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🎯 Your Baseline Technical Checklist (cont'd 15/43)
Phase 1 (Technical Foundation Days 1–7)
Goal: Make the site fast, crawlable, well-structured, and OTTO-friendly.
Step 1: Metadata Optimization
**Path:**Left Sidebar → Content → Meta Generator → SEO Metatags
The Meta Generator helps you quickly create SEO-optimized title tags and meta descriptions for any landing page. 1. Fill Out the Input Form On the main screen, enter:
- Company Name
- Page URL
- Title (optional; the AI can rewrite it)
- Target Keywords (add multiple using commas or Shift + Enter) Then click Generate Ideas.
2. Review the Generated SEO Metatags You will land on a panel showing several AI-generated options. Each suggestion includes:
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A proposed Title Tag
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A proposed Meta Description
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An SEO-ready HTML snippet:
<title>Generated Title</title><meta name="description" content="Generated Description"> -
Character count for the combined snippet
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Icons to copy or save the idea 3. What You Should Do With These Suggestions
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Review the list and choose the best option for your page.
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Click copy to grab the HTML snippet.
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Paste the
<title>and<meta>tags into your CMS or website platform: -
WordPress: SEO plugin fields
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Shopify: “Edit Website SEO” section
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Any CMS: Title + Meta Description fields You can repeat the process for as many URLs as you need.
4. Best Practices****Title Tags
- Front-load the primary keyword
- Keep it ≤ 70 characters
- Ensure it reads naturally (no keyword stuffing)
- Make it relevant and click-worthy Meta Descriptions
- Include the core topic + a clear CTA
- Keep it ≤ 155–160 characters
- Choose the AI option that best matches your page intent Step 2: Heading and Structure Validation
**Path:**Sidebar → AI SEO → Onpage Audit → Page Explorer
This section displays all crawled URLs with their Page Health score and key on-page/technical indicators. ✅ 1. Main View: Page Explorer This table lists every page with columns such as:
- Page Health
- HTTPS
- Status
- Title
- Depth
- Importance 👉 What the user must do:
- Identify pages with low Page Health.
- Click any URL to open the full page audit. ✅ 2. Individual Page View
When clicking a URL, Search Atlas opens a detailed audit panel showing:
Indexability
- Canonical URL (Missing/Present)
- HTTPS
- Status Code
- Robots.txt
- In XML Sitemap
- Download Time Content
- Title
- Meta Description
- H2 / H3 / H4 hierarchy Relations
- Incoming internal links
- Outgoing links
- Missing canonical
- AMP variant Lighthouse Web Vitals
- Speed Index
- FCP, LCP, TTI, CLS
- Total Blocking Time 👉 What the user must do:
- Review title length and relevance.
- Check header hierarchy (only one H1, ordered H2 → H3 → H4).
- Confirm missing canonical.
- Check Open Graph and Twitter tags.
- Review internal linking. ✅ Page Health
It reveals all categorized issues, such as:
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Sitemap
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Page Headers
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Page Title
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Uniqueness
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Images
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Twitter Meta
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Hreflang
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Content
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Links
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OG Meta
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Canonical Link Each category shows:
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Errors
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Warnings
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Compliant items
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Health Gain (points recovered when fixed) 👉 What the user must do:
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Open each category.
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Review issues one by one.
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Remember: all fixes must be implemented manually in the CMS or codebase.
✅ 4. Issue Detail View
When selecting a category, the right panel displays:
- The exact issue (e.g., “H1 tag missing or empty”)
- Expected requirement
- Severity
- Health Gain
- How to Fix button 👉 What the user must do:
- Click each issue.
- Read the requirement.
- Apply the fix manually on the website.
- Return and click Recrawl Page after updating. ✅ 5. “How to Fix” Guidance
Clicking How to Fix opens a detailed explanation with:
- Issue severity
- Health gain
- Description of the problem
- Step-by-step explanation of how to fix it
- A “Learn more about...” button for deeper documentation 👉 What the user must do:
- Follow the technical steps provided.
- Make the corrections manually.
- Optionally read the extended documentation. ✅ Practical Summary
Everything shown in: ✔ Page Explorer ✔ Page Issues ✔ Issue Detail ✔ How to Fix ...must be fixed manually by the user. SearchAtlas provides:
- Detection
- Guidance
- Expected requirements
- Health scoring ...BUT it does not automatically fix:
- Titles
- Meta descriptions
- Header hierarchy
- Canonicals
- Open Graph / Twitter tags
- Hreflang
- Sitemap inclusion
- ALT attributes
- Internal linking
- JS file size issues All of these require manual implementation.
Step 3: Schema Verification
**Path:**Sidebar → AI SEO → Page Explorer → (Select URL) → Page Issues → Schema
When you click a URL inside Page Explorer, scroll down to the Page Issues panel.
One of the modules listed will be Schema (even if it is compliant). If schema issues exist, you will see something like:
- Schema missing
- Missing recommended schema types
- Organization / Local Business schema not detected
- Article / Product / FAQ / Web Page markup missing
- Fields missing inside existing schema Click Details to open the schema issue drawer.
What the user must do (MANUAL FIX REQUIRED) OTTO does not auto-fix schema. The user must manually edit the website’s code or CMS schema plugin. Inside the Schema → Details panel you will see: 2. Add “Local Business” if the business has physical locations
- The expected schema types
- The missing modules
- The fields that must be added (example:
@type,name,image,logo,address, etc.) - Examples or previews of what the schema should contain
- (If present) a JSON-LD block preview Your task
1. Add missing “Organization” schema manually
- Add for each location if multi-location
- Include: address, geo, telephone, opening hours
2. Add secondary schema types as relevant:
- FAQ Page (if page contains FAQs)
- How To (if page has instructional content)
- Product (for products or menu items)
- Article / Web Page markup for blog or landing pages
3. Validate after updating
- Use the schema validator link inside the Details panel, or
- Go to Search Atlas → More Features → Schema Creator (top-right menu)
- Copy/paste your updated JSON-LD and validate.
