Blog Post SEO Checklist for B2B Teams Before Publishing

A blog post is ready to publish when it passes four groups of checks: the page answers one clear buyer question, the things a searcher sees before clicking (title, description, URL) describe that answer accurately, the body is usable and linked into the rest of the site, and every business fact has someone who approved it. A fifth group comes after publishing, when you confirm that the public URL can be crawled and indexed. Passing all of them does not guarantee indexing, ranking or enquiries. Google says so directly in its description of how Search works: it does not guarantee to crawl, index or serve any page.

The checks apply whether a person, an AI assistant or both produced the draft.

What an SEO checklist is for

An SEO checklist is a short list of conditions you verify on a page before and after it goes live, so that avoidable mistakes do not reach the public site. That is all it is. It catches a title that promises something the body never delivers, an image with no description, a new post nothing links to, a page accidentally blocked from indexing.

It cannot make a thin article useful. Google's guidance on helpful content asks whether a page provides original information and a substantial description of its topic, and no tick box supplies either. Use the list to protect a good draft, and fix a weak draft by rewriting it.

The checklist, with what a pass looks like

Each row has a pass condition you can verify by looking at the page. If a row fails, it gets a named owner and stays open.

Before you edit a single sentence

Check	Pass looks like	Fail looks like
One reader, one task	You can write the purpose in one sentence: who is reading, what they must decide, under what conditions	"Cover the topic of valves"
No existing page does this job	A search of your own site for the main phrase shows no post answering the same question	An older post with a near-identical title is still live
Right page type	The reader wants to learn, compare or diagnose	The reader wants a specific product's specifications or price, which belongs on a product page

The second row saves the most work. If an older post already answers the question, improving it usually beats publishing a second one; the update or write new guide covers that decision, and two live posts on one question create the overlap described in the keyword cannibalization guide. For the third row, see blog versus landing page.

What the searcher sees before clicking

Check	Pass looks like	Fail looks like
Title	Describes this page specifically, in the words a buyer would use, with nothing the body does not deliver	"Home", a keyword list, or "best" and "certified" with no evidence behind them
Meta description	A unique one- or two-sentence summary of what the page answers	Empty, copied from another post, or a string of keywords
URL	Readable words separated by hyphens	An ID number, a date-stamped draft slug, underscores
Main heading	One visible heading that matches the title's promise	The heading and the title describe different articles

Three notes on what Google publishes about these elements, because a lot of checklist advice goes further than the documentation does.

Google's page on title links asks for descriptive, concise titles and warns against keyword stuffing and boilerplate. It states no character limit. It says long titles are truncated as needed, typically to fit the device width. The same page lists other sources Google may draw on for the title it shows, including headings on the page. So a pass means the title and the main heading agree, and a character count is a convenience for you.

The snippet documentation says snippets are created automatically from page content, and that Google sometimes uses the meta description when it describes the page more accurately than text taken from the page. Write the description for the reader who is deciding whether to click, and expect it to be replaced for some queries.

For URLs, Google's URL structure guidelines recommend readable words over long ID numbers and hyphens over underscores. Set the slug before publishing. Changing it later means a redirect and a round of link updates.

The body

Check	Pass looks like	Fail looks like
Opening	The first two paragraphs give the answer and say when it changes	Three paragraphs of industry background before anything useful
Headings	Each heading names a decision or a step, so a reader can find their part by scanning	Headings that repeat the keyword with different adjectives
Images	Each image explains something, shows your own product or is used with permission, and has alt text describing what is in it	A stock photo of a different product, alt text missing or stuffed with keywords
Tables	Readable on a phone, every figure traceable to an approved source	A comparison table whose cells nobody checked
Next step	The reader knows what to do after reading	The page simply stops, or every section ends in "contact us"

Alt text is the item most often left blank. Google's image best practices ask for descriptive alt text written in the context of the page, and warn that filling it with keywords makes for a bad experience and can cause a site to be seen as spam. The same page recommends short, descriptive filenames and placing images near the text they relate to. A workable test: read the alt text aloud to someone who cannot see the image. "Cross-section of a 2-inch ball valve showing the PTFE seat" passes. "Valve valve supplier industrial valve" fails.

Links

Check	Pass looks like	Fail looks like
Links out to your own pages	Two to four links to pages a reader would want next, each with anchor text that names the destination	"Click here", or a link to the homepage for every mention
Links in from your own pages	At least one existing page links to the new post, added on publishing day	The post is reachable only through the blog archive
Links to other sites	Each one supports the sentence it sits in and opens the page you meant	A source cited from memory, or a link that now redirects elsewhere
Link markup	Every link is a normal anchor element with an href	Navigation that only works through a script

The count in the first row is our working default. It is not a Google rule. Google's link best practices say there is no ideal number of links for a page, and that every page you care about should have a link from at least one other page on your site. That second statement is the source of the "links in" row, which is the half teams skip: a new post gets outgoing links while it is being written and never receives one. The internal linking guide has a decision rule for which pages should link to which.

