About the Author
Corey Morris is the President and CEO of VOLTAGE, a search marketing and website agency for expertise-driven organizations. He has spent more than two decades in digital marketing and SEO, and he wrote the book on the Digital Marketing Success Plan® (DMSP), the planning process VOLTAGE uses with clients. Corey has published more than 150 articles and expert contributions across Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land, and Forbes over nearly a decade, and he still writes regularly for the first two. His Search Engine Journal articles alone have been read nearly 1.7 million times. He has spoken at SMX, Digital Summit, and SMPS. He's also a sought-after podcast and media guest, with more than 75 speaking, podcast, and media appearances. He served as an officer on the board of the global search marketing trade association, founded a Kansas City search marketing conference, and was named the 2019 KCDMA Marketer of the Year.
Many SEO teams have a backlog, and it usually starts with the right intent. An audit identifies technical issues, keyword research points to new opportunities, content ideas get documented, and tools generate research-based recommendations. Over time, all of it gets organized into a list of work to be done.
On the surface, that backlog feels like progress. It shows there’s no shortage of ideas and no lack of effort. In practice, though, an SEO backlog can turn into a growing collection of tasks without clear priority, context, or connection to outcomes, and instead of driving progress, it quietly slows it down.
When everything is a priority, nothing is.
A typical SEO backlog includes a mix of technical fixes, content updates, optimization ideas, and new opportunities, and probably some research and testing for being found in large language models (LLMs) layered in as well. Each item might be valid on its own. The issue is how they’re managed together.
Without clear prioritization, everything gets treated as important. Teams move from one task to the next based on urgency, availability, or internal pressure rather than impact.
As a result, effort gets spread across too many areas at once. Work is completed, but it doesn’t build on itself and there’s no compounding effect. What’s usually missing is sequencing.
Backlogs age faster than you think.
SEO doesn’t stand still. Search behavior changes, content evolves, and business priorities shift, but many backlogs don’t keep up.
Recommendations that were valuable months ago may no longer matter today. Pages referenced in an audit may have already been updated. New priorities may have emerged, while older tasks are still sitting in the queue.
Over time, the backlog becomes a mix of current opportunities and outdated ideas, and without regular review, it’s difficult to tell the difference. That creates a situation where teams are doing work that is technically correct but strategically irrelevant.
Activity without direction doesn’t create momentum.
From the outside, a backlog-driven SEO effort can look productive. Tasks are getting completed, updates are being made, and reports show ongoing activity.
Inside the program, though, there’s often a lack of clarity about what actually changed, what moved the needle, and what should be done next.
Without defined initiatives or milestones, it’s difficult to connect effort to results. The work feels continuous but not directional, and when that happens, SEO starts to feel like maintenance instead of growth.
Shift from working the backlog to working the priorities.
You don’t need to eliminate your backlog. A better move is to change how you use it.
A backlog should be a place to capture ideas, insights, and opportunities. It should not be the driver of daily execution.
Instead of asking, “What’s next on the list?” the better question is, “What will have the greatest impact right now?” That shift moves SEO from reactive task management to intentional execution.
Turn the backlog into focused work.
Once you shift the focus to impact, the way you approach the work changes. Instead of working through dozens of unrelated tasks, you group efforts around a clear objective. That objective might be improving performance on a set of high-value pages, strengthening a topic area, or resolving a technical issue that is limiting visibility.
The backlog still plays a role, but now it supports a defined initiative instead of competing for attention.
This creates focus, and it also makes it easier to communicate what is being worked on and why. As you shift your thinking and how you organize work, I’d encourage you to consider an approach that includes sprints.
Define what “done” looks like.
Backlogs are endless by nature, and there is always more that could be done. Meaningful work still needs a defined endpoint.
If you set out to improve a specific group of pages, there should be a point where that work is complete. If you focus on a technical issue, there should be a clear resolution.
Defining “done” creates clarity for both the team and stakeholders. It allows you to evaluate results, document what changed, and decide what to prioritize next. Without that definition, SEO becomes an ongoing process with no clear outcomes.
Measure outcomes over task completion.
One of the biggest limitations of backlog-driven SEO is how performance is measured. Backlogs encourage tracking what was completed, like how many items were addressed and how many fixes were implemented, and completion doesn’t equal impact.
To understand whether your work is effective, you have to look at outcomes. Did visibility improve for the right queries? Did traffic quality change? Did conversion behavior improve? Did business and return on investment (ROI) metrics move?
Those are the metrics that matter, and they’re much easier to evaluate when work is grouped into focused efforts rather than scattered across a long list.
Keep your backlog useful.
Backlogs are still valuable when they’re managed intentionally. That means revisiting them regularly, removing outdated items, and re-prioritizing based on current goals. It also means adding context so each item connects to a broader objective.
If your backlog hasn’t changed in months, it’s worth asking whether your strategy has evolved, because in SEO, standing still is rarely an option.
Prioritized SEO connects to the bigger picture.
When SEO work is prioritized and structured, it becomes easier to align with other marketing efforts. Sorry if you’re a frequent reader and you’re tired of me bringing this up.
Content, paid search, and website experience can support the same goals instead of operating independently. Reporting becomes clearer because it’s tied to defined initiatives, and stakeholders gain visibility into what is being done and why it matters. SEO shifts from a list of tasks to a coordinated part of a larger strategy.
Momentum comes from prioritization.
SEO programs rarely lack ideas, and where they struggle is prioritization. Backlogs give you a place to store what could be done, but they don’t tell you what should be done, and that decision requires focus, alignment, and a clear understanding of impact.
The goal has always been building momentum and moving the business forward. If you want help turning your backlog into a focused plan, our SEO services are built around that kind of prioritized work.