Use This 47-Point Checklist to Find What Needs Evidence, Ownership, and a Verified Fix

This checklist is for plaintiff-side mass tort teams that manage several tort topics, intake landing pages, search visibility, or measurement workflows and need a repeatable way to separate documented defects from assumptions. It is most useful when marketing, web, intake, and legal-review responsibilities are split across different owners.

For every check, collect the named evidence before changing anything. A pass means the evidence satisfies the stated condition; a fail means the condition is not met or cannot be verified. Severity should reflect the practical consequence for crawlability, indexation, page accuracy, intake measurement, user access, or advertising-review exposure. The owner is the person or team with authority to correct the issue, and validation means repeating the same test after the fix.

If you are still establishing the underlying information architecture, review the mass tort SEO fundamentals first so the checklist is applied to a coherent set of tort and location pages rather than to disconnected templates.

If a prior review already documented baseline technical conditions, use the audit guide to investigate root causes, page overlap, intake friction, and competitor gaps in greater depth. This checklist is a verification instrument, not a substitute for a full diagnostic when several failures interact.

Section 1: Intake Form and Data Foundation (12 items)

• Evidence: the form markup, rendered page, and structured-data validator output. Pass/Fail: pass when any structured data present uses a supported type that truthfully describes visible content; fail when invented, unsupported, or mismatched types are used. Severity: medium for misleading markup, lower when no markup is needed. Owner: SEO lead and developer. Corrective action: remove unsupported LeadGeneration assumptions and use only appropriate vocabulary. Validation: rerun validation and compare the rendered content with the markup.
• Evidence: the form's contact fields and any related ContactPoint data. Pass/Fail: pass when phoneNumber, url, name, and description values, if used, are accurate and visible or otherwise legitimately supported; fail when they conflict with the page. Severity: medium. Owner: developer and marketing operations. Corrective action: align machine-readable and visible contact information. Validation: inspect source and submit a test inquiry through the live page.
• Evidence: tort labels in the form, page headings, analytics, and structured data. Pass/Fail: pass when the same case-type taxonomy is used consistently enough to attribute inquiries; fail when naming conflicts break reporting or page meaning. Severity: high for attribution errors. Owner: intake operations and analytics owner. Corrective action: normalize labels without changing legal eligibility language. Validation: run test submissions and confirm the expected case type is recorded.
• Evidence: rendered form labels and HTML associations. Pass/Fail: pass when each control has an understandable accessible label, including a proper label for=id pattern where appropriate; fail when users or assistive technology cannot identify a field. Severity: high for inaccessible required controls. Owner: front-end developer. Corrective action: repair programmatic labels and instructions. Validation: keyboard-test and inspect the accessibility tree.
• Evidence: a recorded form submission, confirmation state, and analytics event. Pass/Fail: pass when submission produces a reliable confirmation and the intended conversion event is recorded; fail when tracking depends on an unverified thank-you-page pixel or double-fires. Severity: high. Owner: analytics owner. Corrective action: implement a stable event tied to successful submission. Validation: submit controlled tests and reconcile event counts with intake records.
• Evidence: the live form and intake requirements. Pass/Fail: pass when requested fields are necessary for intake and clearly explained; fail when unnecessary collection creates friction or privacy risk. The source checklist expected case type, injury type, and jurisdiction as minimum three fields, but teams should confirm necessity with responsible reviewers. Severity: high when sensitive data is collected without a defined need. Owner: intake lead and privacy reviewer. Corrective action: remove unnecessary fields or explain their purpose. Validation: retest the submission and downstream routing.
• Evidence: accessibility inspection of every input. Pass/Fail: pass when names, roles, instructions, and error states are programmatically available; fail when ARIA labels are missing where native HTML does not already provide an accessible name. Severity: high for blocked form completion. Owner: front-end developer. Corrective action: prefer native semantics and add ARIA only where needed. Validation: keyboard and screen-reader spot test.
• Evidence: mobile performance test and real-device observation. Pass/Fail: use under 2 seconds only as this checklist's internal operating target for the form experience, not as an official Google ranking threshold; fail the internal check when the measured experience materially exceeds the target or blocks interaction. Severity: medium to high based on observed abandonment or errors. Owner: performance engineer. Corrective action: reduce blocking resources and form dependencies. Validation: repeat the same test conditions.
• Evidence: the form viewport around collection and submission controls. Pass/Fail: pass when users can reach a clear privacy notice or policy link before submitting; fail when collection occurs without accessible notice. Severity: high for privacy-review concerns. Owner: legal reviewer and developer. Corrective action: place accurate privacy information in the intake flow. Validation: inspect desktop and mobile rendering.
• Evidence: consent language, applicable audience, and data-processing workflow. Pass/Fail: pass when any required CCPA/GDPR or other consent mechanism is used only where applicable and its wording matches actual processing; fail when a generic checkbox is used as a substitute for jurisdiction-specific review. Severity: high. Owner: privacy or regulatory reviewer. Corrective action: align consent with applicable requirements. Validation: counsel or privacy reviewer rechecks the final flow.
• Evidence: forced validation failures on each required field. Pass/Fail: pass when error text identifies what must be corrected; fail when the user receives a generic Error 401 or another non-actionable message. Severity: high when errors prevent intake. Owner: developer. Corrective action: map server and client errors to useful, non-misleading guidance. Validation: trigger each error condition again.
• Evidence: real-device or reliable emulation tests across common mobile platforms. Pass/Fail: pass when controls, keyboard behavior, consent text, and submission work without clipping or blocked interaction; fail when device-specific layout defects appear. Severity: high for submission blockers. Owner: QA and front-end development. Corrective action: fix responsive behavior. Validation: rerun the device matrix.

