Thirty days ago, huntervault.app was invisible on Google. Zero clicks. A few impressions if I squinted hard at Search Console. The domain was three months old, which in SEO terms is basically a newborn.
So I gave myself a month with one job: build out the content pillar, get the technical foundations right, and see what Google actually did with a fresh site.
The short answer? It worked, but slowly, and the part that surprised me had almost nothing to do with writing more articles. Here's the full version.
What I actually did in 30 days
Most of the month went into plumbing, not publishing. Before any content can rank, Google has to be able to crawl the site and make sense of it. That came first.
1. Making the site crawlable
A big chunk of the work was Cloudflare. It sits between the site and its visitors, which is great for security and speed, but an overly aggressive rule can also block legitimate crawlers without you ever noticing.
I went through the firewall, bot protection, caching, and security settings to make sure Googlebot and other recognized crawlers could reach the public pages. I also checked that the important assets, JavaScript files, and page content weren't being blocked.
Then I reviewed the site's:
robots.txt- XML sitemap
- canonical tags
- HTTP status codes
- page redirects
- indexability settings
The point was to make it obvious to search engines which pages should be crawled and indexed.
I also opened the public content up to AI-related crawlers where it made sense. That doesn't guarantee a site gets cited by AI search tools. It just removes the technical barriers that would stop the content from being found in the first place.
2. Improving performance
I used Google PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse to find performance problems on both mobile and desktop, and worked through things like:
- oversized images
- unused JavaScript and CSS
- slow-loading fonts
- render-blocking resources
- layout shifts
- slow Largest Contentful Paint
- inefficient browser caching
Cloudflare pulled its weight here too, handling content delivery, caching, compression, and serving static files more efficiently.
I didn't chase a perfect PageSpeed score. I chased the fixes that made the site noticeably faster for real people, especially on mobile connections.
3. Setting up search monitoring
Google Search Console was how I watched whether the site was getting crawled and indexed. It showed me pages Google had discovered, indexing problems, the search queries coming in, impressions, click-through rates, average positions, and sitemap status.
This was probably the most valuable tool of the month, because it told me exactly which pages and keywords were starting to get visibility. I added Bing Webmaster Tools as a second read on crawlability and search performance outside Google.
4. Improving on-page SEO
I went over the titles, meta descriptions, headings, and internal links across the main pages. The early keyword strategy stuck close to what the product actually does:
- budgeting app
- expense tracker
- gamified budgeting app
- personal finance tracker
- debt tracker
- savings goal tracker
- budgeting app for Filipinos
I didn't stuff all of these into every page. Each page or article got matched to one specific search intent instead. I also made sure titles said clearly what you'd find after clicking, and wrote meta descriptions to earn the click, even though Google sometimes swaps in its own.
5. Publishing useful content
Rather than only pushing promotional posts about Hunter Vault, I wrote about things people are already searching for: tracking expenses consistently, auditing recurring subscriptions, understanding recurring transactions, managing gaming-related spending, building better budgeting habits.
Each article ties back to Hunter Vault, but the reader's question comes first.
I also added internal links between related articles and product pages. For example, my subscription-audit article links readers to the guide about recurring transactions because the two problems are closely connected. From there, readers can discover how Hunter Vault tracks recurring expenses inside the app. This gives visitors a natural next step while helping Google understand how the articles, features, and main product pages relate to one another.
I tried to avoid adding links purely for SEO. Every internal link needed to be useful in the context of what the reader was already trying to learn.
6. Adding structured data
I validated the site's structured data with Google's Rich Results Test and the Schema.org validator, and added schema markup where it was relevant: Articles, Breadcrumbs, Organization info, Website info, Mobile application details, and FAQs.
Schema doesn't move rankings on its own. It helps search engines interpret the site and its content, which is worth doing.
7. Building early authority
Off-page work was still light this month, on purpose. I wasn't going to spin up hundreds of low-quality backlinks. I stuck to legitimate mentions and links from places connected to the product and my work: my portfolio, relevant social profiles, app listing pages, community discussions, founder and developer posts, and a few product directories.
I treat App Store Optimization as part of the same discovery picture, so I tightened the app's title, description, screenshots, keywords, and release notes. That way the messaging stays consistent across the website, Google Play, and the App Store.
The tools I leaned on
- Google Search Console — indexing and search-performance data
- Google PageSpeed Insights — performance diagnostics
- Lighthouse — technical and accessibility audits
- Cloudflare — security, caching, crawler access, content delivery
- Bing Webmaster Tools — extra crawl and search data
- Google Rich Results Test — structured-data testing
- Schema.org Validator — checking schema markup
- Google Analytics — visits and user behavior
- Screaming Frog SEO Spider — titles, links, status codes, technical issues
- Ahrefs Webmaster Tools — backlink and SEO health monitoring
So, did it work?
Yes, but not in the "traffic exploded overnight" way SEO case studies love to sell.
After roughly 30 days of technical fixes, performance work, and content, Hunter Vault hit about 100 organic Google clicks inside a 28-day window. Rankings were still crawling along. But impressions climbed, and more pages started showing up for real searches.
The real win was structural. Google could finally crawl the site and start testing pages in results, and that mattered more to me than any single ranking.
What surprised me was how little of that early payoff came from writing more. Cloudflare not blocking crawlers, faster pages, a submitted sitemap, cleaned-up metadata, a stronger internal structure. All of it had to land before the content could earn any real visibility.
One warning for anyone starting a new site: don't judge SEO by clicks in the first few weeks. A new domain usually piles up impressions long before it earns rankings. Google tends to test your pages in lower positions first, so early progress looks slow even when the site is genuinely moving in the right direction.
The Hunter Vault challenge
Hunter Vault is playing in a rough category. Terms like "budgeting app," "expense tracker," and "personal finance app" are already owned by established finance sites and major apps with years of authority, thousands of backlinks, and marketing budgets I can't match.
Chasing those broad terms with a three-month-old site would be unrealistic. So I went narrow instead: gamified budgeting, expense tracking for Filipinos, subscription audits, recurring expenses, savings goals, tracking gaming-related spending.
There's a second problem too. Hunter Vault is mainly a mobile app, and app-store discovery doesn't automatically feed website visibility. Someone can find the app through an App Store search and never touch the site. Someone else can read a budgeting article on Google and never install anything. So the website has to earn its own keep: pull people in with useful content, answer their money questions, then introduce Hunter Vault as a solution that fits.
The biggest lesson from month one is that SEO for a new app is about building lots of small discovery paths around the problems the app solves. The homepage is only one of them.
The first 100 clicks aren't a milestone anyone's going to frame on a wall. But they told me the foundation is holding, and that Google is finding the pages, testing them, and starting to send real people. Next month, more content goes on top of it.