A post-launch SEO review was conducted via Google Search Console (accessed through the same browser instance used for other admin work) after the passlee.com staging-to-production deployment.
Findings
- Average position sits on page 2 of results overall.
- The best-performing content is local landmark junction/roundabout guide pages, not the core service pages – suggesting local, hyper-specific content outperforms generic service pages for this site.
- 7 apparent 404s were investigated and confirmed to be legacy crawl history from a previous occupant of the domain, not a current site problem.
- www to non-www 301 redirects are correctly configured.
- Rank Math SEO is installed and connected to Search Console, with a local analytics database (wp_rank_math_analytics_gsc); a connection error was noted during the review and may need re-checking.
- A Malvern-focused page had previously been removed from the site.
Implication for content strategy
Since local landmark guide pages outperform core service pages, future content investment may be better directed toward more hyper-local, landmark-specific pages rather than expanding generic service page content.
Strategic interpretation (added later)
Re-reading these findings in light of the subsequent authority-building decision, the key conclusions were:
- Low impressions were considered more significant than CTR – the site wasn’t being shown often enough, rather than being shown but not clicked.
- CTR was acceptable – when the site did appear, click-through was fine.
- Homepage relevance was acceptable – Google understood the topic and associated the homepage correctly with the target keyword.
- Authority signals were considered insufficient – this, not relevance or on-page content, was judged to be the limiting factor.
These findings directly informed the “Shift from Homepage Optimisation to Authority Building” Decision and the Authority Gap section of the PassLee SEO Strategy article.
Operating methodology (added Sprint 11)
Search Console should be used to answer a specific set of questions before drawing conclusions:
- Does Google understand the site’s topic?
- Is Google indexing the correct pages?
- Are impressions increasing?
- Are clicks following impressions?
- Is the problem relevance or authority?
See Search Console Strategy for the fuller reasoning behind treating Search Console as a diagnostic rather than a ranking tool.