This is not a success story, but rather a record of an experiment conducted from May to June 2026 on a new site operated by HanamiWEB, which was part of their WordPress maintenance and management service, specifically focusing on SEO measures.

What kind of website did you create?

I received a request to create a new website for a company that sells well water coolers, which was established in February 2026.

The site structure is
・TOP page
·Company Profile
• Inquiry Form
- Add a case study by posting
- Add an announcement by posting it.
This was a very challenging situation from an SEO perspective.

For typical corporate websites, if a client wants a catalog-like presence, we often get inquiries about creating a homepage with this level of content.

Here are the results of AhRef:
- This is a newly launched site, less than a month old, so its domain has zero authority.
- There are no external links, so the external link rating is 0.
・No keyword hits
This is the state of the site.

After publication, access was almost zero.

I launched the site in mid-April, but even in mid-May, there were still zero results in Search Console.
This is a common issue with WordPress sites: the site was being flagged for meaningless keywords.

Reviewing SEO strategies for your WordPress site

Therefore, I reviewed the SEO strategies for my WordPress site once again.
Recently, there's a plugin called Rank Math SEO that's been gaining global attention. I learned a lot about Rank Math SEO by watching numerous YouTube videos from overseas, and although I'd been using All in One SEO exclusively for many years, I finally decided to switch to a different SEO plugin and installed Rank Math SEO.

Data from the All in One SEO plugin could be migrated with a single click, and when I switched to Rank Math SEO, I made detailed settings for the structured data that could be configured additionally. I am using Rank Math SEO within its free limits.

Start using AhRef

As you all know, organic traffic from SEO has plummeted. With people relying more on AI and fewer users searching, organic search traffic has drastically decreased.

Because the free tools of Google Analytics and Search Console have limitations in analyzing the results of AI Overview, we started using a paid analytics tool called Ahref.

Why Ahref? While researching AI search from YouTube videos originating overseas, I learned that Ahref, an SEO analysis tool, is used globally. In terms of price, even the cheapest Lite plan is only 19,900 yen per month, so I decided to upgrade to the paid version and start using Ahref.

In my experience, while I've started consulting AI more often, if I want accurate information, I still use regular search engines to gather the information myself.
Ultimately, the reality is that AI is quoting articles that rank highly in SEO, so SEO remains extremely important.

Reasons for trying Ahrefs Agent B

I subscribed to Ahref for AI overview and SEO analysis, and they provided me with a beta version of their AI agent, Agent B. It was amazing!

Based on the Ahref screen you're currently viewing, the AI agent will automatically make suggestions, navigate you through the screens, and adjust settings.

• Competitor Keyword Analysis
• Suggestions for target keywords, difficulty level, and volume.
• Policy proposals
• Output the draft of the article or service page.
• Keyword tracking settings

etc.
It's like having an SEO director. You consult with the director, and even with the proposed content, you ask questions like, "This is what I think, what do you think?" and then fine-tune it.
This process helps you quickly identify what needs to be done right now.

Published the first SEO article.

Through repeated conversations with Ahref's AI Agent B, I was able to find the keywords I wanted to target that I felt were right for me.
Also, since chat conversations tend to get lost in the feed, I made sure to paste important information into a spreadsheet and keep a record so I could refer back to it later.

First, I wrote my first SEO-focused article using WordPress on May 16th.
We are a company that sells commercial air conditioning systems, and we have had someone analyze the situation to determine that there is demand in the livestock industry, and that the combination of livestock industry and air conditioning is a promising market with little competition.
[Heat countermeasures for pig farming]
I wrote an SEO article targeting that audience.

Since I'm not an expert on pig farming, I used articles written by an AI agent and then corrected any inaccuracies and added information highlighting the company's strengths.

Changes after the publication of article 1.

Ahref has a feature called Rank Tracker, which tracks the ranking of keywords you've set. This was also suggested and automatically configured by the AI Agent B.

About 10 days after publishing the first article, the site, which had zero keyword hits for a month,
"Measures to combat heat stress in pigs"
"Heat countermeasures for pig barns"
The keywords we were targeting, those that people struggling with heat countermeasures in pig farms would likely search for, were ranking below 50th place.

It's apparently rare for a website with zero domain authority and only about a month old to suddenly jump into the top 50 rankings, which means the keyword has very little competition.

As you can see, there are many keywords with high search volume but few competitors implementing SEO strategies.
Together with AI Agent B, we search for target keywords, increase the variety of keywords that hit, and improve rankings.
By increasing your domain authority, you can develop your website to be competitive even with keywords that have a lot of competition.

Further measures to improve rankings will be added.

When I sent a message to AI Agent B saying I wanted to move on to the next step, it immediately came up with the next suggestion.
This involves writing additional articles.
Since we haven't yet accurately identified keywords that are easy to rank highly for, the suggestion was made to start by publishing articles using keywords with less competition and a reasonable search volume.
I received about 10 article suggestions, and I published all 10 generated articles on my WordPress site that same day, using them almost exactly as they were.

Results after 4 days of publishing 10 articles

 I checked the status of Search Console every day.
Then, four days after publishing 10 articles all at once, about 15 keywords suddenly started appearing in Search Console.
Some keywords had fewer than 10 from the start, which was a surprising result.

Current considerations

Using Ahref's AI Agent B feels like having an experienced director assigned to you.
While it's not about simply following instructions, and there are on-the-ground contexts that AI can't understand, some degree of tuning is necessary. However, I think it's a valuable tool for companies implementing their own SEO strategies.

Future verification plans

When I reported the Search Console results to Ahref's AI Agent B,
- Add internal links
- Add new articles to aim for a higher ranking.
I was given a suggestion to implement changes, so I added internal links and four more articles.

I was advised to check keyword trends once a week using Search Console or Ahref's rank tracker, but right now I'm curious, so I'm going to monitor them daily.

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