Ten clicks. We have doubled.

Two weeks ago this site got five clicks and I wrote a thank-you note to five people. Google has now sent a badge for ten.

That is a 100% increase. In a deck I could put that on a slide with an arrow going up and nobody could call it false. It would also be one of the most dishonest slides ever made, which is the entire lesson of this post.

What actually happened, with the real numbers

On October 1st I deployed a large update. Here is what Search Console recorded in the seven days that followed:

• Impressions went from about 10–20 a day to 530–600 a day. On September 29th: 19 impressions. On October 2nd: 547. That's not a rounding error, that's a different website.
• 293 pages indexed, with 229 still sitting in "Discovered — currently not indexed".
• 1,000 queries now returning impressions, up from a handful.
• Clicks: ten.

Why ten clicks on 2,845 impressions is not a failure

Average position across those queries is about 41. Nobody clicks position 41. Nobody sees position 41. Impressions at that depth mean Google has indexed you, understood roughly what you're about, and started testing you against queries — which is the step before ranking, not a substitute for it.

The sequence is always the same: indexed, then impressions, then position improves, then clicks. Skipping steps isn't available for purchase.

The part I didn't expect

The queries we're closest to winning are not the ones I'd have guessed. Sorted by position rather than volume, the top of the list is small and mid-sized cities:

• local seo bozeman — position 2.9
• seo agency hilo — 2.4
• seo expert in bozeman mt — 2.7
• local seo latrobe pa — 3.3
• search engine optimization rapid city — 3.4
• seo services fargo — 4.4
• local seo morgantown — 4.5

115 queries are already in the top ten. Not one of them is a city I've ever worked in. They're markets where fewer agencies bothered to publish anything, and a thorough state page is enough to compete.

So this week I built a real page for Bozeman, because five separate Bozeman queries are sitting between positions 2.7 and 5.0 against a page that mentions the city once.

What I'd tell a client looking at this exact report

Don't celebrate the impressions and don't panic about the clicks. Ask three questions: Is the trend up? Yes, by about 30x. Is average position improving? It went from 61 to 41 in a week. Are any queries close? 115 in the top ten. Everything else is patience.

And if your agency shows you a 100% increase without telling you the base number was five, find a different agency. That's one of the questions people actually ask me, and the answer embarrasses my own industry.

To the ten of you

Thank you. Sincerely. You clicked a link to a 548-page website run by one guy in Louisville with a page about a dog psychic on it. I hope you liked it.

Your reward is the same as last time: call and receive a free psychic reading from a dog. He remembers the first five. He is expecting you.

Call (502) 963-7305 Consult the dog