---
name: seo-change-lifecycle
description: Use when auditing a content site's SEO, proposing metadata changes, or evaluating whether an applied SEO change helped. Treat findings as measured conditions and close the loop through approval, delivered-output verification, and delayed Search Console comparison.
license: MIT
source: adapted from https://github.com/citeworthyio/seo-agent/blob/b78bb487f2819c3c7cc2ba6f3f5626ea0b841840/README.md (How it works, Findings lifecycle, Analytics)
---

# SEO Change Lifecycle

An SEO edit is not complete when source content changes. It is complete only
after the served page is recrawled and the outcome has had time to emerge in
search data. Use this loop for metadata and technical on-page changes.

## 1. Snapshot what crawlers actually receive

Start from the sitemap and fetch every listed final URL. Record the delivered
status, title, meta description, canonical, robots directive, OpenGraph image,
and JSON-LD types. Do not audit templates or CMS fields in place of the response:
an edge rewrite, stale cache, redirect, or failed deployment can make the served
page disagree with its source.

If no usable sitemap exists, use a bounded, same-origin link crawl and label the
result incomplete. A link crawl cannot find orphan pages, so absence from that
sample is not evidence that a page does not exist.

## 2. Diagnose deterministic conditions

Prefer repeatable rules whose evidence can be preserved and checked again. At a
minimum, inspect:

- sitemap URLs returning errors or redirects;
- missing titles, duplicate titles, and titles whose core exceeds 60 characters
  or whose delivered total exceeds 80;
- missing descriptions, descriptions shorter than 70 or longer than 160
  characters, and descriptions ending in `...` because upstream truncation can
  hide an over-long source value;
- missing or off-page canonicals;
- `noindex` pages still present in the sitemap;
- missing `og:image` and missing `Article` JSON-LD on known article routes.

Decode HTML entities before length checks so `&` counts as the one character a
reader sees. Key each finding by `(path, rule)`: keep it open while the condition
persists and auto-resolve it only when a fresh crawl no longer reproduces it.
This makes findings sensors, not tickets someone can close without fixing the
underlying page.

## 3. Draft a constrained proposal

Give a drafter the page's observed content, the exact failed rule, the current
served value, and the site's positive style guidance. Require the smallest field
change that can clear the finding. Use deterministic surgery when there is one
right answer (for example, removing a duplicated brand suffix or replacing a
canonical with the page's own normalized URL); a model adds risk without value.

Validate model output outside the model. Reject an unchanged value, forbidden
terms, a title that includes a suffix the publishing layer will append, or copy
outside the agreed length and sentence constraints. An invalid proposal is no
proposal, not a reason to relax the gate.

## 4. Review, apply, journal, and recrawl

Require human approval by default. Record the old value, approved value, field,
path, timestamp, and a reversible change identifier. After applying, fetch the
public URL again and compare the delivered field with the approved value. Keep
the finding in an `applied, awaiting recrawl` state until that comparison passes.

This extra verification catches the failures source inspection misses: a wrong
cache key, route gap, stale CDN response, lost edge binding, or deployment that
never reached the serving path. A successful write to a CMS or override store is
not proof that crawlers see the change.

## 5. Measure impact without claiming causation

Use page-level Search Console data, not site-wide totals. Leave a three-day
settling gap after the change, then compare equal 14-day before/after windows;
repeat with 28-day windows when enough data exists. Compare clicks and
impressions as per-day rates and CTR/position as impression-weighted averages.
Do not calculate a verdict if either window is absent or the two windows total
fewer than 50 impressions.

Treat a relative CTR movement of about 15% or an average-position movement of
about 1.0 as a review signal, with impression shifts checked for confounding.
Call the result correlation, never causation: seasonality, algorithm changes,
competitors, and query-mix changes remain plausible explanations. A negative
signal should open a review/revert decision, not trigger an automatic rollback.