This site is our first client.
What this page is
We built buildyourownaudience.com with the same process we use for clients, and we're growing it in public. Below: the monthly results, the searches and AI questions we're trying to win, what's being released next, the latest automated checks, and a log of everything we did.
The scoreboard
Updated monthly. Search numbers come from Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. AI citations come from asking a fixed set of questions in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews and counting how many answers cite this site. A dash means we haven't measured it yet.
| Month | Event | Pages indexed | Search impressions | Search clicks | AI citations | Organic leads |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 2026 | Pre-launch baseline: not yet live, so every number starts at zero | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
What we're trying to win
These are the searches and questions we built this site to answer. Before launch we looked at who currently ranks and gets cited for each one, and retitled pages to match how people actually search. Publishing the list, and the competition, is a bit of a dare. If we can't win our own, you shouldn't trust us with yours.
| Search or AI question | Page built to answer it | Who owns the answer today | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|
| alternatives to buying leads | Alternatives to Buying Leads | B2B prospecting and list-building vendors whose 'alternative' is their own outbound or scraping tool. Nobody answers it for consumer-lead buyers (mortgage, insurance, solar, home services). | Low |
| is buying leads worth it | Should You Buy Leads or Build Your Own Audience? | Lead-industry vendors and trade press own it with pros/cons posts that mostly conclude 'yes, if done right', e.g. activeprospect.com, housingwire.com. | Medium |
| where do lead generation companies get their leads | Where Lead Vendors Get Their Leads | Lead-industry vendors (boberdoo, Callbox) and thin SEO-farm posts (savemyleads has several near-duplicate pages). They write it from the seller's side. | Low |
| why isn't my AI-built website ranking | Why Most AI-Built Websites Don't Rank | Website builders (Wix) and big agencies (WebFX). Wix's page is thorough on technical causes: JS rendering, missing titles, thin pages, no sitemap, no schema, no links. It also covers how to check indexing. | Medium |
| do small businesses need GEO and AEO | SEO vs GEO vs AEO: What Each One Means | Small SEO/GEO agencies and consultants with recent blog posts own it; no dominant authority yet, e.g. eseospace.com, lilachbullock.com, senso.ai. | Low |
| how long does it take to build a website with AI | The 80% Illusion | High-authority brands and AI site-builder vendors own it with 'minutes to hours' answers, led by yoast.com, plus base44.com and techradar.com. | High |
| SEO ROI calculator vs buying leads | Lead Spend Calculator | SEO agencies with generic SEO ROI calculators and guides win; none compares SEO against buying leads directly, e.g. webfx.com, seerinteractive.com. | Low |
| how to stop paying for leads | Shifting Budget From Lead Vendors to Owned Channels | Nobody owns it; scattered SaaS playbooks, newsletters and trade-press pieces rank, e.g. shiftflow.app, inman.com, with some off-intent results. | Low |
| shared vs exclusive leads | Shared vs Exclusive Leads | Lead sellers and lead-industry blogs, plus active insurance-agent forum threads. leadgen-economy.com is the most complete: a price-by-vertical table (auto insurance shared $15-25 vs exclusive $55-75, solar $40-80 vs $95-150, PI $60-150 vs $200-400+), contact rates and worked CPA math, though uncited. | Medium |
| what is ping post lead distribution | How Ping-Post Lead Distribution Works | Ping-post software vendors (boberdoo, ActiveProspect, ClickPoint, iRev). Authoritative but written for lead sellers and platform buyers. | Medium |
| are aged leads worth it | Aged Leads: What They Are and When They Pay | Forums dominate: agents asking peers. Beyond them, vendor and sponsored content. There's no neutral, data-backed answer. | Low |
| cost per lead vs CPA | Cost per Lead vs Cost per Acquisition (CPA) | Wikipedia and marketing-software glossaries own this definitional query, with convert.com the main head-to-head comparison article. | Medium |
| why don't purchased leads convert | Why Purchased Leads Don't Convert | Trade press and generic 'leads not converting' vendor posts. None focus on purchased leads specifically across consumer verticals. | Low |
| questions to ask a lead vendor | How to Evaluate a Lead Vendor | Lead-gen vendors and one prolific industry SEO blog (leadgen-economy); no neutral buyer-side source. | Low |
| TCPA consent rules for purchased leads | TCPA Consent for Purchased Leads | Compliance-tech vendors and law-firm alerts; several top results still describe the dead one-to-one rule as pending. | Medium |
| owned vs rented audience | What Is an Owned Audience? | Creator-economy platforms selling newsletters or communities own it, framed for creators leaving social media, e.g. circle.so, beehiiv.com, digistore24.com. | Medium |
