Two months in, the AEO score has jumped from 70 to 88 and the SEO page has started converting impressions into actual clicks for the first time. Overall traffic held roughly flat month on month, which is the honest headline for June.
| # | Post | Date | Key metric |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | From Zero to Cumbria SEO: Building a Website That Ranks | 6 May 2026 | Baseline established |
| 2 | From Zero to Cumbria SEO: Month One | 5 June 2026 | 2,260 impressions, AEO 38 → 70 |
| 3 | From Zero to Cumbria SEO: Month Two Update | 4 July 2026 | AEO 70 → 88, SEO page converting clicks |
For reference, the launch post explains the plan in full.
What happened in June
Here is the full work log for month two:
- June 3 — added a “Made by 1418” footer link on a client site — the first genuine external backlink pointing at the domain
- June 4 — while preparing this post, discovered a trailing slash redirect issue affecting the SEO and hosting & email pages in Search Console. Fixed and deployed. Also found four old WordPress URLs still showing as crawled but not indexed — a fix had been submitted back in May but Google had not yet recrawled
- June 5 — published the month one site diary post
- June 6 — set up Google Business Profile as a service area business, Cumbria set as the service area, address hidden
- June 12 — published the local SEO blog post, with Cumbria set as the explicit local targeting focus
- June 15 — investigated why the site diary posts were showing as indexed in Search Console but not appearing in search results. Added a series navigation table to the top of both diary posts to improve usability and interlinking between them
- June 19 — worked through a batch of AEO fixes across service pages and blog posts — meta description lengths, opening paragraph structure, H3 subsections — pushing the site AEO score to 80
- June 19 — added a second “Made by 1418” footer link on a different client site
- June 26 — published the web design blog post on website costs for small businesses in Cumbria
- June 29 — added a third “Made by 1418” footer link on a client site
A busier month than the work log alone suggests — most of it was troubleshooting and structural fixes rather than new content, which matters but does not always show up in traffic numbers straight away.
The deindexing scare
Worth documenting honestly: partway through the month, the launch post and the month one diary post both disappeared from search results despite Search Console showing them as indexed. After investigation, this traced back to Googlebot encountering failed page resources — several blog images returning errors during a crawl, likely because the crawl happened in a narrow window right after a deploy before the new build had fully propagated.
Once confirmed the images were loading correctly on the live site, reindexing was requested manually and both posts returned. A reminder that “indexed” in Search Console and “visible in search” are not always the same thing at any given moment, and that resource loading errors are worth checking whenever a page unexpectedly drops out.
Search Console — month two
8 clicks, 1.93K impressions, average position 41.4 — down slightly on impressions from May’s 2,260, but average position improved meaningfully from 54.5 to 41.4. The site is climbing, even if the raw impression count did not grow this month.
The SEO page is the clearest sign of progress: 1,628 impressions and 4 clicks, up from 1,505 impressions and zero clicks in month one. The page that spent a month being seen but not clicked has started converting. That is exactly the pattern expected as a page climbs from somewhere on page five or six toward somewhere more visible.
Other pages are starting to pick up their first clicks too — Hosting & Email and Website Maintenance both recorded a click each for the first time. Design & Build appeared in the top pages list for the first time this month with 35 impressions.
The launch diary post shows 222 impressions but zero clicks this month, likely affected by the deindexing period covering some of the month.
Google Analytics — month two
42 active users, essentially flat against May’s 43. Google organic traffic in GA4 shows only 2 sessions, which looks low against the Search Console click numbers — the two tools measure and attribute traffic differently, and GA4’s organic figure does not always reconcile neatly with Search Console clicks.
The majority of sessions are still showing as direct traffic. Worth noting that GA4’s “direct” bucket is not necessarily people typing the URL from memory — it commonly includes links clicked from apps that strip referrer data, such as LinkedIn’s mobile app or email clients. Given the footer link additions and Google Business Profile setup this month, some of that direct traffic may be attributable to those changes without GA4 correctly crediting the source.
AEO score — the standout metric
This is where the real progress sits. The AEO score moved from 70 to 88 over the month — comfortably past the original target of 80 by month three, achieved a month early.
| Baseline (May 4) | Month 1 (June 3) | Month 2 (July 3) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Site Health | 86 (B) | 100 (A) | 100 (A) |
| AEO Score | 38 (F) | 70 (C) | 88 (B) |
The improvement came from a methodical pass through every page and post — trimming oversized meta descriptions, rewriting opening paragraphs to lead with direct answers, and adding H3 subsections to break up long-form content for easier extraction. None of it was glamorous work, but the score reflects it clearly.
An honest read on a flat month
Traffic did not grow this month, and the deindexing scare cost some visibility during the period it was happening. That is worth saying plainly rather than dressing it up.
What did happen was structural — three genuine backlinks, a Google Business Profile now live, an AEO score ahead of target, and a service page that has started converting impressions into clicks for the first time. None of that shows up as a big traffic spike, but it is the kind of foundational work that tends to compound over the following months rather than the same month it happens.
What month three looks like
The priority for July is watching whether the SEO page continues climbing now that average position has improved, and whether the Google Business Profile starts contributing local visibility now it has had a few weeks to settle. Content continues at the usual pace — three posts planned across maintenance, hosting, and SEO topics.
The next update will be at the start of August with July’s data.
1418 provides web design, SEO and AEO, hosting and email, and website maintenance for businesses in Cumbria. This blog documents the process of building search visibility from the ground up.