About the Author
Corey is the owner and President/CEO of VOLTAGE. He is also founder and author of The Digital Marketing Success Plan® and the START Planning Process. Corey has spent 20+ years working in strategic and leadership roles focused on growing national and local client brands with award-winning, ROI-generating digital strategies. He's the recipient of the KCDMA 2019 Marketer of the Year award and his team at VOLTAGE has won nearly 100 local, national, and global awards for ROI-focused client work in the past decade.
SEO is a long game. It’s complex, technical, and ever-changing. It demands consistency — but consistency without structure can quickly become chaos.
Many teams try to solve that chaos with checklists. Over time, those lists of best practices have evolved into the standard playbook for “ongoing” SEO. But in practice, “always-on” often means “always-busy,” not “always-strategic.”
When optimization turns into an endless cycle of tasks, it loses direction. That’s why it’s time to think differently about how we plan and execute SEO — not as a permanent checklist, but as a series of focused, measurable sprints.
The Problem With Perpetual SEO
The idea of “always-on SEO” sounds appealing: steady progress, constant monitoring, and uninterrupted optimization. In reality, it often turns into motion without momentum.
Checklists can be full of the right tactics but lack prioritization and purpose. Everything becomes a task, but nothing is ranked by impact. Without clear objectives or defined endpoints, teams get trapped in activity for activity’s sake — updating content, fixing small issues, and chasing rankings that may not align with business goals.
That lack of direction drains time, focus, and resources. When results lag and the effort feels endless, teams lose confidence, and stakeholders start to question whether SEO works at all.
Why Sprint-Based SEO Works
A sprint-based model borrows from agile frameworks used in development and project management. It breaks the broader SEO effort into short, time-bound phases — usually around four to six weeks — each focused on a specific, measurable outcome.
Instead of working on everything at once, teams zero in on what matters most right now. Each sprint has its own theme, such as:
- Optimizing key landing pages for conversions
- Fixing technical crawl and index issues
- Improving internal linking
- Building topical authority through new content
By narrowing focus, teams gain clarity, momentum, and accountability. Every sprint ends with tangible deliverables, reported outcomes, and insights that inform the next one.
The result is a repeatable process that builds agility into a long-term strategy.
The Benefits of SEO Sprints
Sprint-based SEO provides both structure and flexibility — two things most checklists lack.
It creates natural points for review and learning. Each sprint includes a retrospective, allowing teams to see what worked, what didn’t, and what to prioritize next. That short feedback loop drives faster improvement and stronger alignment with business goals.
Sprints also bring clearer communication. Stakeholders understand what’s happening and when, without waiting months for results or explanations.
And because every sprint ties to defined objectives — such as increasing conversions, improving engagement, or supporting specific funnel stages — it’s easier to show how SEO contributes to ROI, not just rankings.
Most importantly, sprints help teams stay energized. When there’s a defined goal and a finish line, SEO feels purposeful again.
How to Start Working in Sprints
Shifting from “always-on” to sprint-based SEO doesn’t require rebuilding your entire process. It just requires planning and discipline.
Start with strategy. Identify your most important business goals and how organic search supports them. Then choose one high-impact objective for your first sprint. Make it specific and measurable — for example, “Increase organic conversions on our top five service pages,” not “Improve rankings.”
Create a backlog of opportunities but resist the urge to treat it as another checklist. Use it as input for future sprint planning, not as an overwhelming to-do list.
At the end of each sprint, review progress, document results, and define what comes next. Treat every sprint as a step toward smarter, faster, more intentional SEO.
When “Always-On” Still Matters
Some SEO work should remain ongoing — routine technical audits, monitoring crawl health, fixing broken links, maintaining site speed, and other foundational tasks.
Those efforts are the infrastructure that keeps your site healthy. But they’re not the strategy. They should support your broader sprint framework, not define it.
The key distinction is direction. Maintenance keeps your site running; sprints move it forward.
The Shift From Busy to Intentional
Endless checklists and reactive work can make SEO feel like a treadmill — constant movement, little progress. Sprint-based SEO creates a different rhythm: periods of focus, measurement, and adaptation.
By planning in defined bursts instead of perpetual cycles, marketing teams can connect SEO activity to real business outcomes, learn faster, and stay agile as search and AI-driven visibility continue to evolve.
It’s time to move from “always-on” to “always-progressing.”
This article is adapted from Corey Morris’s original piece published on Search Engine Journal: The Problem With Always-On SEO: Why You Need Sprints, Not Checklists.