00Primer · 35 min
Before You Start: How HTTP Works
The six steps between typing an address and seeing a page, and the status codes the server answers with. Its own short course; about 35 minutes.
1The eight modules
Goal. Explain, without a plugin in the room, why a Richmond business searching for IT help sees the pages it sees, and leave the site maintainer with a keyword plan, a site triage and a baseline that the Rank Math course builds on.
Done when. The keyword plan from module 06 has one row per search Hermetic cares about, the PageSpeed and hostname checks from module 07 are recorded, and the first monthly review entry from module 08 exists.
Before you start
How the web answers
A short course of its own, shared with the technicians.
Part 1
How search works
What a search is for, what Google does with a page, and what it ranks on.
01Module · 45 to 75 min
What a Search Is For
The four kinds of search and the Richmond MSP version of each, how people type and refine, organic against paid, phone against desktop, and why Google punishes manipulation.
02Module · 45 to 75 min
Crawl, Index and Rank
What Google does to a page in order, the words of a query and the operators, the index and the Knowledge Graph, the anatomy of a results page, and site: and Search Console as windows into the index.
03Module · 45 to 75 min
What Google Ranks On
Relevance, E-E-A-T, links and anchor text, local signals, freshness, legitimacy and source diversity, user behavior data, and the negative factors, each read against a ten-person MSP site.
Part 2
Our site and our searches
Taking stock of the site, then finding and valuing the words people type.
04Module · 45 to 75 min
Taking Stock of the Site
The triage: the agency's work, manipulation left behind, changes that can hurt, technical problems, the asset inventory, three competitors, the information architecture, and the baseline.
05Module · 45 to 75 min
Keyword Research
The topics list from the ten services, the keyword plan sheet, what Search Console, tickets, technicians and clients tell you, and what autocomplete, People also ask and Trends add.
06Module · 45 to 75 min
Valuing Keywords and Mapping Them to Pages
Relevance scores, business priority, the low-traffic filter, breaking hard terms into reachable ones, current rank, the opportunity score, SERP space, and the hand-off to the page map.
Part 3
Keeping it healthy
The WordPress and hosting setup, and what to do when Google changes the rules.
07Module · 45 to 75 min
Setting Up WordPress for Search
Hosting and server response, HTTPS and one hostname, permalinks, the page builder, images, caching and Cloudflare, Core Web Vitals, the phone layout, and staging sites.
08Module · 45 to 75 min
Algorithm Updates, Quality and Recovery
The kinds of update, Google Search Essentials, quality and weak content, links Google dislikes and the disavow tool, manual actions, diagnosing a traffic drop, and the monthly measure.