— Case Study

227 queries ranking, on a site that didn't exist a month ago.

Built a new site for runboulder.org with technical SEO baked in from launch, for the in-person training group Kathy Butler coaches in Boulder, Colorado, which also routes athletes who can't train in person to her online coaching. Four weeks of real Google Analytics and Search Console data.

Design approach: a bold layout built around Coach Kathy Butler's Olympic pedigree, with a clear path for prospective members to get in touch. The FAQ carries an equally clear answer for the two audiences the club actually gets. "Do I need to live in Boulder?" (no, remote athletes get routed to Kathy's online coaching) sits right next to "I'm visiting Boulder, can I train with the group?" (yes, drop-ins welcome). Mobile-first, fast on every device, with technical SEO fixed at the source, not layered on top.

And it's working: weekly sessions grew from 9 to 86 in the four weeks since launch. Full breakdown below.

🔒 www.runboulder.org

Client — Run Boulder Athletic Club Site — runboulder.org Window — Jul 29 – Aug 25, 2026, four weeks post-launch, still gathering data Written by — the phoe.be team

— Reach

Every place that reached out

Same filter as every other number on this page: a city counts only with a returning visitor or a multi-page journey behind it, not raw pageviews, which bots inflate for free.

Colorado, zoomed in

Eight of the eleven cities are Colorado towns near Boulder, too close together at world zoom to tell apart once the map zooms out far enough to fit Abu Dhabi, Oaxaca, and the UK, so the inset in the corner keeps that Colorado detail visible. The UK connection only resolved to the country level in this data, not a specific city, which is why it's plotted without one. Not every real connection shows up here, either: direct visits and word-of-mouth referrals leave no trail in Analytics at all.

— What we did

The actual work, not just the result

The numbers on this page are downstream of what actually got built and fixed, not a vague "SEO pass."

✓Built runboulder.org as a new site.
✓Set up Search Console tracking across 227 distinct ranking queries so the club's visibility is measured, not assumed.

— Traffic

Steady growth, honestly plotted

Bars are weekly sessions; the line is average engagement time per session. The line dips slightly even as sessions climb: the explanation is below the chart, not hidden.

Sessions Avg. engagement time

On the yellow line: engagement time reads as a decline (37s down to 32s), but 85–95% of each week's active users were brand-new visitors. A flood of first-time traffic pulls the average down mechanically; it isn't evidence the content got worse. Worth watching once new/returning mix stabilizes.

Show the underlying weekly numbers

Week	Sessions	Active users	New users	Returning	Avg. engagement
Jul 29 – Aug 4	9	7	6	1	37s
Aug 5 – 11	77	71	69	2	34s
Aug 12 – 18	84	58	56	2	34s
Aug 19 – 25	86	70	66	4	32s

Search Console totals for the same four-week window.

227Distinct ranking queries

11.1Avg. position

173Clicks

6,200Impressions

2.8%Avg. CTR

Distinct ranking queries — different search terms the site showed up for in Google, whether or not they got clicked. It's a breadth measure, not a quality one; Avg. position below is what tells you how well those queries actually ranked.
Avg. position — the average spot in Google's results across those queries; lower is better, 1 is the top result.
Clicks — times someone clicked through from a Google result to the site.
Impressions — times the site appeared in Google's results, whether or not it was clicked.
Avg. CTR — click-through rate: clicks divided by impressions. For an average position just past page one, that's on the higher end of what you'd typically expect, not a weak spot to explain away.

— Still ahead

What hasn't been fixed yet

Progress isn't the same as done.

✕Indexing fix is fresh. A "Duplicate, Google chose different canonical" error on the apps page (a stale internal-link signal left over from a URL rename) has been fixed, but the re-crawl and any impression lift aren't confirmed in Search Console yet.
✕227 queries is head-term coverage, not long-tail. "Run boulder" itself is close to maxed at an average position of 1.4. Broader topical coverage beyond the club's name is the next lever, and it hasn't been pulled yet, including the "can't train in person" / remote-athlete search intent the FAQ already answers on-site but doesn't yet target directly.

— FAQ

Want a site like this one?

The questions that come up before every project like Run Boulder Athletic Club's.

How much does a website like runboulder.org cost?

Business sites like Run Boulder Athletic Club's are quoted after a quick call, once the scope is clear. Single-page sites start at $150, with custom design, technical SEO, and a year of hosting included.

What's included in a phoe.be website?

Every site gets custom design with no templates, technical SEO foundations built in from day one, mobile-first performance, and a full year of hosting included in the starting price.

Is four weeks of data enough to trust these numbers?

Four weeks is enough to show real, verifiable movement: 227 distinct queries in Search Console, exact weekly session counts, no rounding up. It's not enough to call anything finished, which is why the "Still ahead" section above lists what's still unproven instead of only reporting the wins.

— Next

Websites
from $150

Want numbers like these for your site?

Just what actually moved and what's still left to fix, no inflated stats and no vanity metrics. Technical SEO and a year of hosting included.

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Also see: the Kathy Butler Coaching case study →