Section 2: Tort Landing Page Architecture (11 items)

• Evidence: URL inventory, navigation, sitemap, and page purpose. Pass/Fail: pass when each materially distinct active tort topic that deserves a search landing page has one canonical destination; fail when equivalent intent is split across tabs, filters, or duplicate URLs. Severity: high for indexation or cannibalization. Owner: SEO lead. Corrective action: consolidate or create the appropriate canonical page. Validation: recrawl and verify indexable destinations.
• Evidence: H1, title, search-query data, and page body. Pass/Fail: pass when the heading accurately states the tort and genuine jurisdictional context rather than mechanically inserting location terms; fail when a location is nominal or unsupported. Severity: medium to high. Owner: editorial lead and legal reviewer. Corrective action: rewrite headings around truthful page intent. Validation: review the rendered page against the services and jurisdictions actually handled.
• Evidence: crawl export of titles and descriptions. Pass/Fail: pass when metadata is unique where page intent is unique and accurately summarizes visible content; fail when duplicates obscure materially different tort pages. Severity: medium. Owner: SEO editor. Corrective action: rewrite metadata without adding unsupported claims. Validation: recrawl for duplicates.
• Evidence: testimonials or outcome summaries, consent records, and review notes. Pass/Fail: pass when any such material is authorized, accurate, contextualized, and legally reviewed; fail when claims are unverifiable, cherry-picked, or imply guaranteed results. Severity: critical for misleading legal advertising. Owner: legal reviewer and editorial owner. Corrective action: remove, substantiate, or revise the material. Validation: responsible reviewer signs off on the final version.
• Evidence: viewport captures and interaction path. Pass/Fail: pass when a clear contact action is available where context supports it without obstructing content; fail when users cannot find the next step or the page uses coercive patterns. Severity: medium. Owner: UX and intake operations. Corrective action: improve placement and wording. Validation: complete the path on desktop and mobile.
• Evidence: visible FAQ content and structured-data output. Pass/Fail: if FAQ markup is retained, pass only when it truthfully matches visible content and current documentation supports the type; fail when markup is added solely to chase a rich result. The historical checklist referenced 4-6 case-type-specific questions; treat that as an editorial range, not a Google requirement. Severity: medium. Owner: SEO lead and editor. Corrective action: keep useful reader questions and remove unsupported markup. Validation: validate the final structured data and visible text.
• Evidence: crawl graph and rendered internal links. Pass/Fail: pass when related tort content is connected by descriptive, useful links; fail when important pages are reachable only from the homepage or are orphaned. Severity: medium to high. Owner: SEO lead. Corrective action: add contextually relevant links. Validation: recrawl and confirm improved discoverability.
• Evidence: landing-page templates and intake routes. Pass/Fail: pass when each page offers an appropriate, accessible contact path, whether embedded or linked; fail when the path is missing or broken. Severity: high. Owner: intake operations and developer. Corrective action: provide the least-friction compliant contact route. Validation: submit and trace a test inquiry.
• Evidence: attorney identity, office information, and jurisdiction statements on the page. Pass/Fail: pass when required professional-identification information is accurate for the jurisdictions involved; fail when license or affiliation statements are absent where required or imply authority the firm does not have. Severity: critical. Owner: legal reviewer. Corrective action: correct or add reviewed disclosures. Validation: compare published text with authoritative firm records.
• Evidence: structured data and visible business information. Pass/Fail: pass when LocalBusiness or another type is used only if it accurately describes the entity and genuine location; fail when nominal service areas or nonexistent offices are encoded as locations. Severity: high for misleading location representation. Owner: SEO lead and legal reviewer. Corrective action: remove unsupported local markup and align entity data. Validation: inspect source against real office information.
• Evidence: mobile performance trace under a consistent test profile. Pass/Fail: use under 3 seconds on a 4G mobile connection only as this checklist's internal diagnostic target, not as an official ranking rule; fail the internal check when measured delay materially interferes with reading or intake. Severity: medium to high. Owner: developer. Corrective action: optimize the largest bottlenecks. Validation: rerun the same profile after deployment.

