The SEO lifecycle
Seven stages that run end to end. The point is not the stages themselves — it is that state persists between sessions, so the programme remembers what it found and what it predicted, and can be held to it later.
Run it
/pro-seo lifecycle # continue from wherever you left off
/pro-seo lifecycle status # what stage am I in, what is outstanding
/pro-seo lifecycle discover # jump to a named stageThe stages
Discover — What is actually true right now
Pulls real Search Console queries, crawls the site, checks the index, and researches competitors. Produces a keyword matrix and a SERP-verified cluster plan. Nothing is planned until this stage has evidence.
Plan — Decide what to build and in what order
Turns the discovery data into a strategy with phased roadmap, KPI baselines and an explicit falsifiability check — a date by which a specific number must move, or the diagnosis was wrong.
Build — Produce the content and the pages
Content briefs, then drafts, then the internal-link matrix that ties them together. Ships in waves rather than all at once, so each wave gives a clean read.
Optimize — Fix what the site already has
Technical fixes, schema, images, internal links, page experience. Usually the fastest wins in the whole programme because the pages already exist.
Authority — Earn the trust signals you cannot self-declare
Links, directory listings, review profiles, citations. Almost always the binding constraint for a young domain, and the slowest stage because it depends on other people.
Measure — Find out what actually happened
Checks the falsifiability conditions set in Plan. Reports on clicks and positions rather than impressions, which are easy to inflate and easy to misread.
Iterate — Feed the result back into the next cycle
Refresh decaying pages, retire what failed, and re-enter Discover with better information than you had the first time.
Why state persistence matters
Each stage writes to pro-seo-lifecycle.json: what it found, what it decided, and
what it expects to happen. That file is the difference between an SEO tool and an SEO programme.
The most useful thing it stores is the falsifiability check — a specific number and a specific date, written down in advance. If the pillar page has not reached the predicted position by the predicted date, the diagnosis was wrong, and the plan says so rather than quietly moving the goalposts.
What runs at each stage
| Stage | Skills it delegates to |
|---|---|
| Discover | keywords, cluster, google,
technical, backlinks |
| Plan | plan, content-brief, competitor-pages |
| Build | content-brief, internal-links, publish |
| Optimize | technical, schema, images,
sxo, geo |
| Authority | backlinks, local, competitor-pages |
| Measure | google, drift, report |
| Iterate | refresh, drift, keywords |