| how long does SEO take for a new website | How Long Does SEO Take? | SEO agencies and tool vendors; Ahrefs-style data studies and expert roundups give the strongest pages. Google's own 'four months to a year' quote is the anchor everyone cites. | High |
| how to rank in ChatGPT | How to Get Cited by ChatGPT | Well-funded AI-visibility software vendors and growth agencies own it with long guides backed by proprietary prompt data, e.g. tryprofound.com, nogood.io. | High |
| how to show up in Google AI Overviews | How to Appear in Google AI Overviews | Vendor and agency blogs; Google's own 'AI features and your website' doc is the authority but doesn't win the how-to SERP. | Medium |
| what is llms.txt | What Is llms.txt? | Glossary pages and vendors with a stake (Mintlify, AI-SEO tools); the spec site llmstxt.org and skeptic pieces (Optimizely 'Does llms.txt work? with receipts', 'llms.txt is the meta keywords of 2026', Mueller news) are the strongest honest sources. | Medium |
| does ChatGPT recommend my business | How to Check if AI Mentions Your Business | Forums and small consultant/agency blogs own it, with lilachbullock.com strongest via a check method plus a free AI visibility checker; also clickforest.com. | Low |
| how many pages does a website need for SEO | How Many Pages Does a Website Need? | SEO tool vendors and small agencies giving unsourced page-count ranges (e.g. 5-10, 12-30, 10-100). | Low |
| will Google penalize AI-written service pages | Google's Policy on AI-Generated Content | Local SEO agencies and AI-tool vendor blogs answering the general 'does Google penalize AI content' question, with sterlingsky.ca the only one specific to service-area pages. | Medium |
| is my AI-built website SEO friendly | Is My AI-Built Website SEO Friendly? How to Audit It | AI website builder vendors answering in their own favor, led by b12.io's nine-audit checklist, plus techradar.com and bluehost.com overviews. | Medium |
| AI website copy checker | AI Sameness Checker | AI-detector and plagiarism tools and the directories listing them (originality.ai, alternativeto.net, SiteTell); nobody owns 'is my site copy generic' as a distinct answer. | Medium |
| mortgage lead generation | Mortgage Lead Generation | Vendors who sell leads, lead software or ad inventory, plus HousingWire (affiliate). Everyone pitches buying or their platform; no neutral 'build your own' angle. | High |
| HELOC leads | HELOC Leads: Buying Them vs Building Your Own | Nobody good for buyers: one deep industry blog (leadgen-economy) plus vendor and marketplace pages; spam/scraped pages also appear, signalling a weak SERP. | Medium |
| SEO for mortgage loan officers | SEO for Mortgage Lenders and Loan Officers | Mortgage marketing vendors and SEO agencies; LeadPops has the most complete guide; WebFX ranks on authority alone with a thin page. | Medium |
| mortgage advertising compliance rules | Mortgage Advertising Rules for Websites and Content | Mix of official/quasi-official sources (FTC, Fed's Consumer Compliance Outlook) and compliance vendors; no single page covers every rule set. UK results (FCA/ASA) leak in, showing ambiguity. | Medium |
| how to return bad leads to a lead vendor | Lead Vendor Contracts and Return Policies | Lead vendors' and lead-software help docs explaining their own return button (mediaalpha.com, support.phonexa.com, ClickPoint); no neutral buyer-side guide ranks. | Low |
| how much does SEO cost vs buying leads | How Much Does SEO Cost Compared With Buying Leads? | Niche agencies comparing bought leads with SEO for their own vertical (liensstudios.com and geeksforgrowth.com for law firms), mixed with off-intent 'buy SEO leads' pages. | Low |
| alternatives to Angi and Thumbtack | Alternatives to Angi, Thumbtack and Local Services Ads | Field-service software brands with long contractor listicles of other lead platforms (housecallpro.com, getjobber.com, fieldpulse.com), plus homeowner guides like blockrenovation.com. | High |
| how to track ChatGPT traffic in GA4 | How to Track ChatGPT and AI Traffic in GA4 | SEO tool vendors and agencies with step-by-step regex and channel-group tutorials, led by writesonic.com, seoworks.co.uk and practicalecommerce.com. | High |
| how to get my business recommended by ChatGPT | How to Get Your Local Business Recommended by ChatGPT | Marketing agencies selling 'ChatGPT SEO' with generic five-step listicles (impactplus.com, clickforest.com, profiletree.com), none sourced to OpenAI documentation. | Medium |
| mortgage broker website statistics | The Mortgage Homepage Sameness Study | Market-research and trade press on broker industry size (ibisworld.com, theadviser.com.au) plus agency stat roundups like webtonic.io; no original US study of broker websites ranks. | Low |
What's coming
6 guides are live. 42 more are written, inspected and scheduled, about two a week. We release them gradually on purpose: a brand-new site that publishes everything at once looks like the mass-produced content search engines distrust. Each release date is a public commitment.
