SEO audit and consulting for a work-at-heights training center: what was broken, what was missing and what to build first

What the crawl found

Site SEO audit: the biggest search in the sector pointed to a page Google ignored

A full crawl of the domain with Screaming Frog, in September 2026, returned 121 URLs: 75 images, 32 resources blocked by robots.txt, 2 code files and 12 HTML pages. Of those 12, only 7 were indexable. The site was technically sound, with 200 status codes and no blocks on content pages. The problem was the site structure: few URLs, duplicate titles and the highest-demand page left out of the index.

Finding	What it meant for the business	Recommendation
Critical: /certificados declared a canonical pointing to the homepage	People looking to verify or download their work-at-heights certificate (~24,000 searches/month) didn't find a SIA page	A self-referencing canonical and a hub with two child pages: verify and download
Critical: a single /cursos page for six intents	Coordinator, refresher training, authorized worker, area manager and confined spaces all competed on the same URL	One page per course, each with its own keyword
Important: a blog with no indexable articles	/blog had 12 words and its only article was canonicalized to the homepage	Informational guides that link to the course on their topic
Important: orphan redirect	/empresa 301-redirected to a noindex URL	Redirect retired URLs to their equivalent
Review: "sias" with 90,500 searches/month	The highest-volume term associated with the domain, probably a text coincidence	Don't optimize for it until it's validated in Search Console

The homepage, /cursos and three other URLs shared the same title. The first three findings are configuration errors: they get fixed before creating content and don't require a single new word.

What the demand research found

Keyword and competitor research: three services SIA offered and wasn't showing

We cross-referenced the 53 keywords the domain already appeared for with 90 suggestions for Colombia. The result was 57 useful keywords in 11 intent clusters, each with volume, difficulty, current URL, recommended URL and status. Keywords that didn't justify their own page were discarded.

A review of 11 organic competitors showed which searches the market serves and which it leaves open. That surfaced services SIA already offered and that the site only showed as an image with no page:

Search query	Monthly volume in Colombia	Why nobody was winning it
"brigadistas de emergencia" (emergency response team members)	3,600 (difficulty 9/100)	The best-ranked competitor was in position 28
"primeros auxilios curso" (first aid course)	1,000	SIA had an image of the service and no page
"rescate en alturas" (rescue at heights)	820	Only one competitor had a dedicated page
"resolución 4272 de 2021"	14,800 (difficulty 10/100)	The top result is a standalone government PDF

A keyword with volume isn't enough to create a service page: the client has to offer that service. Emergency response teams stayed marked as pending until SIA confirmed it offers them. Advertising a service you don't provide attracts visits that never turn into clients.

What we decided to build first

SEO prioritization: the page for the highest-intent buyer first, ahead of the highest-volume keyword

With demand mapped, the consulting question shifted from "which keyword has the most volume?" to "which page brings in the people who end up buying?". Reading Google's actual results for the main keywords led to three decisions:

The certificates hub goes first. Someone verifying a certificate is about to need refresher training, or is a health and safety manager validating the crew on a job site, which opens sales of multiple seats. The recommendation was a tool-style format: steps with screenshots of the official portal, an FAQ with the exact variants people search (verificar, consultar, validar, descargar: verify, look up, validate, download) and the refresher training offer right after the certificate status is confirmed.

The Google listing matters as much as the website. Three of the top six results for "curso de alturas" (work-at-heights course) are Google Maps listings, and SIA didn't appear on the map. Google Business Profile was recommended as a parallel workstream: categories, photos, hours and reviews, with the address and hours identical on the website and the listing.

This niche has almost no comparison searches. Seven of eight comparison phrases have no measurable volume. That's why testimonials and pricing go in as trust blocks inside the course pages and guides, without their own URL.

What we corrected before publishing

Regulatory check: two facts the client had published that the regulations contradicted

Every fact in the content was checked against the regulations: Resolución 4272 de 2021 (work at heights), Resolución 0491 de 2020 (confined spaces) and Decreto 1072 de 2015, article 2.2.4.6.25 (emergency response teams). That review found two errors in the client's material:

What was published	What the regulation says
"The work-at-heights certificate expires after one year"	Resolución 4272 sets no expiration date. It defines when retraining is required: a change in task, procedure or technology; joining a new company; and, if none of those happens, after 18 months
Confined spaces supervisor: 20 hours in one document, 16 in another	The annexes to Resolución 0491 set entrant 16 h, attendant 8 h, administrator 8 h and supervisor 20 h. The 16 belonged to the entrant

Anything that couldn't be verified against a source was left blank and added to a list for the client: unconfirmed prices, the VAT on two courses and the occupational health and safety license number. No figure was estimated or copied from the competition. In a sector where an ARL (occupational risk insurer) or a project auditor reviews what gets published, every figure has to hold up to that review.

What the client received

SEO consulting deliverables: a 25-URL architecture ready to execute

The proposed structure is hub & spoke by search intent: four hubs (courses, certificates, blog and company pages), 25 indexable URLs, 17 of them new, and 3 301 redirects so no previous URL ends in an error. The URL rules the consulting set:

• The slug is the main keyword, lowercase, hyphenated and without accents: /cursos/coordinador-de-alturas/.
• Two levels at most: the cluster hub and the specific intent.
• The same topic can have a commercial URL and an informational one when the intent changes: /cursos/rescate-en-alturas/ and /blog/rescate-en-alturas/.
• City pages only where there's real coverage: Bogotá, Cali and the Caribbean coast are pending confirmation with the client.

The deliverables package:

• Technical audit with findings ranked by impact.
• Keyword research by intent cluster, with volume, difficulty, target URL and status, also in CSV.
• Competitor and gap analysis, with the new services and the condition for creating each page.
• URL architecture and sitemap, with naming rules and redirects.
• On-page brief per URL: main and secondary keywords, title, meta description, H1, schema and FAQs.
• Report for the business owner, jargon-free, with the pending data and the decisions that are theirs to make.