A law firm can receive a spreadsheet of 200 SEO tasks and still have no reliable way to decide what is broken, what matters first, or whether a fix actually worked. This version treats every action as a control: gather evidence, apply a pass-or-fail rule, assign severity and ownership, make the correction, then verify the result.
The work is ordered by dependency. Foundation checks establish that search engines and users can reach, render, understand, and measure the site. Core checks then examine local presence and on-page execution. Advanced checks focus on content depth, internal discovery, external authority, and ongoing maintenance. Compliance checks sit across every tier because marketing content can create professional-risk questions even when its SEO mechanics are sound.
For each item, save the evidence that justified the status. Evidence can include a Search Console screenshot, crawl export, rendered-page inspection, analytics event test, profile record, citation record, content review note, or written reviewer approval. A pass means the stated condition is met today. A fail means the owner has a specific corrective action and a validation method, not merely a recommendation.
Compliance boundary: This checklist cannot guarantee compliance, and responsible legal, medical, or regulatory reviewers remain required where those review functions apply. Attorney advertising, testimonial, privacy, accessibility, confidentiality, and jurisdiction-specific publication decisions should be reviewed against current authoritative requirements before release.