| Release date | Guide | Topic |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-11-03 | Why Purchased Leads Don't Convert | Buying leads |
| 2026-11-06 | How to Get Cited by ChatGPT | Getting found |
| 2026-11-10 | Mortgage Lead Generation | Mortgage and HELOC |
| 2026-11-13 | Shared vs Exclusive Leads | Buying leads |
| 2026-11-17 | Is My AI-Built Website SEO Friendly? How to Audit It | Building websites with AI |
| 2026-11-20 | Cost per Lead vs Cost per Acquisition (CPA) | Buying leads |
| 2026-11-24 | HELOC Leads: Buying Them vs Building Your Own | Mortgage and HELOC |
| 2026-11-27 | How Long Does SEO Take? | Owning your audience |
| 2026-12-01 | How to Appear in Google AI Overviews | Getting found |
| 2026-12-04 | Shifting Budget From Lead Vendors to Owned Channels | Owning your audience |
| 2026-12-08 | SEO for Mortgage Lenders and Loan Officers | Mortgage and HELOC |
| 2026-12-11 | How to Evaluate a Lead Vendor | Buying leads |
| 2026-12-15 | Google's Policy on AI-Generated Content | Building websites with AI |
| 2026-12-18 | What Is an Owned Audience? | Owning your audience |
| 2026-12-22 | Mortgage Advertising Rules for Websites and Content | Mortgage and HELOC |
| 2026-12-25 | How to Check if AI Mentions Your Business | Getting found |
| 2026-12-29 | TCPA Consent for Purchased Leads | Buying leads |
| 2027-01-01 | Why AI Rewrites What You Fixed | Building websites with AI |
| 2027-01-05 | Organic vs Paid Leads: How the Cost Really Compares | Owning your audience |
| 2027-01-08 | How Perplexity Picks Its Sources | Getting found |
| 2027-01-12 | How Ping-Post Lead Distribution Works | Buying leads |
| 2027-01-15 | How to Make AI-Assisted Content Original | Building websites with AI |
| 2027-01-19 | How to Turn Website Visitors Into Leads | Owning your audience |
| 2027-01-22 | How Many Pages Does a Website Need? | Getting found |
| 2027-01-26 | Aged Leads: What They Are and When They Pay | Buying leads |
| 2027-01-29 | Scaled Content Abuse, Explained | Building websites with AI |
| 2027-02-02 | Building an Email List for Lead Generation | Owning your audience |
| 2027-02-05 | Structured Data for Small Business | Getting found |
| 2027-02-09 | Pay-Per-Call vs Web Leads | Buying leads |
| 2027-02-12 | What Is Topical Authority? | Getting found |
| 2027-02-16 | Paid Ads to Your Own Site Instead of Buying Leads | Owning your audience |
| 2027-02-19 | Robots.txt for AI Crawlers: What to Allow | Getting found |
| 2027-02-23 | Building a Reviews and Referrals System | Owning your audience |
| 2027-02-26 | Location Pages Without Doorway Pages | Building websites with AI |
| 2027-03-02 | E-E-A-T Explained for Small Businesses | Getting found |
| 2027-03-05 | What Is llms.txt? | Getting found |
| 2027-03-09 | Core Web Vitals Explained | Getting found |
| 2027-03-12 | How Much Does SEO Cost Compared With Buying Leads? | Owning your audience |
| 2027-03-16 | How to Get Your Local Business Recommended by ChatGPT | Getting found |
| 2027-03-19 | Lead Vendor Contracts and Return Policies | Buying leads |
| 2027-03-23 | How to Track ChatGPT and AI Traffic in GA4 | Getting found |
| 2027-03-26 | Alternatives to Angi, Thumbtack and Local Services Ads | Owning your audience |
The latest automated checks
Every time this site is published, automated checks re-test every page against our standard, grouped into the same six gates we use for clients. If any check fails, the build stops and nothing goes live. They don't replace the human inspector. It makes sure nothing that already passed has quietly drifted.