Section 3: Multi-Jurisdiction and Local Accuracy Audit (10 items)

• Evidence: Google Business Profile records and proof of each office. Pass/Fail: pass when a profile represents a genuine eligible location and its core details are accurate; fail when a profile is created for a nominal market or unsupported office. Severity: high. Owner: local search owner and legal reviewer. Corrective action: correct or remove unsupported location representations. Validation: compare the live profile with firm records.
• Evidence: firm name, address, and phone across the website and material citations. Pass/Fail: pass when differences are intentional and accurate; fail when inconsistencies create user confusion. Severity: medium. Owner: local search owner. Corrective action: correct authoritative listings first. Validation: rerun the citation check.
• Evidence: address strings and authoritative business records. Pass/Fail: pass when formatting is accurate and consistent enough to identify the same location; fail when variants reflect outdated or incorrect addresses. Severity: medium. Owner: operations and local search owner. Corrective action: standardize against the firm's authoritative address record. Validation: compare live listings after updates.
• Evidence: mobile rendering of phone links. Pass/Fail: pass when tel: links call the correct intake number and accessible text identifies the purpose; fail when numbers are broken or misrouted. Severity: high for lost intake. Owner: developer and intake operations. Corrective action: fix link targets and labels. Validation: place controlled test calls.
• Evidence: profile service areas and page language. Pass/Fail: pass when service-area statements match actual practice and platform eligibility; fail when they imply a physical office or legal availability that is not accurate. Severity: high. Owner: legal reviewer and local search owner. Corrective action: narrow claims to substantiated coverage. Validation: compare all public representations.
• Evidence: jurisdiction page, governing-law research, and attorney review. Pass/Fail: pass when any statute-of-limitations discussion is current, qualified, and approved for the specific jurisdiction and claim context; fail when a generic deadline is presented as universal legal advice. Severity: critical. Owner: responsible attorney. Corrective action: revise or remove unsupported deadline language. Validation: attorney re-review before publication.
• Evidence: local structured data and office records. Pass/Fail: pass when address, phone, and service-area properties accurately describe a genuine location and supported coverage; fail when markup invents locality. Severity: high. Owner: SEO lead and legal reviewer. Corrective action: align or remove local properties. Validation: validate markup and compare with visible content.
• Evidence: Avvo, SuperLawyers, state bar directory, and local directory listings that actually exist for the firm. Pass/Fail: pass when material listings are accurate and authorized; fail when stale or conflicting details remain. Severity: medium, higher for an authoritative licensing source. Owner: local search owner. Corrective action: correct source records where permitted. Validation: recheck published listings.
• Evidence: Organization structured data and the firm's actual practice descriptions. Pass/Fail: pass when declared services match what the firm actually offers; fail when markup lists unsupported practices or jurisdictions. Severity: high for misleading entity data. Owner: SEO lead and legal reviewer. Corrective action: remove unsupported service descriptions. Validation: compare source, visible page, and firm records.
• Evidence: similarity review across jurisdiction pages. Pass/Fail: pass when each dedicated location page exists for a genuine location or jurisdictional need and provides useful location-specific substance; fail when pages are near-duplicates created only to target place names. Severity: high for scaled thin content. Owner: editorial lead. Corrective action: consolidate weak pages or add genuinely distinct information. Validation: compare page purpose and content after revision.