4. Re-crawl the page
- After implementing schema changes, click:
- “Recrawl Page” at the top of the Page Explorer view. Step 4: Internal Links and Alt Text
**Path:**Sidebar → AI SEO → Site Audit → Issues This panel shows all on-page SEO issues detected during the crawl.
For each issue category:
- Click How to Fix to view detailed guidance
- Click See All Affected to open a list of impacted URLs
- Then implement the fixes manually in your CMS or codebase **Common manual fixes you’ll complete here:**Internal Links
- Add contextual internal links between related pages
- Maintain proper canonical linking
- Avoid pages with zero internal links Images
- Add descriptive alt attributes using natural keyword variations
- Ensure image file size is optimized (target: <150 KB)
- Avoid outdated formats when possible Titles & Headings
- Ensure one H1 per page
- Maintain correct heading order (H2 → H3 → H4)
- Remove duplicates or empty headings
- Rewrite titles that are too short or missing Sitemap
- Include all indexable pages in the XML sitemap
- Fix pages flagged under Page not in SitemapSchema (if not compliant)
- Add missing markup types relevant to your page (Organization, Local Business, Article, FAQ, Product)
- Validate changes after deployment All corrections must be applied manually; Search Atlas provides detection and instructions o **Step 5: Crawl & Canonical Settings****Path:**Sidebar → AI SEO → Overview → OTTO Settings
Open OTTO Settings from the Overview dashboard to configure your crawl parameters: Crawl Frequency
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Recommended setting: Weekly****Pages to Crawl
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Move the slider to scan as many pages as possible (up to the maximum allowed). Crawl Speed
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Set the speed to around 15 pages/second unless server limitations require slower crawling.
User Agent Use: Searchatlas If the site blocks crawlers or shows unusual behavior, switch temporarily to: Googlebot JS Rendering Ensure this remains: Enabled so OTTO can interpret dynamic and JavaScript-driven content.
Respect robots.txt Keep this option Enabled, unless performing diagnostics.
5. Triggering a Fresh Crawl After adjusting settings, initiate a new crawl through:
- The Scan button in the website’s Overview header, or
- Saving changes inside OTTO Settings (which triggers a recalculation) This ensures OTTO processes your updates and refreshes crawl-dependent recommendations.
**Step 6: Domain level****Path:**Sidebar → AI SEO → Domain-level Inside Domain-level, review and correct the following items: XML Sitemaps
- Ensure that at least one valid XML sitemap is detected.
- If missing, create or submit your sitemap via your CMS or hosting platform. Robots.txt If issues are shown (invalid syntax or missing sitemap reference), update your robots.txt file:
Sitemap: https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml Make sure no disallowed paths unintentionally block important pages.
Domain Issues Fix any domain-level warnings shown in the right-hand panel, such as:
- Soft 404 errors
- Missing server compression (gzip / deflate / brotli)
- Invalid canonical URL behaviors****Core Web Vitals From the CWV module:
- Reduce Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
- Improve First Contentful Paint (FCP)
- Ensure Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) remains stable Troubleshooting Crawl Settings and Page Counting If OTTO shows an incorrect page count after fixing URL errors, follow these steps:
- Perform a recrawl using OTTO to detect recent corrections.
- Verify functional pages for proper detection by OTTO.
- Wait for OTTO’s analysis cycle to update the dashboard, adjusting page counts accordingly. Delays may occur due to the analysis schedule, but functional pages should reflect updates accurately over time. Understanding OTTO’s Analysis and Crawling Schedule OTTO analyzes website changes in two main steps:
- Use OTTO to recrawl your updated website after implementing changes.
- Wait for the scheduled analysis cycle to process and confirm the changes. Recrawling initiates the detection, but visible updates depend on OTTO’s scheduled cycle. Plan accordingly for updates to reflect in task counts.
🎯 Your Baseline Technical Checklist (cont'd 16/43)
Phase 2 (Content Expansion Days 8–15)
Goal: Fill gaps in content, enrich pages, and plan ongoing posts.
🎯 Your Baseline Technical Checklist (cont'd 17/43)
Step 1: Keyword Research and Organization
🎯 Your Baseline Technical Checklist (cont'd 18/43)
Path:
🎯 Your Baseline Technical Checklist (cont'd 19/43)
Left Sidebar → Keywords → Keyword Research


In this workspace you’ll build and organize your keyword lists:
- Create a new keyword list
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Click Create List (top-right of the “Keyword lists” panel).
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In the modal:
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List name: Give the list a clear name (e.g., “Roofing – US”, “Dental Implants – Toronto”).
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Location: Choose the correct country/market from the dropdown.
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Under Keywords, paste or type one keyword per line
(Shift + Enter to add a new line).
- Optional: Click Import from file if you already have a CSV or text file of keywords.
- Save and reuse your list
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Click Create List to save.
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Your new list will appear in the Keyword lists tab.
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Use View next to any list to inspect or expand it (e.g., for further keyword discovery, exports, or analysis).
- How this ties into the strategy
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Build separate lists for each service line / product family / location cluster.
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These keyword lists will later be used alongside Topical Maps and content planning to:
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Identify core topics and supporting subtopics.
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Prioritize pages and content hubs for on-site optimization and new content.
🎯 Your Baseline Technical Checklist (cont'd 20/43)
Step 2: Content / Scholar
🎯 Your Baseline Technical Checklist (cont'd 21/43)
Path:
Continued in Part 4 →