Facts and approval

Check	Pass looks like	Fail looks like
Specifications	Each tolerance, rating, lead time and minimum order matches a document the company has approved	A figure that "sounds right"
Certifications	The certificate is current and the claim names what it actually covers	"ISO certified" with no scope, or a certificate that lapsed
Third-party claims	The linked source says what the sentence says	The source is about a neighbouring topic
Author and date	A reader can see who is responsible for the page	No author, or a date changed to look recent with nothing else updated

Tables deserve the same scrutiny as paragraphs here. An AI-drafted comparison can place an invented tolerance in a cell while the surrounding prose stays cautious. The AI fact-checking guide describes a way to trace every claim to its origin.

Example: one draft through the checklist

Example. Harlow Valve Works is a fictional manufacturer, invented for this article. Its marketing lead has a draft titled "Ball Valves: Everything You Need to Know".

Check	Result	What changed
One reader, one task	Fail	Purpose rewritten as: a maintenance engineer replacing a leaking valve on a steam line needs to know which seat material survives the temperature
No existing page	Fail	A 2023 post, "Ball valve seat materials", already existed. The draft was merged into it instead of published separately
Title	Fail	Changed to "Ball Valve Seat Materials for Steam Service: How to Choose"
Meta description	Fail	Was empty. Now one sentence naming the materials compared and the conditions covered
Opening	Fail	Two paragraphs on the history of valves removed. The answer now comes first
Images	Fail	A stock photo of a gate valve replaced with the company's own cross-section drawing, with alt text
Tables	Open	The temperature limit for one seat material had no source. Assigned to the engineering manager, and the cell stays blank until she confirms
Links in	Fail	Links added from the steam valve product page and from one older post
Certifications	Pass	The post makes no certification claim

Eight rows failed or stayed open, and none of them was about keywords. The largest fix came from the row that asked whether the page should exist at all.

After publishing: confirm the public URL in Search Console

Publishing moves the review from the draft to the live address. Do this the same day.

1. Open the public URL in a private browser window, signed out of the CMS. Confirm the title, body, images and links appear as approved.
2. In Search Console, paste the full URL into the inspection bar at the top. The URL Inspection tool reports on the version Google last indexed, which for a new post will usually be "not on Google" yet.
3. Run the live test. It fetches the page in real time. You are looking for a page that can be crawled and is allowed to be indexed. A noindex left over from staging shows up here.
4. Check the canonical. The tool shows the canonical you declared and, once the page is indexed, the one Google selected. On a new post the declared canonical should be the post's own URL.
5. Request indexing if you want to. Google's help page states that a request does not guarantee the page will appear in the index and that there is a daily limit on requests.
6. Confirm the post appears in your sitemap and that the internal links you planned are live.

Record four separate states in your notes: approved, published, indexing requested, confirmed indexed. They happen on different days and are easy to blur into "done". If the page is still absent after a few weeks, work through the blog indexing guide before touching the text. Rewriting a sound article will not repair a blocked URL.

Checks you can drop

Some items appear on many checklists and have no support in Google's documentation. Removing them shortens the review.

• Keyword density. Google's SEO starter guide says repeating the same words excessively is tiring for users and that keyword stuffing is against its spam policies. It gives no target percentage.
• A minimum word count. The same guide says the length of content alone does not matter for ranking purposes. A post should be as long as the answer needs.
• The keywords meta tag. The guide states that Google Search does not use it.
• Strict heading order. The guide says that, from Google Search's perspective, it does not matter if headings are used out of order. Ordered headings still help people and screen readers, so keep them tidy for that reason.

Running the list on older posts

The same rows work on a post published two years ago, with one addition: start from evidence. Open the Performance report in Search Console, filter to the post's URL, and read the queries it appears for. If those queries describe a different question from the one the post answers, the title and opening are the first things to fix.

Then rerun the facts group. Specifications, certificates and lead times drift, and an old post with a lapsed certificate is a liability. Change the visible date only when the content changed substantially; Google's helpful-content guidance lists changing dates to seem fresh as a warning sign. The content refresh checklist has the full sequence.

Frequently asked questions

How long should a title and meta description be?

Google's documentation gives no character limit for either and says both are truncated as needed to fit the device. Put the specific part first, so that a shortened version still says what the page is about.

Should every post have a sales call to action?

Every post should have a next step that fits the reader. For someone still choosing a material, a specification checklist or a related guide fits better than a quote form.

Who approves certifications and specifications?

The person in the company who holds the current evidence. If the writer does not have it, the claim waits or comes out. Blogo handles this by asking the owner three to five questions before it writes, and a figure appears in the draft only if it is in those answers or on the page linked in that sentence; the fact-checking documentation describes the rule.

Do we need to run the whole list for every post?

Yes for the facts group and the after-publishing group, since an error in either is public. The rest becomes quick once the team has run it a few times.