An SEO plan is the operating sheet for the next 90 days: which queries you will own, which URLs will own them, who ships the work, and how you will know it moved. It includes classic search and, in 2026, whether AI answers mention or cite you. It is not a vision deck.

What should an SEO planning template include?

A one-line outcome, a query → URL map, named owners, a publish/refresh queue, a weekly scorecard, and a first-class row for AI-search citation tracking. Technical crawl work belongs in the same plan so it cannot hide as a separate “later” project. This page is that template — copy the tables.

SEO plan vs SEO strategy template?

An SEO strategy template decides direction: market, positioning, the topics you will compete on. An SEO plan assigns the next 90 days of execution against that direction. People search both phrases for a sheet they can copy. Use strategy to choose the bets; use this plan to run them. If you arrived from “SEO strategy template” or “SEO planning template,” you are on the right page.

Is an SEO plan template the same as an SEO roadmap template?

Close enough to share one page. A roadmap is usually the sequence (what ships in which month). A plan is the sheet: owners, evidence, and the weekly scorecard. This template has both — the workstream table plus the 90-day outline. Copy it once; do not maintain a second “roadmap” URL.

Copy into Sheets or Notion

SEO Plan Template

Copy these tables into Sheets or Notion and fill the blanks. This is an SEO plan you can run for 90 days — keywords, pages, and AI-search citation tracking in the same sheet. It is not a file download and not a blog essay.

Jump to the tables Track AI citations

How to use this template

Select a table, copy it, paste into Sheets or Notion. Fill the blanks with your site — not with invented volumes. One owner. One 90-day horizon. AI-search citation tracking is a workstream, not a footnote.

1. Plan header

Write the outcome first. Everything else is how you get there.

Field	Fill this in
Primary outcome	What changes in 90 days if this plan works? (rankings, citations, pipeline — pick one lead metric)
Market / locale	Country and language you will actually publish and measure in
Site + CMS	Domain and where pages ship (WordPress, Webflow, Shopify, …)
Owner	One name. A plan with three owners is a status meeting.
Cadence	Weekly review day. Protect it.

2. Workstreams

Same sheet for crawl, pages, and citations. If AI search is missing, this is a 2016 plan.

Workstream	Job this quarter	Owner	Evidence
Technical crawl	Keep the URLs you care about fetchable, canonical, and in the sitemap.	—	Crawl errors, index coverage, robots/sitemap checks
Keyword + page map	One primary query per URL. Related terms sit on that page; they do not each get a thin URL.	—	Query → URL sheet, GSC impressions by page
Publish / refresh	Ship or update the pages the map says you are missing.	—	Published URL, date, and the query it owns
AI search / citation tracking	Track whether ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and AI Overviews mention or cite you for the same buyer prompts.	—	Prompt panel, mention/citation log, competitor named instead
Links + distribution	Earn or place links only where they support a live URL in the map.	—	Referring URL → target URL, not a raw domain-count goal

3. 90-day outline

Three windows. Each has a done-when so the plan cannot hide as “ongoing.”

Window	Focus	Done when
Days 1–30	Inventory and fix	Crawl and index issues on money URLs are closed, the query → URL map exists, and the AI prompt panel is written down.
Days 31–60	Publish the gaps	The missing pages (or refreshes) from the map are live, internally linked, and in the sitemap. Citation tracking has a first baseline.
Days 61–90	Measure and double down	You know which URLs moved in GSC and which prompts gained a mention or citation. Next quarter’s list is the winners plus the remaining gaps — not a new brainstorm.

4. Weekly scorecard

Review once a week. Empty cells are the point — fill them from your own data, never from a guessed search-volume column.

Signal	Where you read it	This week
Pages shipped or refreshed	CMS / changelog	—
GSC queries on target URLs	Search Console → Pages / Queries	—
AI mentions / citations	Prompt panel log (or Rankealo AI visibility)	—
Blocked by tech?	Crawl, robots, canonical, sitemap	—

Keep the plan attached to live work

Related terms, page maps, and citation tracking already have Rankealo surfaces. Use them from the sheet; do not clone a second tool.

Expand a seed into related ideas

Use the live keyword research tool when you need a wider related-term list for the page map.

Open the keyword research tool

Group terms into page-sized topics

Cluster the list before you assign URLs so one intent does not become ten thin pages.

Open the keyword clustering tool

Find related terms first

How to find LSI / related keywords from Google, Search Console, ranking pages, and AI answers — without a generator.

Read how to find LSI keywords

After you pick a tool

The comparison is the shortlist. This plan is what you run once the tool is chosen.

See the AI SEO tools comparison

Measure the citation row

The plan’s AI-search workstream needs a measurement surface: mentions and citations in Google AI Overviews.

Read AI overview tracking

SEO plan questions

Run the plan. Track the citations.

Rankealo plans, publishes, and monitors Google plus AI-search visibility so the scorecard is not a separate spreadsheet forever.

Start with Rankealo See AI visibility