Case study
A brand-new site, from zero to 26,000 Google impressions a month
A software blog for freelancers launched in April 2026 with a new domain and no history on Google. I planned and wrote every post. Five months later the site appears in Google more than 26,000 times a month, and its best guide sits on page one.
The situation
A new website starts with nothing. Google has never seen the domain, nobody links to it, and it has no pages in the index. The topic made it harder: accounting, invoicing and project software for freelancers is covered by the software companies themselves and by large review sites with years of authority.
The site owner handled the build. My job was the content: decide what to write, in what order, and write it so a new site had a realistic chance of ranking.
What I did
- Picked searches a new site could win. The broad terms belong to the big review sites. I went for specific questions with a clear answer, such as accounting software you can buy without a subscription, or open-source alternatives to a well-known package.
- Wrote each guide to answer the question properly. Real options, real prices checked at the source, and a straight statement of what you lose with each one. Each heading is written as the question people type.
- Built the topics in groups. Accounting, invoicing, cash flow and project management each got a set of posts that link to one another, so Google could see the site covers a subject and not one stray keyword.
- Kept publishing. By October, 63 posts were showing in search.
The results
Monthly search visibility
How often the site appeared in Google results each month.
Visibility rose every month. The average position across the site moved from 35, which is page four, to 14 over the last 30 days, and to about 10 in the most recent week.
The posts bringing in the clicks
Clicks earned by the leading posts since launch, with their average Google position.
One guide on page one, five months after launch.
The open-source alternatives guide averages position 7 and has brought in 213 clicks, more than half the site’s total. For its main searches it ranks between positions 4 and 7.
Who is finding it
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Countries with at least one impression | 190+ |
| Share of impressions from the United States | 62% |
| Share of impressions on desktop | 85% |
| Posts averaging position 20 or better | 32 of 63 |
What it hasn’t done yet
Clicks are still small: 122 in September. Most posts sit on page two, where people see a result far more often than they click it, so impressions have grown faster than visits. That is the normal order for a new site. Google shows the pages first, then moves them up as they prove useful.
The next phase is moving the page-two posts onto page one, by updating the posts closest to it and adding links between related guides. With 32 posts already averaging position 20 or better, that is where the clicks will come from.
All figures taken directly from Google Search Console (web search), covering 27 April to 4 October 2026. Monthly figures are full calendar months. Post counts cover blog posts with at least five impressions. Client anonymised; I wrote the blog content and did not build the site.