SEO Client Onboarding Questionnaire & Access Log

Business, Goals & KPIs

When to use: Use this section to understand what the business actually does, who decides what, and what success looks like in measurable terms.

Business, Goals & KPIs

Answer in as much detail as you can. There are no wrong answers, and this saves time on our kickoff call.

• In one or two sentences, what does your business do and who do you serve? [Your answer]
• What are your most profitable products or services? [Top offerings]
• What is the single most important outcome you want from SEO over the next 12 months? [Primary goal]
• Which business metrics matter most: leads, online sales, calls, bookings, or something else? [KPIs]
• What is the average value of a customer or lead to you? [Value]
• Are there specific products, locations, or pages you most want to grow? [Priorities]

Decision-making:

1. Who is our main point of contact? [Name, role, email]
2. Who has final sign-off on strategy and spend? [Approver]

Target Audience & Market

When to use: Use this section to define who you are trying to reach, where they are, and how they describe their problems in their own words.

Target Audience & Market

Understanding your customers helps us match the language, intent, and locations behind real searches.

• Who is your ideal customer? Describe them in plain terms. [Audience description]
• What problems are they trying to solve when they find you? [Pain points]
• What words or phrases do customers actually use to describe what you offer? [Customer language]
• Which geographic areas do you serve: local, regional, national, or international? [Service area]
• Do you have priority cities, regions, or countries? [Target locations]
• Are there audiences or markets you do not want to attract? [Exclusions]
• Is your buying cycle quick or considered (research over weeks)? [Sales cycle]

Helpful extras:

1. Do you have buyer personas or market research to share? [Link or attach]
2. What objections do prospects raise most often? [Common objections]

Current SEO, Assets & Access

When to use: Use this section to inventory existing tools and request access the right way, so you can audit performance from day one.

Current SEO, Assets & Access

We will request access through each platform's own invite system, at the lowest role that lets us do the work. The client keeps ownership of every account. Please never send passwords in plain text over email or chat.

• What platform is your website built on (CMS)? [e.g. WordPress, Shopify]
• Who manages your website day to day? [Internal or agency]
• Do you have Google Analytics installed? Please add us as a user. [Property name]
• Do you have Google Search Console set up? Please grant access. [Verified property]
• Do you use Google Business Profile or Bing Webmaster Tools? [Yes / No]
• Have you done SEO before, in-house or with an agency? [History]
• Can you share any past audits, reports, or keyword lists? [Attach]

Access checklist:

1. CMS editor or admin access (or a contact who can publish). [Method]
2. Any existing SEO tool logins via secure invite or a password manager share. [Tool]

Competitors

When to use: Use this section to identify both business rivals and search rivals so you can benchmark and find realistic opportunities.

Competitors

Your toughest competitors in search are not always your toughest competitors in business. Help us see both.

• Who are your top three to five business competitors? [Names and websites]
• Which competitors do you most want to outrank in search? [Priority rivals]
• Are there websites you admire or want to emulate, even outside your industry? [Inspiration]
• What do competitors offer that you do not, or vice versa? [Differences]
• What makes you genuinely different or better? [Your edge]
• Have you lost business to a specific competitor recently? [Details]

For context:

1. Are there larger players you do not expect to beat but want to learn from? [Aspirational]
2. Any competitor tactics you have noticed (ads, content, reviews)? [Observations]

We will validate these against the websites actually ranking for your priority terms.

Content, Brand & Approvals

When to use: Use this section to capture brand voice, content resources, and the review process so published work matches your standards.

Content, Brand & Approvals

Clear brand guidance and a defined approval path keep content on-message and moving.

• Do you have brand guidelines, a style guide, or a tone-of-voice document? [Attach]
• How would you describe your brand voice in three words? [Voice]
• Are there words, claims, or topics we must avoid? [Restrictions]
• Who creates content today, and do you have subject-matter experts we can interview? [Contacts]
• Do you have a logo pack, brand fonts, and approved imagery? [Assets]
• Are there legal, compliance, or regulatory rules we must follow? [Requirements]

Approval workflow:

1. Who reviews and approves content before it goes live? [Approver]
2. What turnaround can you commit to for reviews? [Timeframe]
3. Can our team publish directly, or do you publish on your side? [Process]

Success Metrics, Budget & Logistics

When to use: Use this section to align on how progress is measured, what resources exist, and how we will communicate, with realistic expectations.