| Gate | Check | Passed | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 · Positioning & intent | Title is 30–65 characters | 22/22 | pass |
| 1 · Positioning & intent | Meta description is 110–165 characters | 22/22 | pass |
| 1 · Positioning & intent | Exactly one H1 | 22/22 | pass |
| 1 · Positioning & intent | Title is unique | 21/21 | pass |
| 1 · Positioning & intent | Description is unique | 21/21 | pass |
| 2 · Site architecture | Heading levels don't skip | 22/22 | pass |
| 2 · Site architecture | Every internal link resolves | 22/22 | pass |
| 2 · Site architecture | Listed in sitemap.xml | 21/21 | pass |
| 2 · Site architecture | Assigned to a topic | 6/6 | pass |
| 2 · Site architecture | Listed on its topic page | 6/6 | pass |
| 2 · Site architecture | Links to its topic's core guide | 6/6 | pass |
| 2 · Site architecture | Links to at least 2 other pages | 6/6 | pass |
| 2 · Site architecture | robots.txt points to the sitemap | 1/1 | pass |
| 3 · Content substance | No generic AI phrasing | 22/22 | pass |
| 3 · Content substance | Guide is at least 900 words | 6/6 | pass |
| 3 · Content substance | Uses at least 3 visual formats | 6/6 | pass |
| 3 · Content substance | Figures come with a linked source | 6/6 | pass |
| 3 · Content substance | Under 5% overlap with any other guide | 6/6 | pass |
| 3 · Content substance | No page is a near-duplicate of another | 20/20 | pass |
| 4 · Technical foundation | Canonical URL is correct | 22/22 | pass |
| 4 · Technical foundation | Language is declared | 22/22 | pass |
| 4 · Technical foundation | Mobile viewport is set | 22/22 | pass |
| 4 · Technical foundation | HTML under 120 KB | 22/22 | pass |
| 4 · Technical foundation | Page weight under 250 KB (HTML, CSS, JS) | 22/22 | pass |
| 4 · Technical foundation | No render-blocking scripts | 22/22 | pass |
| 4 · Technical foundation | At most 3 third-party hosts | 22/22 | pass |
| 4 · Technical foundation | External links use HTTPS | 22/22 | pass |
| 5 · Search & entity signals | Share image exists | 22/22 | pass |
| 5 · Search & entity signals | Structured data parses | 22/22 | pass |
| 5 · Search & entity signals | Organization details identical | 22/22 | pass |
| 5 · Search & entity signals | Open Graph tags present | 22/22 | pass |
| 6 · AI answer readiness | Short answer is 35–75 words | 6/6 | pass |
| 6 · AI answer readiness | Short answer appears before the body | 6/6 | pass |
| 6 · AI answer readiness | Has 3 or more FAQ answers in schema | 6/6 | pass |
| 6 · AI answer readiness | At least 3 headings phrased as questions | 6/6 | pass |
| 6 · AI answer readiness | Listed in llms.txt | 6/6 | pass |
| 6 · AI answer readiness | robots.txt welcomes GPTBot | 1/1 | pass |
| 6 · AI answer readiness | robots.txt welcomes OAI-SearchBot | 1/1 | pass |
| 6 · AI answer readiness | robots.txt welcomes PerplexityBot | 1/1 | pass |
| 6 · AI answer readiness | robots.txt welcomes ClaudeBot | 1/1 | pass |
| 6 · AI answer readiness | robots.txt welcomes Google-Extended | 1/1 | pass |
| 6 · AI answer readiness | robots.txt welcomes Bingbot | 1/1 | pass |
Run on 2026-10-28: 564 of 564 checks passed across 22 pages.
What we've done
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| 2026-10-28 | Published our first original research: we read 106 mortgage broker homepages across 28 metro areas and released the anonymized data. Also built a tool that runs our six-gate audit on any website, so free audit requests can be turned around quickly. |
| 2026-10-28 | Researched who currently ranks and gets cited for each of our target questions, then retitled seven guides to match how people actually search, strengthened eleven more, added a mortgage and HELOC topic and five new guides where competitors left gaps. |
| 2026-10-28 | Wrote and inspected 33 more guides across four topics, and scheduled them for release two a week through February 2027. An independent editorial review then flagged 37 issues, including contradictions between guides, outdated facts, missing legal disclaimers and claims we couldn't back up. All were fixed before launch. |
| 2026-10-28 | The inspector's first run failed 20 of 215 checks: meta descriptions too long, guides without question-style headings, too few links between guides, a skipped heading level and one generic AI phrase. We fixed every one. The next run passed 215 of 215, and only then did the site go live. |
| 2026-10-28 | Built the site: homepage, 6 core guides, two free tools and this scoreboard. |