The articles were there. Google couldn't see nearly a third of them.

Your website grew the way most do. A main site, a blog added later in another tool, a developer somewhere else. Each part works on its own. Together, Google can’t tell what you offer, so the articles you already paid for go unread, and the people searching for exactly what you sell find someone else.

That was one of my clients, an education company, in August. By the end of the twelve weeks, their pages appeared on Google’s first page for about 1,111 different searches a week, up from about 649.

Who they are

The client is an education company that publishes a large library of guides for students and their families. The guides do the work: of its visits from Google’s unpaid results, seven in ten begin on one of its articles. The articles are the front door.

What was wrong

In the first week, Google had 71 of their 114 articles on file. Thirty-six it had never seen at all, because nothing told Google they existed.

The writing was fine. The trouble was in how the parts were joined:

• One line in one settings file stopped Google from reading the page that listed every guide, so Google saw it as empty.
• Renaming an article left its old address dead.
• Every article lived at more than one address, and Google kept switching between them.

Articles were written in one system and copied by a script onto the main site, which runs on another. Their developer and their marketing lead work in different countries and time zones. Nobody owned how the whole thing read to Google.

What I did

I found the places the systems disagreed and wrote each fix for the person who owned that part. Their team built most of the site changes, and I checked each one on the live site as it went in.

• One address for every article. The settings line came out in the first deploy, and Google can now read the guide listing. Retired addresses now forward to the right page, and every article is in the list of pages the site gives Google. The publishing script now writes its own forwarding rule when an article is renamed, so the fix holds as the library grows.
• A library that works together. Overlapping articles merged or retired, new descriptions on the 27 pages Google showed most, and subject experts named as reviewers on the articles they checked. After the sprint, on 28 October, I placed 220 links between related guides myself.
• Titles that say what people search for. Two of their guides were shown 73,134 times in three months and clicked 185 times, and neither title named what people were looking for. I rewrote both; their team put them live on 21 October.
• Tracking that counts applications, not visits. Applications started, applications submitted and briefings booked are now recorded, so they can see which articles lead to applications.

What changed

	Before (July)	After (October; clicks 26 September to 16 October)
Different searches a week where they appear on Google’s first page	about 649	about 1,111
Of those, in the top three results	about 173	about 326
Clicks a day from people who did not search for them by name	about 42	about 52

71 percent more searches on the first page. Nearly twice as many in the top three. A quarter more clicks a day from people who had never typed their name. Each one is a search where someone looking for what they offer now sees them on Google’s first page.

Does your site look like this?

• Your blog runs in a different tool from your main site.
• More than one developer or agency has worked on it.
• You publish articles, but few people find them on Google.
• You could not say which of your pages Google has never seen.

If two of those sound familiar, book a call. Bring your website address, and I’ll show you what Google can’t see on yours.

How we measured

Every figure above states its window here, with the date it was read.

• Seven in ten visits from unpaid search begin on an article: Google Analytics 4, landing pages of organic search visits, 2 to 27 September 2026, reported 1 October 2026.
• 71 of 114 articles on file, 36 never seen: Google’s indexed pages list, 9 August 2026 snapshot, the project’s first week. These counts move as Google recrawls; they are that day’s reading.
• Dead addresses, more than one address per article, an empty guide listing: live fetches of renamed addresses, 6 August 2026; Search Console and live fetches of each article’s address forms, August 2026; the guide listing page and the site’s robots.txt, August 2026, with Google’s recrawl of the listing confirmed 17 August 2026.
• The two systems, the script and the team: the client’s own account of its publishing pipeline and team, August 2026.
• The two guides: Google Search Console, web search, 15 July to 12 October 2026, both address forms of each article added together. New titles live 21 October 2026; their effect is not yet measured and is not claimed here.
• First page and top three: Google Search Console, weekly position history, different searches for which the site appeared in positions 1 to 10 and 1 to 3. Before: weekly average of the weeks of 13 to 27 July 2026, about 649 and about 173. After: weekly average of the weeks of 12 and 19 October 2026, about 1,111 and about 326. Pulled 30 October 2026, re-read unchanged 31 October 2026.
• Clicks from people who did not search by name: Google Search Console, clicks from searches not containing the company’s names. Before: 921 clicks in 12 July to 2 August 2026 (22 days), pulled 28 August 2026. After: 1,099 clicks in 26 September to 16 October 2026 (21 days), pulled 20 October 2026.
• The 220 links: each checked on the live site, 28 October 2026.

What the project delivered, 3 August to 28 October 2026

The twelve-week sprint ran to 23 October; the 220 links were placed on 28 October.

• 25 written change instructions to their team; their team built the site changes.
• 9 reports and analyses, including three cycle reports.
• 3 maps and plans, including the second edition of a topical map.
• 4 working calls.
• Changes made on their site directly by The Buildhaus: priority addresses submitted to Google for re-crawl (17 August), a three-article linking test (21 October), and 220 internal links, each checked live (28 October).