SEO Setup Workshop.

What you leave with

Four things, built in the room with your own data:

1. A role map. One named owner for Search Console. Who decides, who builds, who checks.
2. One goal with key results. One objective in unbranded organic traffic, year over year, and a few key results with a number each.
3. A release gate. The three SEO tests before and after every release. A page that fails does not go live.
4. A routine calendar. What your team checks every week, after every release and every season.

Where SEO setups fail in 2026

The gaps I saw in my 2026 workshops and handovers, and what your team sets up instead:

Where it breaks	What I saw	What you set up
Nobody owns Search Console	For a site you want to grow, reading Search Console is about a half-time job	One named owner, working across all teams
A goal that is too small	A team proposed 15 percent more unbranded traffic a year; about double was realistic	One objective, a few key results with a number each
The next release undoes the fix	A fix is gone again with the next change	The three SEO tests before and after every release
Cherry-picked tasks	A thick strategy paper, picked from instead of run	Processes before tasks
Nobody looks back	Changes ship, and nobody checks what they did	Search Console after 2 weeks and after 2 months
Too many voices	Every team has a say on every page	Three people decide

Nobody owns Search Console

What I told one team in 2026: “one person must be responsible to look at the Google Search Console and understand everything in that.” For one site taken seriously as a growth channel, that is about a half-time job.

SEO stays a shared responsibility. I advise against an SEO department beside development, content and marketing.

What you set up: a role map with one named owner, and who decides, who builds and who checks.

A goal that is too small

My rule: never start SEO without an explicit, measurable goal. In one 2026 workshop the team proposed 15 percent more unbranded organic traffic a year. I called it almost unambitious: about double is realistic. They agreed in the room.

Google’s own checklist for hiring an SEO asks: “How do you measure your success?” (Google Search Central)

What you set up: one objective and a few key results with a number each, for example:

• about 95 percent of the sitemap pages indexed
• every page under 150 KB of unzipped HTML
• PageSpeed Insights at 80 or better on mobile

The next release undoes the fix

“If you make a fix somewhere, it is gone again with the next change,” I told one team in 2026. In the same room: the three SEO tests are not negotiable. Run them before and after every release, and about 80 percent is done.

The three SEO tests: PageSpeed Insights, the page with JavaScript turned off, and the live test in Search Console.

What you set up: the three tests as a release gate on one page of every page type. A failed test blocks the go-live.

Cherry-picked tasks

In SEO you cannot pick single items from a list; picked items do not perform. In one 2026 workshop the team had a thick SEO strategy paper.

My order: mindset, setup, goals, processes, tasks. “A process is worth a 1000 tasks.”

What you set up: processes before tasks, each with an owner and a trigger: every new page, every release, every season.

Nobody looks back

My rule after every change: look at Search Console after two weeks, again after two months, and compare with the year before.

Google suggests checking Search Console “around once every month, or when you make changes to the site’s content”. (Google Search Central) A site you want to grow needs a tighter rhythm.

What you set up: a routine calendar.

• Every week, at least: Search Console.
• Every release: the three SEO tests, before and after.
• Two weeks and two months after every change: did it work?
• Every season: update the targeted pages.

Too many voices

“The more people have a say, the greyer everything gets.” My rule for design: three people decide, the product owner, the designer and the CEO. Nobody else has a say.

Feedback goes where it belongs: to the people who do the actual work.

What you set up: who decides what, written down, and numbers that reach developers, editors and marketing directly.

How the day runs

1. Before the day. You send Search Console access and your team’s questions. I read the data before I look at the site.
2. One room, the whole team. Development, content, product, marketing, the SEO lead, ideally management. Up to 12 people, everyone for the full day.
3. Data first. Search Console, then the three SEO tests on your page types, then the live site.
4. Built live. The goal, the role map, the gate and the routine get written in the room. Every item is marked: agreed by the team, or my instruction.
5. Handover. Every task and process with its tier, what is still open, and the book.
6. Afterwards, if you want. A follow-up call some weeks later checks what shipped against fresh Search Console data, or a regular jour fixe.

My goal: make every SEO company unnecessary, including mine. Your team runs the setup without me.

Questions before a setup workshop

Who should be in the room?

Everyone who touches the site: development, content, product, marketing, your SEO lead or agency. The developers who will build the tasks must attend. Management for the goal.

Do we need an SEO department?

No. SEO is a shared responsibility of development, content and marketing. You need one owner who works across them.

Do we have to call it OKRs?

No. Use the words your company uses. What matters: one objective, a few key results with a number, an owner, and a date to check.

Our agency does SEO. Is this for us?

Yes. Often the agency stays. The workshop sets who on your side owns the result and checks the work. If the agency work needs sorting first: SEO agency cleanup.

How is this different from the SEO & GEO Workshop?

The SEO & GEO Workshop finds and prioritises the tasks. This one sets who does them, how you measure them and how they stay done. To train one new in-house SEO, see SEO Training for In-house SEOs.

When is the right time?

Before a relaunch or a new product, and whenever SEO has no owner. Google: “a great time to hire is when you’re considering a site redesign (the earlier, the better)”. (source

Sources for the Google quotes on this page, read on 2026-10-24: Do you need an SEO? and Get started with Search Console, Google Search Central. The rest comes from my own workshops and handovers in 2026.