Crawl, index, intent — in that order. The technical layer gets fixed first, because ranking a page Google cannot crawl properly is impossible no matter how good the copy is. Then the keyword map is built against the competitors actually beating you. Then results get reported in plain numbers.
01 — The technical layer
- A full crawl: broken links, redirect chains, orphan pages, duplicate titles, crawl waste burning your budget on pages that will never rank.
- Core Web Vitals measured on a mid-range phone on a real connection. Lighthouse on a desktop with fibre tells you almost nothing about your customers.
- Indexation reconciled — what you think is indexed against what actually is, and why the gap exists.
- Structured data implemented and validated for your business type.
- Canonicals, sitemaps and robots directives that agree with each other.
02 — The query map
A keyword map is not a spreadsheet of search volumes. It is a decision about which page owns which intent, so your own pages stop competing with each other.
- Every target query assigned to exactly one page. Two pages chasing one query is a self-inflicted wound.
- Competitor gap analysis against the sites currently ranking, not the ones you consider your rivals in real life — they are often different.
- Local intent handled properly where it applies: town, region, campus, service area.
- Internal linking planned as a structure, so authority earned on one page reaches the pages that need it.
The MI-BOX Central NH build is this taken to its logical end — a statewide service area mapped across region, campus and trade vertical. Worth reading if your customers search by place.
03 — The reporting
Monthly, and in numbers you can check yourself: a technical log of what changed, ranking movement on the mapped queries, page speed, and form fills. Every report names the next fix and why it is next. If a month’s work did not move anything, the report says that too.
What this is not
There is no secret list of backlinks to buy and no trick that survives the next core update. This is crawlability, intent, content that answers the question completely, and internal structure — done consistently, and measured. Anyone promising otherwise is selling you a rebuild in eighteen months.