawl-budget work only when discovery evidence shows a constraint — no crawl-budget theater on small sites.

L7 · Programmatic programmatic

  1. Preconditions: unique data per page + real per-page demand + a template that fully answers the intent. Missing any = do not build.
  2. Block thin combinations at generation; index in cohorts; expand only cohorts that prove indexation + engagement + conversions.
  3. Hand-check 20 pages per cohort pre-index; honest scaled-content-abuse review.

L8 · News / Discover news

  1. News sitemap, IndexNow for Bing, strong fresh-hub internal links.
  2. Bylines with author pages, visible dates, corrections policy, original reporting.
  3. Discover: 1200px+ images, max-image-preview:large, honest compelling titles. Accept volatility — never forecast Discover.
  4. No fake freshness: date bumps without substantive updates are prohibited.

L9 · Video SEO video

  1. YouTube is the search engine: researched titles, structured descriptions, chapters, transcripts, custom thumbnails, end-screens to owned pages.
  2. On-site: dedicated watch pages where video is the primary content, VideoObject schema, video sitemap, transcript on page.

L10 · Image / visual visual

  1. Descriptive filenames + accessibility-first alt text (describe, do not stuff); WebP / AVIF; responsive srcset; lazy-load below the fold only.
  2. Image sitemaps for image-led businesses; surrounding context text.

L11 · UGC / marketplaces ugc

  1. Index rules by quality thresholds: minimum content / engagement before a UGC page is indexable; noindex thin, empty and duplicate states.
  2. Moderation and spam pipeline before scaling indexation; expired listings follow L2 out-of-stock logic.

L12 · YMYL / regulated ymyl

  1. Every page: named credentialed reviewer + review date; claims cite primary sources; limitations stated.
  2. Legal sign-off in the publish gate; factual errors corrected within 48h.
QC: no YMYL publish without recorded qualified reviewer sign-off — including refreshes. No exceptions.

L13 · Penalty recovery & algorithm updates triggered by P2 or traffic event

  1. Manual action: identify exact type in GSC, fix comprehensively site-wide, document every fix, honest reconsideration request. Never partial fixes.
  2. Algorithm update: wait about 2 weeks before concluding; segment losses by template / intent; compare niche winners vs losers; fix root causes (usefulness, trust, intent-fit), not symptoms; core-update recovery often waits for a following update cycle — say so.
  3. Rule out tracking changes, seasonality, demand shifts and SERP-feature changes before blaming an algorithm.
QC: never promise recovery timelines; never blend recovery with unrelated redesign work.

L14 · Reputation / branded SERP reputation

  1. Audit page 1 for brand and brand-modifier terms; inventory what you control.
  2. Own more legitimate real estate: optimized profiles, press, claimed knowledge panel, managed review platforms.
  3. Suppression only through genuinely stronger legitimate content — never fake reviews or astroturf.
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