May 2025 Site Progress Update 01
Intro post on why or how this all started: Can SEO Alone Build an Audience in the Age of AI? Let’s Find Out.
Quick Summary
- Site launched using Astro v5.5.2 and Vercel with perfect Lighthouse scores
- Facing some technical challenges with redirects and trailing slashes
- Following how Google discovers and indexes a niche-free blog
- Considering focusing on a specific niche to improve indexing and authority
What This Update Covers
Welcome to the first monthly progress update on my SEO experiment! I’m documenting this journey to track how Google discovers and indexes a small, niche-free blog like this one, and sharing everything I learn along the way.
If this is your first time here, check out “Can SEO Alone Build an Audience in the Age of AI? Let’s Find Out” to understand the full experiment.
Let’s dive in!
Table of contents
Open Table of contents
Key Findings
The site was launched using Astro (v5.5.2) and Vercel. It’s worked out pretty well. Astro so far has been great. It loads extremely fast.
100 across the board! In all my years as a developer I don’t think I’ve ever seen that. Keep in mind I’ve always worked on large corporate websites from CakePHP, WordPress, Webflow, NextJs, NuxtJs, React, you name it I’ve worked on it. The list goes on and on but I digress. It’s a cool thing to see. These perfect scores give us a clean technical foundation for the experiment, eliminating performance as a potential variable in our SEO results.
A few weird things I have run into in the astro.config file:
Redirects:You get a layout shift and a blank page with the redirect on it for a second or so. I still need to read about this as it’s very odd to me. I’m used to using :splat or other values to replace a sub folder such as /blog or /articles. I’m sure it’s just me. I’ll figure it out but really who is reading this and will care? hahatrailingSlash:never:I’ve never understood this. Why can’t we all come to a conclusion and pick trailing slash or no trailing slash at the end of a URL? Google goes nuts over this. If you have the trailing slash but your canonical URL (I wrote about it in What are Canonical URLs?) doesn’t, Google will not index that page because it’s lazy. Well, it’s recording the page twice because of the stupid trailing slash. Please, Google handled http to https how is this any differnt? Google’s own “To slash or not to slash”1 post (2010) simply says: choose one style and be consistent to avoid duplicate-content headaches.
This trailing slash inconsistency is especially relevant to our experiment since it directly impacts indexing. I’ll be monitoring how quickly Google resolves these canonical issues for a new site, and whether it affects our ranking progress. If you got the time learn Why Does the Trailing-Slash Matter? A (Very) Short History. It’s comes up often enough for me that I wrote the stupid post about it because others ask and we all forget. Because it doesn’t matter anymore!
The Selective Indexing Mystery
Google has taken its sweet time indexing the site. It’s fascinating (and a bit frustrating) to watch how it randomly indexes some pages while completely ignoring others.
This really confirms my research (post coming soon) that Google conserves its energy – it won't bother fully crawling your site if it doesn't immediately find something it considers valuable. I’m now wondering if I need to force this experiment into a specific niche just to get Google’s attention, or if some of my posts are permanently stuck in Google’s “maybe later” pile.
Here’s the reality check: if your site doesn’t get indexed, it might as well not exist. That whole “if you build it, they will come” philosophy is a complete myth (if you hadn’t figured that out already. Sorry to all you Field of Dreams2 fans).
This highlights why it’s so challenging to build an audience with just SEO alone – you need those social signals (tweets? X’s? whatever we’re calling them now, plus Reddit discussions, etc.) to give Google a nudge. These signals feed into the Authoritativeness part of Google’s E-E-A-T evaluation (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness). Looks like I’ve found another topic to write about!
Traffic & Analytics
Overall Site Metrics
Reviewing all the site metrics, I’m seeing that using Vercel Analytics doesn’t allow me to block my IP address(I can’t read all documentation). As I go through all this data, I’m thinking it’s mostly me. And this is because the Google machine is telling me that not many people are clicking from search to the site. I’m looking at adding a different analytics platform. Yes, I know there is Google Analytics 4, however, we use so many Google products already. (Hypothesis: does using or not using Google Analytics help a site rank?)
Update: Vercel Analytics pricing just chnaged. However, still a very basic analytics platform.
Current list I’m working through:
More to come on this. Maybe some posts or I’ll just pick one. I'm times I'm lazy too.
But for now all we have is Vercel’s free analytics. It works, but I do find it funny how they would like users to upgrade to view UTMs. (That’s an interesting upgrade. Not worth it for me.) Maybe if I’m signed in, don’t track me—I’d pay for that. As I still don’t know if it’s my mom or me who is reading the posts more.
Traffic
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Unique Visitors: 133
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Page Views: 473
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Bounce Rate: 68%
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Countries: 56% United States (All the rest must be spam, right?)
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Device type: Desktop: 65% | Mobile: 35%
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Operateing System: Windows: 31% | Mac 21% | iOS 21% | Android 14%
Going forward, I'll have more of a breakdown once I pick a better analytics platform. I’ll start doing a month-over-month comparison as well as include organic, direct, referral, social, etc. But this is what we get, and we will build on it from here. One can only hope that this will get better over time and people will like what I’m writing, as I’m selfish and without social media in my life, I’m not getting the dopamine from likes and comments. Haha!
