After Launch: Improving and Circling Back

1The work that waits until now

Modules 01 to 09 skipped anything that did not have to be configured for the site to go live. That left a list. Some of it is cleanup of what the old site accumulated. Some of it is a spending decision. Some of it is a habit. This page covers all three, in the order they pay off.

2The monthly review loop

One loop, run once a month. It uses only the free Analytics tab and the free Instant Indexing module, both set up in module 06. The point of the loop is to pick one page a month and make it better, then confirm the change registered.

1. Open Rank Math SEO, then Analytics. Read the four numbers at the top: impressions, clicks, click-through rate, average position. Write them in the monthly log with the date. Google Search Console shows the same data with a 16-month history, so open it too when you want the longer view.
2. Pick one page. The best candidate has many impressions and few clicks (people see it and do not choose it), or sits at position 11 or worse for a search that matters (page two of Google). Take service pages before blog posts.
3. Improve it. Rewrite the SEO title and meta description using module 07's rules. Add a paragraph that answers the question the search is asking. Add two internal links from other pages to it. Fix any test in the meta box that is red.
4. Resubmit it. Rank Math SEO, then Instant Indexing, then Submit URLs, pastes the URL to Bing and the other IndexNow engines. For Google, use URL Inspection in Search Console and click Request Indexing.
5. Check next month. Open last month's page in the Analytics tab. Compare impressions, clicks and position with the log. If nothing moved after two months, the page is competing with a stronger page for the same search; go back to the page map in module 02.

3The 148 posts audit

The crawl on 2026-09-29 found 148 URLs in the post sitemap, one of which is the /news/ archive itself, filed under 18 categories and 84 tags. Three of the categories are uncategorized, health and google, and one is mobile. The posts were imported into Rank Math in module 03 with whatever titles and descriptions Yoast held, and the taxonomies were set to index or noindex in module 05. What has not happened is a decision per post. That is this audit.

The spreadsheet

Export the post list from WordPress (Posts, then the URL and title of each) or read it from post-sitemap.xml, and add these columns. Fill the Search Console columns from Search Console, Performance, filtered to each page, over the last 12 months.

The four decisions

Categories and tags

• Categories. Aim for a category per service line, so a post about MFA sits under Cybersecurity and a post about Teams sits under Microsoft 365. Merge security into cybersecurity. Move everything out of uncategorized and delete it. Delete health, google and mobile once their posts are recategorized. The number you end with is the number of service lines, whatever that is.
• Tags. 84 tags across 148 posts means most tags hold one post. A tag archive with one post is a page Google has to crawl for no benefit. Module 05 set tag archives to noindex, so they do no harm in search, but they still clutter the sitemap and the editor. Delete tags with fewer than three posts. Keep the rest only if you will use them on new posts.
• Author archives. Module 05 turned author archives off, which removes the tech-pro-marketing and info@ mailbox archives from the sitemap. Reassign posts authored by Tech Pro Marketing to a real person at Hermetic so the byline is ours.

4The 57 tourism pages

The crawl counted 57 pages about parks, museums, a raceway, a cemetery, a country club and ten Henrico city-guide subpages. They were built to make the site look local to Google. None of them describes a service Hermetic sells, and none of them gives a visitor a reason to call. They were left alone in modules 02 and 09 because deleting 57 pages on launch day makes a bad launch harder to diagnose. Now the site is stable, decide.

The recommendation, if the Search Console Links report shows no external links to them: remove with 410. If a handful have links or clicks, redirect those to the closest city page and remove the rest. This is your call, and the cost of either is small.

5Blog cadence

Module 01 named the three searches that bring a Richmond business to Hermetic: a service plus a city, the Hermetic name, and a problem the owner is having. Service pages answer the first, the homepage and About page answer the second. Blog posts exist to answer the third. That is the only reason to write one.

Where post ideas come from

• Tickets. The questions clients ask the helpdesk are the questions prospects type into Google. A month of tickets gives more titles than a year of guessing.
• Search Console, Queries. Searches the site already appears for at position 11 or worse, where no page answers them well.
• Sales calls. The pain questions from the Sandler sessions in this track. Each one is a post title.

