Maksym Mertsalov is an attorney practicing in Pavlohrad and Ternivka — military, criminal, family, inheritance, and pension cases. When we started, the site ran on an outdated technical base, with no analytics, no search-ready structure, and only one language.
The goal for month one was to lay the foundation: connect analytics, upgrade the technical base, run keyword research in two languages, and rebuild the key pages. This is where honest SEO actually starts.
Technical base: before and after
What we did this month
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Analytics and indexing
Connected Google Analytics 4 and Search Console, installed Rank Math, generated and submitted an XML sitemap, checked robots.txt, enabled HTTPS, and moved the site to PHP 8.2.
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Keyword research and structure
Ran full keyword research in two languages (UA and RU), grouped queries into clusters, shaped an SEO-ready structure, and set priority areas: military lawyer, mobilization, criminal cases, and family cases.
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Content
Wrote briefs for copy and meta tags, produced real copy for the category and blog pages (not machine translation), and mapped keywords for three articles.
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Page rebuilds
Rebuilt the key pages from scratch — Home, Services, About, FAQ, and Contact — and created dedicated landing pages for priority services. The blog section was built from the ground up.
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Off-site and local SEO
Set an anchor strategy, placed the first permanent links, optimized the Google Business Profile, and listed the site in relevant directories.
Important
Month one is foundation, not traffic. We don’t promise rankings in a week: in May we connected analytics and laid the technical and content base. We’ll show traffic and ranking growth in the reports for the periods ahead — measured from an honest zero point.
Starting point
An honest snapshot of the zero point we measure growth from: 19 first users in May (all new) and 5 pages indexed in Google. Rankings are now tracked and will start to show from the next period.
Work delivered by area
How the completed work broke down across the main areas in May:
Work delivered by area — May
Tech stack
Next up: verifying the fixes, reviewing Search Console, new copy and meta for six pages, optimizing the categories and the blog, and continued link building. The foundation is set; now we build visibility.
In the first month the team sorted out what I'd been putting off: they upgraded the site's technical base, set up analytics, and built the structure in both Ukrainian and Russian. What I value most is the honesty — no promises of a number-one spot in a week, just a clear plan and transparent reports on every step. The foundation is set right, so we're continuing the work.
