Building an organic growth engine from zero

SEO is cheaper to build in than to bolt on. So I started with the new website itself.

I planned the site structure from keyword research. Each core page targeted a clear search intent, such as raising capital under Reg CF, Reg A, or Reg D. I then wrote the copy for the homepage, solution pages, and landing pages around those terms.

What the copy had to do

• Pass review
• Rank
• Convert founders

I also provided design direction to the design team using Lovable. This kept the design and the copy working toward the same goal. It also meant the site launched with clean page structure instead of needing fixes later.

My design input covered

• Page layout
• Heading hierarchy
• Content blocks
• Calls to action

Even a well-planned site collects technical issues once it's live. So my next step was the technical layer.

I audited the site, monitored it, and reported every issue to the dev team promptly. We then worked together to get each one fixed.

• What the audit foundHow it was fixed
• Canonical and sitemap mismatchesCanonicals corrected and the sitemap aligned
• Orphan pages that no internal link pointed toOrphan pages linked or removed
• Spammy URLs indexed and sending junk trafficI removed the spam URLs from the index
• Unclear heading structureI rewrote the heading tags so each page had a clear H1 and a logical outline, and deployed the fix
• Weak metadataI rewrote the metadata site-wide, page by page

The site also reached a perfect SEO score of 100 in Google's page audit.

The spam cleanup had a visible cost. Overall traffic fell 46% in April, partly because of the cleanup and partly because of Google's core update. I reported both causes to leadership that month. Cutting junk traffic makes the numbers look worse for a few weeks. It also makes every later number more honest.

Most SEO programs chase search volume first. On a DR 5 site, that's the fastest way to publish content nobody sees.

I ran the keyword research. I filtered for terms where the top results were beatable, not only for terms with high volume. Then I grouped them into topic clusters. Each cluster had one pillar page and supporting posts that linked back to it.

Topic clusters

• Reg CF
• Reg A
• Reg D

I also mapped content to the three customer profiles Planet Wealth served. That kept the content tied to the people sales wanted to reach.

Customer profiles

• Food and beverage founders
• SaaS founders
• Energy entrepreneurs

The clusters fed a 40-post content calendar running from July 2026 to January 2027. The “People also ask” questions matter for AEO, which I cover in Play 6.

In the US, ranked keywords doubled from 15 in June to 31 in July.

In fintech, a good blog has to pass two tests.

I built the content library to do both. The blog work focused on the clusters from Play 3.

The content library

• Landing pages
• Long-form articles
• Company case studies
• Email sequences
• Google Business Profile posts

These four posts show how the approach played out.

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For sourcing, I linked only to credible, non-competitor sources. These included regulators, statute text, and reputable law firm analysis. I never repeated an external URL within a post.

I also wrote with an opinion. Regulated content tends to go flat because writers fear saying anything. But flat content gives readers no reason to stay, and no reason to cite it. Each piece made at least one clear argument while staying inside the rules.

A young domain needs links, and it needs them to the right pages. I built them through five channels.

• HARO and Featured.comExpert quotes placed in publisher articles.
• Guest postsOutreach to relevant finance and startup publications.
• PartnershipsCo-marketing with companies in the crowdfunding space, including an introduction between Planet Wealth's CEO and the CEO of KingsCrowd.
• Community platformsMedium and Quora for early, relevant mentions.
• Competitor gap analysisFinding sites that linked to competitors but not to us, then pitching them.

I pointed links at specific pages, not only the homepage. The two April pillar posts received 22 and 18 backlinks within weeks of going live. Every blog that received backlinks went on to rank in the top 100.

Referring domains grew 475% in under four months. Backlinks grew about 5.5x.

June brought a five-point gain, the biggest single-month jump on record. It matched the 45% growth in referring domains that month.

I also watched link quality. At one point, the site picked up a surge of spam backlinks. I checked whether they explained a DR change. They didn't. I then isolated the two real link losses behind the movement and dealt with those.

Buyers now read AI answers before they click anything. So I built AEO into the content from the brief stage.

Each section followed the same pattern. This structure makes a page easy for an AI system to lift and cite.

In July, Google's AI Overview cited our Reg CF explainer for the query “what is reg cf.” It appeared next to SEC.gov, in both the inline citation and the source panel. That's a DR 18 site cited beside the regulator that wrote the rule.

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By June, at least three of our pages were getting cited in AI results.

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I also proposed an entity play. Competitors such as Wefunder and SeedInvest have Wikipedia pages. I drafted one for Planet Wealth, assessed it against Wikipedia's notability guidelines as an approved editor, and planned to route it through compliance first.

One person running content, SEO, and outreach needs a system. So I built a set of custom Claude skills that encode my SEO process.

The rest of the stack

• Ahrefs
• Semrush
• Google Search Console
• GA4
• Chrome DevTools
• HARO
• Featured.com
• Zapier

Zapier ran the HARO pipeline, routing queries from Outlook so I could respond quickly. The skills didn't replace judgment. They removed the repetitive setup, so more of my time went to strategy, writing, and outreach.

SEO gains can disappear through changes outside your control. Here is what happened in August.

1. 5 pagesThe team deleted five landing pages on a subdomain.
2. 32 pagesPages on the main site still linked to them.
3. 95+ to 84Site health dropped almost overnight.
4. FixedI found the broken links and reported them to the dev team, who fixed them. I also raised the issue with the CTO.

I sent leadership a monthly SEO work and performance report.

Each report covered

• Traffic by channel
• Keyword movement
• Backlink growth
• Work done
• Next month's plan

The reports explained dips, not only wins. Paid social drove most of the site's sessions, so total traffic swung with ad spend. I separated organic performance from those swings.

In both months, organic grew while total traffic fell. Organic's share of sessions also rose from 1.69% in May to 2.17% in June. Referral sessions grew 52.73% in June, which reflected the new backlinks.

Estimated organic traffic showed the same direction, climbing every month.

I also flagged the harder months honestly. In the quarter from March to June, organic sessions dipped slightly. I explained why.

• March pages had a fresh optimization boost that faded.
• The May core update gave no major lift.
• Demand for the business is seasonally higher in Q1.
• Competitors shipped new content while we fixed technical issues.

Organic traffic then grew 49% in the first 20 days of July compared with the same period in June.

Local search improved too. From March to June, Google Business Profile interactions rose 41%, and direction requests rose 51%.