The rule per post

• One focus keyword, and no other post uses it. Rank Math's Keyword Uniqueness test enforces this.
• Named category that matches a service line, and one internal link to that service page in the first half of the post.
• The module 07 checklist, run before publish, with the score in the green band (81 to 100).
• Submitted through Instant Indexing on publish, which the module does automatically for the post types chosen in its settings.

How often is a business decision. One post a month that answers a real client question does more than four posts that answer nothing. Put the number in the monthly routine and hold to it.

6The PRO decision

Everything in modules 01 to 09 ran on the free plan. The paid plan is a yearly subscription to Rank Math, separate from the Content AI subscription. The prices below are as shown on the pricing page on 2026-09-29, in euros; check the page for the current figure in dollars before buying.

What PRO changes for a single-location MSP

A reasonable order: run three months on Free, using the routine in section 2. If the routine is happening and the city pages are live, buy PRO for the schema and the tracker. If the routine is not happening, PRO will not fix that.

7Features to leave off

Rank Math's Dashboard lists modules that do nothing for a services business with one office. Leave them off. Each one turned on adds settings screens and, for some, output in the page source.

8Page speed

Rank Math does not measure or fix page speed, and no setting in this course changes it. Google measures it through Core Web Vitals, three numbers about how fast a page loads, how soon it responds, and whether it shifts while loading. Search Console reports them under Core Web Vitals, and Google's PageSpeed Insights tool at pagespeed.web.dev reports them for any single URL.

On the Hermetic site, the likely cost is Beaver Builder's page builder output, Popup Maker, and unoptimized images, because those are what the crawl found running. Run PageSpeed Insights on the homepage and the Managed IT Services Richmond page once, record the three numbers in the monthly log, and put anything red on the backlog. Fixing it is hosting, caching and image work, outside this course.

9The monthly routine

The backlog, in order

1. Post audit spreadsheet built (section 3). Decisions made for every post.
2. Categories merged, uncategorized emptied and deleted, tags under three posts deleted.
3. Tourism pages decided and done (section 4).
4. PageSpeed Insights run on two pages, numbers logged (section 8).
5. Three months of the routine complete. PRO decision made (section 6).
6. If PRO: areaServed added to the LocalBusiness schema; FAQ and Service schema on each service page; Rank Tracker set with up to 6 searches.
7. Blog cadence set and held for three months (section 5).

10Do this now

1. Create the monthly log spreadsheet with columns for date, impressions, clicks, CTR, average position, the page picked, and the change made. Open Rank Math SEO, then Analytics, and fill in the first row. This is the baseline every later month compares to.
2. Put a recurring monthly hour in the calendar with a link to section 9 of this page. The routine only works if it has a slot.
3. Export the post list and start the audit spreadsheet from section 3. Fill the Search Console columns from Performance, filtered by page, last 12 months. Do not decide anything yet; the numbers decide most of it.
4. In Search Console, open Links, then Top linked pages, and note whether any tourism page has external links. That answers section 4.
5. Run PageSpeed Insights on the homepage and on the Managed IT Services Richmond page. Record the three Core Web Vitals numbers in the log.
6. Open Rank Math SEO, then Dashboard, and confirm the modules in section 7 are off. Turn off any that are on.
7. Write the backlog from section 9 into wherever Hermetic keeps its rocks and to-dos, with an owner on each line.

11Check yourself

1. A post from the old site has had no impressions in 12 months and nothing on the new site covers its topic. Which redirect type do you use, and why not a 301 to the homepage?

   Answer

   410 Content Deleted. It tells Google the page is gone on purpose, so it drops it from the index. A 301 to the homepage sends the visitor to a page that does not answer their question, and Google treats a mass redirect to the homepage like a soft 404.

2. Two posts both have the focus keyword "multi-factor authentication". Which Rank Math test catches this, and what do you do?

