Three properties. One of them I lost — that one taught me the most.
Every number below is verifiable in Semrush or Search Console. I show the decline as readily as the climbs, because anyone who only shows you the climbs hasn't been in this long enough.
The Lenders Network
LOST TO YMYLZero to 527,281 monthly organic visitors and 15,000 leads a month, solo, with no marketing spend and no team. At peak it held 135,349 ranking keywords and six-figure lead contracts with Quicken, Carrington and NAF.
Then Google's Your Money or Your Life update landed and took most of it inside a year. I learned what Google wants from financial content the expensive way — and everything since has EEAT in the architecture from the first page, not bolted on after.
VA Loan Network
LIVEFrom nothing in two years to 50,338 monthly visitors and 37,100 ranking keywords — 4.1 million impressions in the last 28 days at an average position of 8.3. Over 80% of tracked keywords sit on page one, and ChatGPT and Gemini now send traffic directly.
The site is only half of it. I built the CRM integration, lead routing, drip system, commission audit and operator dashboard — 4,809 leads in the database and a live command center that runs the business.
LRG Realty
LIVEA local brokerage site that was effectively invisible to Google in August 2024. Twenty-four months later it runs 22,070 monthly organic visitors on 7,259 ranking keywords, up 60% and still climbing — outranking Zillow and Realtor.com on its own market's terms.
Done part-time, on someone else's business, using the same content system. Which is the point: the architecture isn't specific to one site. It replicates on any local real estate market in the country.