Section 4: On-Page Keyword and Content Audit (8 items)

• Evidence: primary heading and page intent. Pass/Fail: use the source checklist's target keyword appears in H1 exactly once as an internal editorial check, not a ranking requirement; pass when the primary heading is unique, natural, and accurately describes the page. Severity: medium. Owner: editor. Corrective action: rewrite forced or duplicate headings. Validation: inspect the rendered heading hierarchy.
• Evidence: body copy and search intent. Pass/Fail: the historical checklist suggested a target keyword appears 2-3 times in body copy; treat that only as a source-preserved editorial reference. Pass when terminology is natural and sufficient for clarity, fail when repetition degrades readability or creates misleading emphasis. Severity: low to medium. Owner: editor. Corrective action: write for reader comprehension, not density. Validation: editorial reread.
• Evidence: subheadings, query data, and topic coverage. Pass/Fail: pass when related terms appear where they help answer real claimant questions; fail when variations are inserted mechanically. Severity: low to medium. Owner: editor. Corrective action: expand missing concepts with accurate language. Validation: compare revised copy with the intended query set.
• Evidence: meta description and visible page promise. Pass/Fail: pass when metadata accurately summarizes the page and avoids unsupported urgency or outcome claims; fail when it overpromises. Severity: medium. Owner: SEO editor. Corrective action: rewrite for accurate relevance. Validation: crawl the final metadata.
• Evidence: image purpose and alt attributes. Pass/Fail: pass when informative images have concise descriptive alternatives and decorative images are handled appropriately; fail when alt text is meaningless, such as image001. Severity: medium for accessibility. Owner: content producer. Corrective action: write purpose-based alt text. Validation: inspect the accessibility tree.
• Evidence: internal anchor text and destination relevance. Pass/Fail: pass when anchors describe the destination naturally; fail when generic click-here wording obscures context. Severity: low to medium. Owner: editor. Corrective action: replace vague anchors. Validation: crawl links and review in context.
• Evidence: content inventory and user intent. Pass/Fail: the source checklist referenced 800+ words for informational intent and 400-600 for transactional landing pages; preserve those as historical editorial heuristics only. Pass when the page is complete enough to answer its purpose without filler, regardless of length. Severity: medium when material information is missing. Owner: editorial lead. Corrective action: add necessary substance or remove padding. Validation: topic-completeness review.
• Evidence: sentence-level readability and claimant comprehension. Pass/Fail: the previous checklist used average sentence length under 20 words and Flesch reading ease above 50 as internal diagnostics; do not treat either as a ranking factor. Pass when legally accurate copy remains understandable to its intended audience. Severity: medium. Owner: editor and legal reviewer. Corrective action: simplify syntax without changing legal meaning. Validation: reread and rerun the same readability check.

Section 5: Technical and Compliance Checklist (6 items)

• Evidence: crawl protocol report and browser security state. Pass/Fail: pass when HTTPS is consistently used and mixed-content errors are absent; fail when insecure resources disrupt or downgrade the intake experience. Severity: high. Owner: developer. Corrective action: update resources and redirects. Validation: recrawl and inspect browser console output.
• Evidence: XML sitemap and canonical URL inventory. Pass/Fail: pass when the sitemap contains indexable tort and genuine jurisdiction pages that the firm intends search engines to discover; fail when important pages are missing or obsolete URLs remain. Severity: high. Owner: SEO lead. Corrective action: regenerate the sitemap from canonical inventory. Validation: fetch and compare the sitemap after deployment.
• Evidence: robots.txt, page robots directives, and crawl results. Pass/Fail: pass when intended indexable tort pages are not accidentally blocked; fail when directives conflict with publication intent. Severity: critical for blocked priority pages. Owner: developer and SEO lead. Corrective action: correct only the unintended restrictions. Validation: refetch directives and recrawl.
• Evidence: redirect map and crawl chain report. Pass/Fail: pass when required redirects resolve directly to the intended canonical destination; fail when chains add unnecessary hops or point to the wrong tort page. Severity: medium to high. Owner: developer. Corrective action: update redirect sources to the final destination. Validation: rerun the redirect report.
• Evidence: responsive rendering, mobile interaction, and indexability checks. Pass/Fail: pass when the same essential content and intake path are usable on mobile; fail when responsive defects hide or block key content. Severity: high. Owner: front-end developer and QA. Corrective action: fix layout and interaction problems. Validation: repeat mobile tests on representative pages.
• Evidence: intake-page disclosures, attorney review notes, and applicable advertising requirements. Pass/Fail: pass only when required notices are current, accurate, and reviewed for the relevant jurisdictions; fail when disclosure status cannot be verified. Severity: critical. Owner: responsible attorney or compliance reviewer. Corrective action: revise, add, or remove language based on applicable rules. Validation: responsible reviewer approves the published version.

