A useful SEO and AEO experiment starts with a well-built website. This is the baseline I use for InterimCMO, and a checklist a lean marketing team can adapt for its own site.
Current status As of September 15, 2026, InterimCMO is public at interimcmo.com without a passcode. Direct Google Analytics 4 is active after visitor consent; page views, accepted newsletter requests, and accepted contact submissions were verified in Realtime on September 14. Search Console ownership verification, sitemap submission, indexing checks, and a recorded observation period remain open.
Content that earns attention and trust
- Clear positioning
- Identify the audience, the problem, and the value of the site. Make the next step obvious.
- Useful, original content
- Bring operator experience, specific examples, and evidence. Separate observations, opinions, and untested claims.
- Visible authorship
- Connect articles to a real author, relevant experience, and a contact route. Disclose material relationships.
- Readable structure
- Use descriptive headings, concise paragraphs, and relevant internal links. Add a contents menu when it helps readers navigate a long page.
A foundation search engines can read
- Rendered content and metadata
- Make important copy available in HTML. Give each page an accurate title, description, and canonical URL, with metadata available to browsers and crawlers.
- Discovery and page relationships
- Maintain a sitemap, intentional robots rules, working internal links, and clear breadcrumbs. Align every public URL with the production domain.
- Accurate structured data
- Identify the author, publication, and article where appropriate. Markup should match the visible content, not make unsupported claims.
- Honest dates and sharing previews
- Distinguish publication from meaningful updates. Check the title, description, and image shown when a page is shared.
Make it easy to act, without losing trust
- Working conversion paths
- Test newsletter signup and contact delivery, confirmation, errors, and mobile use. Keep contact inquiries separate from newsletter consent.
- Accessible, fast pages
- Check contrast, keyboard use, responsive layouts, image sizes, and unnecessary scripts. Test speed on the deployed site, not just the development preview.
- Clear data practices
- Explain which services process visitor information, collect only what is needed, and review new integrations before activation.
Public launch and the measurement starting point
- Public launch checks
- The canonical domain is interimcmo.com. The www and former ChatGPT Sites addresses redirect to matching pages; reviewer-only search restrictions have been removed. Canonical URLs, the sitemap, and sharing metadata use the public domain.
- Measurement that matches the goal
- Newsletter growth is the primary outcome. Direct GA4 measures consented page views and accepted newsletter and contact requests. Analytics remains opt-in worldwide; Google Tag Manager is not used. Form contents are excluded. Beehiiv is the source of truth for confirmed subscribers: an accepted request is not a confirmed subscription.
- Search Console setup
- The Google ownership-verification DNS record was added on September 14. Verification was still pending in the last setup check. Ownership confirmation, sitemap submission, and representative-page indexing checks remain to be completed; public access alone does not prove indexing.
- A recorded starting point
- Before the first Juma run, save the site version, test pages, available measurements, and observation period. The public launch and verified analytics installation on September 14 establish the setup baseline; no traffic, subscription-growth, ranking, or AI-citation results are claimed here. Missing data is not zero.
InterimCMO is a new site, not a mature traffic benchmark. The first Juma tests will evaluate editorial candidates, human corrections, publishing reliability, time, and cost. Search visibility and subscriptions will be tracked as they develop, without claiming that every change was caused by Juma.
You can adapt this checklist for your own site. See how it informs the Juma experiment.