Rainbow Watersports · 09
SEO Success Metrics
Baseline first, then how we'll actually know it worked — ten real metrics, not vague "traffic should go up" promises.
Current
12 of 97 keywords on page 1
Target
Flat or improved by day 30
On a same-domain rebuild, a broad ranking drop almost always means something technical broke — a bad redirect, a missing canonical — not that Google "forgot" the site’s history.
Current
Baseline pending Search Console access
Target
28-day rolling at/above baseline; CTR flat or improved
The current homepage meta description is a 368-character auto-generated block of button text — clicks and CTR should genuinely improve once that’s fixed, not just hold steady.
Current
Mobile LCP 5.3–5.7s (target ≤ 2.5s); every vital failing
Target
Good within 30–60 days (28-day rolling real-user data)
This is the whole reason the rebuild exists. Field data — real visitors, not a lab tool — is what Google actually ranks on.
Current
Baseline pending Search Console access
Target
Important pages stay indexed; no spike in exclusions
Rebuilds are the #1 cause of accidental de-indexing — a leftover noindex tag, a robots.txt mistake, a broken canonical.
Current
Generic schema already present sitewide (Organization, WebSite, BreadcrumbList, Article, BlogPosting) — zero commercial types (LocalBusiness, FAQPage, Offer, TouristTrip)
Target
Existing types survive intact; new commercial types validate with zero critical errors
An earlier crawl reported zero schema entirely — that was a measurement gap, not a finding. The real gap is narrower: nothing currently declares this a business that sells anything.
Current
185 linking root domains, including Washington Post and Smithsonian
Target
100% of top-linked legacy URLs resolve cleanly (200 or a single 301)
A backlink pointing to a 404 is authority actively leaking away — this is the literal preservation goal of the whole project.
Current
Unconfirmed, pending GBP access
Target
Calls, clicks, direction requests stable or rising
For a location-based tourism business, this is real local demand — independent of whether someone ever visits the website itself.
Current
Unknown — requires FareHarbor’s GA4 integration confirmed AND fareharbor.com added to GA4’s unwanted-referrals list
Target
Booking-start and completion rate flat or improved by day 90
Every other metric here is a proxy. This is the actual answer to "did the rebuild make the business more money."
Current
DA 25 vs. 8; Rivalry 51 (Moz, July 13, 2026)
Target
DA gap holds or widens; Rivalry score trends down
Every other metric measures the site against itself over time. This is the one that measures it against the single business most likely to take a booking that should have gone to Rainbow Watersports.
Current
NOT YET CAPTURED — outstanding pre-launch task, unmeasurable if skipped
Target
Named in a majority of 5 queries across 2+ AI surfaces, accurately described
No tool reports this the way Search Console reports rankings — it has to be run manually, five queries across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews, screenshotted before launch.