TIER 1 (This Week) - Treat these as urgent verification tasks when evidence shows a broken intake or crawl path:

• Evidence: structured-data output and rendered form. Pass/Fail: pass when any markup accurately describes visible content and validates; fail when unsupported types or properties are present. Severity: high if misleading. Owner: SEO lead and developer. Corrective action: remove or repair markup. Validation: use the Schema.org validator and compare it with the page.
• Evidence: every priority tort landing page and its contact path. Pass/Fail: pass when a usable inquiry path is present and appropriate; fail when users hit a dead end. Severity: high. Owner: intake operations. Corrective action: restore the path without adding unnecessary fields. Validation: complete a controlled submission.
• Evidence: submission confirmation and analytics event. Pass/Fail: pass when successful inquiries are recorded once and can be reconciled with intake; fail when tracking is absent or duplicates events. Severity: high. Owner: analytics owner. Corrective action: repair event logic. Validation: compare test submissions with recorded events.
• Evidence: mobile interaction capture. Pass/Fail: pass when the form is fully usable without horizontal scrolling or hidden controls; fail when layout blocks completion. Severity: high. Owner: front-end developer. Corrective action: fix responsive styling. Validation: retest representative devices.

TIER 2 (Next 2-3 Weeks) - Use this planning window for structural cleanup after urgent failures are controlled:

• Evidence: business records, profile data, website details, and citations. Pass/Fail: pass when genuine location information is accurate; fail when conflicting data remains. Severity: medium to high. Owner: local search owner. Corrective action: correct authoritative sources. Validation: rerun the comparison.
• Evidence: page-similarity review and intent map. Pass/Fail: pass when each tort page has a distinct, useful purpose; fail when duplicated templates compete for the same intent. Severity: high. Owner: SEO and editorial leads. Corrective action: consolidate or differentiate based on real user needs. Validation: recrawl and remap queries.
• Evidence: location inventory, H1 usage, and actual practice coverage. Pass/Fail: pass when a state-specific page exists only where there is a genuine jurisdictional need and substantive local information; fail when pages are created solely for nominal targeting. Severity: high. Owner: editorial and legal reviewers. Corrective action: consolidate unsupported pages. Validation: review the final location set.
• Evidence: FAQ content and markup on the top 5-10 case-type pages selected by business importance. Pass/Fail: pass when reader questions are useful and any structured data is accurate and supported; fail when FAQ content exists only for markup. Severity: medium. Owner: editor and SEO lead. Corrective action: improve content and remove unsupported markup. Validation: content review and schema validation.

TIER 3 (Next Month) - Address durable information architecture and authority signals after the core site is reliable:

• Evidence: internal-link graph. Pass/Fail: pass when priority tort and genuine location pages receive relevant contextual links; fail when they are isolated. Severity: medium. Owner: SEO lead. Corrective action: add useful internal links. Validation: recrawl the graph.
• Evidence: external citations that actually reference the firm. Pass/Fail: pass when material listings are accurate; fail when outdated details persist. Severity: medium. Owner: local search owner. Corrective action: request corrections where permitted. Validation: recheck the live records.
• Evidence: approved testimonials or outcome summaries and their supporting records. Pass/Fail: pass when authorized, accurate, contextualized, and reviewed; fail when confidentiality, substantiation, or advertising concerns remain. Severity: critical. Owner: responsible attorney. Corrective action: remove or revise unapproved material. Validation: legal re-review.
• Evidence: topic map and existing internal links. Pass/Fail: pass when broad resources lead to genuinely related tort pages without inventing a named framework; fail when clusters are built around duplicated or irrelevant pages. Severity: medium. Owner: SEO and editorial leads. Corrective action: reorganize around actual user questions. Validation: recrawl and review navigation paths.