Success Metrics, Budget & Logistics

SEO is a compounding investment that typically takes several months to show meaningful results, and no ethical provider can guarantee specific rankings. Let's agree on how we measure progress.

• How will you judge whether SEO is working? [Definition of success]
• What is your timeframe and any key deadlines or seasonal peaks? [Timeline]
• What monthly budget range are you working with for SEO? [Budget]
• Is there budget for content production, design, or development support? [Additional resources]
• Who needs to receive reports, and how often? [Reporting cadence]
• What is your preferred way to communicate and meet? [Channel]

Getting started:

1. Are there any constraints we should know now (rebrand, migration, freeze)? [Constraints]
2. When would you like the engagement to begin? [Start date]

Prior Work & Known Incidents

When to use: Capture what happened before you arrived, so you don't undo a deliberate decision or inherit blame for a drop that started earlier.

Prior work & known incidents

Traffic charts don't explain themselves. Ask about the past before you diagnose the present.

• Previous SEO providers: [agency or freelancer, dates, what they changed]
• Site migrations or redesigns: [date, old and new domain or platform, who ran it]
• Traffic or ranking drops you noticed: [month, pages affected, what you think caused it]
• Manual actions or security warnings in Search Console: [yes / no, date, resolved?]
• Disavow file uploaded: [yes / no, who has the latest copy]
• Tracking changes: [GA4 setup date, tag manager changes, consent banner changes]
• Bought links or paid placements: [yes / no / unsure, and roughly when]
• Anything we should not change: [legal copy, regulated claims, pages owned by another team]

Why it matters: a drop that began two months before you started is evidence, not your fault. A noindex that looks like a mistake may be a legal decision. Write both down before you touch anything.

Access Handover Log (fill-in)

When to use: One row per platform: the role you need, who invites you, who keeps ownership, when it was granted and when it comes off.

Access handover log

One row per platform. The client invites you; you never receive a password. When the engagement ends, the last column gets a date.

Rules

• Ownership stays with the client. Ask for Full user in Search Console, not Owner. The business should never depend on its agency to see its own data.
• Lowest role that does the job. Reading reports needs Analyst in GA4. Configuration work needs Editor. Ask for more only when a task needs it, and say which task.
• No passwords in this document, email or chat. If a platform has no user roles, the client shares one item from their password manager and rotates it when you leave.
• Offboarding is part of onboarding. Agree now that every role is removed within [5 working days] of the end date, and that the client confirms each row.

Access owner on the client side: [name, email] · Deadline for all invites: [date]

Worked Example (fictional B2B manufacturer)

When to use: A completed questionnaire summary and access log, showing the answers that actually change the first 30 days.

Worked example: Northgate Pumps

Example only. The company, people, URLs and figures are invented to show what a usable, filled-in version looks like.

The answers that shaped the plan

• Main goal: more quote requests for industrial pumps in the UK. Not traffic. Quote forms are tracked in GA4 as a key event.
• Approver: the marketing manager approves copy within 3 working days. Technical changes need the IT lead, who has one release window a week.
• Known incident: the site moved platforms 14 months ago. The previous agency redirected 300 product URLs to the homepage. Organic quote requests have not recovered since.
• Do not change: safety certification wording on product pages, which legal owns.

What it changed

Without the incident question, the first month would have gone into new content. Instead it went into fixing the 300 homepage redirects, because that is where the lost quote requests were. The approver answers also showed that technical fixes must be batched for the weekly release, so the plan was written in weekly batches.

Next step

Before the kickoff call, run a free website audit and an organic traffic check so you arrive with a dated baseline, labelled with the data source. If you onboard many clients, track each one as a pipeline stage with an owner and a due date for access. crmsoftware.pro is the CRM we built for small sales and support teams. Want us to run the engagement instead? See our SEO & GEO services.