   Answer

   The Keyword Uniqueness test in the meta box. Merge them: keep the one with more clicks, move useful content across, and 301 redirect the other to it.

3. You want the Hermetic schema to list Henrico, Midlothian and Mechanicsville as areas served. Can the free plan do it?

   Answer

   No. The documented method edits the LocalBusiness JSON-LD and imports it through the Schema Generator's Import tab, and schema import is a PRO feature. It goes on the backlog for after the PRO decision.

4. The monthly numbers in Rank Math's Analytics tab changed three days after you edited a page. What does that tell you, and what does it not tell you?

   Answer

   Only that Rank Math fetched fresh Search Console data, which it does every 3 days on the free plan. Three days is not long enough for Google to have re-evaluated the page. Compare next month, against the log.

5. Name the tool that measures page speed for the site, and the setting in Rank Math that improves it.

   Answer

   Google PageSpeed Insights, and the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console. There is no Rank Math setting for page speed. Speed work is hosting, caching and images.

6. What is the one reason to write a blog post, according to this module?

   Answer

   To answer a problem search, the third of the three searches from module 01, which service pages and the homepage do not answer. If a post does not do that, it has no job.

12Glossary

410 Content Deleted

A redirect type in Rank Math's Redirections module that tells search engines a URL is gone on purpose, with no replacement.

Soft 404

Google's term for a page that returns a normal response but has no real content for the URL, such as a deleted post redirected to the homepage.

Keyword Uniqueness

The Rank Math meta box test that warns when another post already uses the same focus keyword.

Instant Indexing

Rank Math's module that submits URLs to Bing and other IndexNow engines when content is published or updated.

URL Inspection

The Search Console tool that shows whether Google has indexed one URL and lets you request indexing.

Rank Tracker

A PRO feature in the Analytics module that graphs the position of up to 6 keywords over time.

areaServed

A property of LocalBusiness schema naming the cities or regions a business covers. In Rank Math it needs JSON-LD import, a PRO feature.

Content AI

Rank Math's separate paid subscription for keyword ideas, content scoring and AI drafts. Optional.

Core Web Vitals

Google's three page-speed measurements, reported in Search Console and PageSpeed Insights. Not measured or changed by Rank Math.

Regex redirect

A redirect whose source is a pattern rather than one URL, so one rule can cover many pages that share a prefix.

Analytics Database

The General Settings option that sets how long Rank Math keeps Search Console data locally; 90 days by default.

13Sources

• Rank Math, Analytics module: the four summary numbers, Index Status, the 3-day refresh on Free and daily on PRO, Rank Tracker with up to 6 keywords.
• Rank Math, General Settings: Analytics Database retention default of 90 days, Headless CMS Support, Show SEO Score to Visitors, Debug Redirections.
• Rank Math, Setting up Redirections: 301, 410 and Regex redirect types and the advice to test Regex rules.
• Rank Math, Instant Indexing: IndexNow submission, automatic submission per post type, noindex URLs not submitted.
• Rank Math, Score 100 in tests: Keyword Uniqueness test and the score bands.
• Rank Math, Schema module: multiple schemas, custom schema and JSON-LD import as PRO features.
• Rank Math, Add multiple areaServed cities: the JSON-LD edit and import method.
• Rank Math, Image SEO: free alt attributes against PRO captions, casing and Replacements.
• Rank Math, Content AI: separate subscription, optional for basic SEO.
• Rank Math, Pricing: plan prices, keyword limits, refresh and retention as read on 2026-09-29.
• Google, Search Console Page indexing report and URL Inspection: the reports named in the routine.
• Google, PageSpeed Insights and Core Web Vitals report (Search Console Help): page speed measurement.
• Site facts from a crawl of www.hermeticnetworks.com on 2026-09-29: 148 post URLs, 139 pages, 57 tourism pages, 18 categories, 84 tags, 3 author archives, plugins seen.

Documentation read 2026-09-29. Rank Math changes often; where this page and the documentation disagree, the documentation is current.