A previously published operating estimate associated traction with 4-6 weeks after Tier 1 fixes and described Tier 2 work as compounding over 2-3 months; because no supporting source URL is embedded here, retain these only as historical planning assumptions pending source reconciliation, not expected performance. Tier 3 remains an ongoing maintenance category.

Important: This checklist is educational and cannot guarantee compliance; responsible legal, medical, or regulatory reviewers remain required where their review is relevant to advertising claims, intake language, health-related statements, privacy, endorsements, or jurisdiction-specific obligations.

Disclosures and jurisdiction statements

Do not assume one disclaimer works everywhere. Collect the actual landing page, intended audience, attorney licensing information, office facts, referral or co-counsel arrangements, testimonial use, and any outcome language, then route that evidence to the reviewer responsible for the jurisdictions involved. The review should determine what must be stated, where it must appear, and whether any language should be removed.

The related benchmark discussion can help teams separate historical marketing observations from site-specific evidence, but it is not a source of legal-advertising requirements.

ABA Model Rule 7.1 review prompt

Use the rule reference as a prompt to examine whether statements about the firm, services, comparisons, likely results, or prior outcomes could mislead a reasonable reader. Adoption and interpretation vary by jurisdiction, so the responsible attorney should check the controlling rules rather than relying on this checklist's paraphrase.

Testimonials and endorsements

Where testimonials, endorsements, or success stories appear, preserve the evidence supporting them, confirm permissions and confidentiality treatment, and review applicable FTC guidance plus jurisdiction-specific professional rules. Do not select only favorable reviewers through review gating, discourage negative feedback, or use incentives that make the presentation misleading.

Validation step: retain a dated record of what was reviewed, who approved it, what source material was consulted, and which published page version was checked so later changes can be routed back through review.

Turn the 47-point checklist into a working register rather than a one-time score. For each line, save the evidence, record pass or fail, select severity, assign an accountable owner, describe the corrective action, and attach the validation result after deployment.

What the working version should retain:

• All 47 items, with evidence links or screenshots stored beside the finding
• Priority tier assignments (Tier 1, 2, 3) used for sequencing rather than as promises of impact
• An impact field tied to a specific risk such as crawlability, indexation, misleading content, intake failure, privacy, accessibility, or advertising review
• An effort estimate owned by the person doing the work, not a generic template assumption
• Resource references limited to tools, documentation, and compliance materials actually used during validation

The source checklist previously estimated that Tier 1 items could take 5-10 hours with basic technical access and that Tier 2 and 3 work could unfold over 4-8 weeks. No supporting source URL is embedded for those estimates, so preserve them only as historical planning references that require reconciliation with your own site scope, staffing, and review dependencies.

Request the PDF checklist and use it as an evidence register, not as proof that a page is compliant or that rankings will improve.

After completing the 47-point review, use the score only as a triage aid. The underlying failures matter more than the percentage, and any critical legal-advertising, privacy, accessibility, crawl, or intake defect should outrank cosmetic optimization.

If your score is above 35/47 (75%+ completion):

The fundamentals appear largely documented, but do not assume the remaining failures are low risk. Use the comprehensive audit guide to investigate root causes such as query overlap, internal authority distribution, measurement gaps, and competitor coverage with page-level evidence.

If your score is 20-35/47 (40-75% completion):

Sequence Tier 1 and Tier 2 findings by severity, not by convenience. After Tier 2 work is validated, rerun the same evidence checks so the score changes only when a documented failure actually becomes a pass. Then escalate interacting problems to the audit guide.

If your score is below 20/47 (<40% completion):

Prioritize structural reliability before optional enhancements. Review the mass tort SEO hub page for foundational guidance on information architecture, tort-page purpose, and intake measurement, then return to the checklist with clear owners and evidence requirements.

Regardless of score, route pages containing legal claims, medical descriptions, testimonials, outcomes, privacy language, or jurisdiction statements through the responsible reviewers before publication. Record validation separately from SEO completion so a technical pass is never mistaken for legal or regulatory approval.