Search Performance
Gotta love Google Search Console. I still need to setup Bing Webmaster Tools. (Well, you didn’t see it but I went and setup Bing Webmaster Tools.) My main thinking behind this is with OpenAI one can hope that it will also start learning off of what I’m writing and maybe once this site grows, ChatGPT will like me too. I’ll try and show search performance from both Bing and Google going forward. Bing makes it easy because they can connect to Google Search Console and pull all the credentials from there and wait the 48 hours for the site’s data to become available.
Google Search Console data
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Clicks: 4
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Impressions: 2.15k
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Click Through Rate (CTR): 0.2%
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Average postion: 7.1
Semrush data
SERP features:
- AI overview: 18
- People also asked: 14
Keywords: (This is interesting. I’m ranking for a small post and not what I would like to rank for, but okay. The post is How to Be Cool: A Dad’s Guide)
- 84 ranking keywords
- Short list of top keywords:
- how do you become cool
- how do i be cool
- how do you be cool
- what makes people cool
- how to become cooler
- how to act cool
- how to become cool
- how do i become cool
If you’d like to view the full list to can view it here. (It’s nothing crazy) Google Sheet kentgigger.com organic positions May 2025
Google has Search Console Insights (Beta) where it calls out things they believe you are doing well and gives you these little achievements. Here are some our site got:
Content Performance:
Top performing pages by traffic:
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How To Use htaccess to Password Protect Your Website Or Any Directory
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Can SEO Alone Build an Audience in the Age of AI? Let’s Find Out.
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Your Brain on AI—The Cognitive Skill You’re Silently Sacrificing
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Why Does the Trailing-Slash Matter? A (Very) Short History
Content quality assessment (“Do I want this traffic?”)
I would say at this point I want any and all traffic, or what’s the point, right? Nothing is really happening. I don’t have click tracking to see if you all are clicking on the RSS feed or saving the site for later viewing. I don’t know. I guess I do the same thing. I use Raindrop.io to go back and read things. But unless you’re on Substack, I’m not really subscribing. So I guess at some point I might need to get social or start a newsletter to see if people want to continue reading what I’m writing. Also, finding a niche for the site could be better as it would give you something specific to follow along with. Maybe posts like this are what you all want; however, this is a very long-term game, so I don’t know who would read this far into a post. If you do and you'd like to say hi, hit me up on LinkedIn or another social—you'll make my day.
Link Building Progress
Right now all the site has is spam backlinks. So nothing to report here.
Content Development
New Content Published:
I started posting this year(2025) in March.
Initial performance observations: the site is getting traffic, and now I’m getting tired of writing this post! Haha. I can only hope that users are finding something of value.
As of right now, the strategy behind each piece (keyword-focused vs. topic/audience-focused) isn’t much. I’ve mostly focused on writing to keep this all going. I will start doing keyword-focused posts and go after topics that people are searching for that I would like to support and write about. However, it will be few and far between as I really just want to write what comes to mind, well, at least for right now. I’ll be sure to showcase what keywords I reviewed for all the posts (if there was one) in future site progress posts.
May 3 posts
Why Does the Trailing-Slash Matter? A (Very) Short History
Published:
16 May, 2025
Description: The trailing slash started as technical necessity, now it’s about consistency and SEO. Pick one style, redirect the other, and use it sitewide. Don’t stress over the absurdity.
How to Actually “Get Things Done” in Tech Companies
Published:
15 May, 2025
Description: True success? Make decision-makers happy, then walk away.
Your Brain on AI—The Cognitive Skill You’re Silently Sacrificing
Published:
3 May, 2025
Description: Don’t outsource the most valuable skill you have.
April 5 posts
Why AI Tools Are Making Software Engineers Less Capable
Published:
25 Apr, 2025
Description: A developer’s candid take on AI tools in software engineering—balancing productivity gains with the critical thinking skills that make engineers truly valuable in tech.
Can SEO Alone Build an Audience in the Age of AI? Let’s Find Out
Published:
22 Apr, 2025
Description: SEO vs. AI: Can a blog grow without social media? Follow my year-long experiment where keyword strategy meets blind optimism and occasional despair.
Don’t Bench Your Idea
Published:
16 Apr, 2025
Description: Don’t hold back! Your unique voice matters, even in crowded spaces.
Seeing Through My Little One’s Eyes
Published:
15 Apr, 2025
Description: A father reflects on how his toddler’s wonder-filled exploration reveals life’s overlooked details.
Side Project Purgatory
Published:
12 Apr, 2025
Description: Chasing new coding projects while the almost-finished ones gather digital dust, despite knowing they deserve to ship.
March 1 posts
Make Google Products Work With Your Work Email
Published:
31 Mar, 2025
Description: Connect any email address to Google services in minutes. Avoid the ‘Unable to add users’ error when sharing Google Analytics, Data Studio, or Tag Manager with co-worker who don’t have Google accounts.
Goals for Next Month
Do this all again, keep writing, keyword-focused to see if that changes anything. Also pull in a better analytics platform for more and better info to share in these updates. Thanks for joining me on this little experiment. I hope it works out and you as well as I get something out of this.
Intro post on why or how this all started: Can SEO Alone Build an Audience in the Age of AI? Let’s Find Out.