I Built 6 Websites This Year. Here's What I Learned (An Honest Review)

So, in 2025, I created six websites, five of which are directories, one of which is a boring website. And here are the metrics from Google Search Console showing you how many clicks each of these got in the last 3 months. And I'll

be the first one to say a lot of these don't have the traction that we wanted to. And we're going to talk about that.

to. And we're going to talk about that.

Is it the niche selection? Is it the SEO? Is it still worth keeping these

SEO? Is it still worth keeping these around? Should I continue building in

around? Should I continue building in these niches or rebuild them with AI coding tools? and is there an

coding tools? and is there an opportunity to take what I've built and turn it into something that may perform a lot better or monetize better? A lot

of people think that I build these directories and I continue working on them behind the scenes to make them grow and flourish. But the truth is I

and flourish. But the truth is I probably spent around 15% of my year building these directories for anywhere between a day to a week to two weeks and then I just left it there to see what

happens. And in a lot of ways, this is

happens. And in a lot of ways, this is going to be a large laundry list of things not to do if you're going to go and build a directory and expect it to succeed. And I can very clearly look

succeed. And I can very clearly look back at a single project and be like, "Oh yeah, I didn't do the on page SEO correctly, and that's why I didn't give it a fair chance to actually succeed."

It's like throwing a toddler out in the forest and expecting it to grow up to be Tarzan. So, I'm just going to go over

Tarzan. So, I'm just going to go over every project and talk about the things that went wrong specific to that website directory and talk about what I'm going to do moving forward. And some of them are total duds, I think, and some of

them do show promise. And towards the end of the video, I'm just going to be talking about my biggest lessons and takeaways and what I'm going to do differently in 2026 in terms of building directories. Before we start, there's a

directories. Before we start, there's a saying that my dad used to say growing up, and I figured it's kind of the mentality that I'm going into this video with, which basically translates to when you fall down, you can at least grab a

fist full of dirt. And it's kind of cliche, but I love Chinese proverbs, and I think it's so true. The best lessons are learned from just failing at stuff and just putting in the reps. And

there's thousands of examples of other people who have done the thing that you're trying to do successfully. So,

you just have to learn from the mistakes and carry that with you forward. And

that's what we're here to do. So, let's

go ahead and dive in and check out the directories that I built. So, the first directory that I built this year was the dog park directory. And I definitely think there are so many things wrong with this one. When I ask myself what went wrong with this directory, I always

think about my structured approach to building directories, which is all around niche validation, niche selection, and then making sure that the website that you publish has great data and great onpage SEO. But with this

specific website, I feel like it didn't even get to a point where I was satisfied with the on-page SEO. And

that's partly due to the text stack that I was building with. One of the major things that this is lacking, if we go to any of these location pages, is internal links. And what happens is I end up with

links. And what happens is I end up with a bunch of orphan pages, which are terrible for indexing. So that was a major major flaw with this one. There's

a bunch of other issues, but if we take a look at the HF's web master tools, which is completely free, we see so many issues from a technical and onpage SEO front. 2404 page errors. So this is

front. 2404 page errors. So this is obviously a massive massive issue. If we

take a look at the Google search console, we can see that this is the dog parks directory. In the last 3 months,

parks directory. In the last 3 months, 132 total clicks. And if we take a look at the pages here, there are 6,000 pages that are not indexed and only 211. And

if we take a look at the ones that are indexed, they are correct. We wanted

these to get indexed. Google's looking

at this and saying, "Well, gez, this is a massive website and only 200 pages have actual content worth indexing." So,

due to my inexperience using the text stack, I think it was croccoblock if I'm not mistaken. Uh, and just knowing how

not mistaken. Uh, and just knowing how to navigate that and set that up. I

didn't really give this an actual chance to succeed. As far as niche selection, I

to succeed. As far as niche selection, I actually don't think this is a terrible niche. And so there is kind of a glimmer

niche. And so there is kind of a glimmer of hope for me kind of rebuilding this, but I would want to spend very, very little time. I'm looking at the main

little time. I'm looking at the main competitor that I was looking at, which is nylabone.com, and they're still getting a good amount of traffic here.

They did kind of experience what seems to be kind of a lull in their traffic, but they're still getting traffic, and they're ranking on the first page for keywords like dog park near me. So, this

is a great sign from a validation standpoint. I don't think the idea

standpoint. I don't think the idea itself is awful, but I wouldn't say it's the best because there's not that much commercial intent like they're just looking for dog parks. So, not really trying to purchase a service or a product. Now, what about the redeeming

product. Now, what about the redeeming qualities? Is there anything that this

qualities? Is there anything that this is doing well? And the first thing that I would say is the actual data enrichment is pretty solid. I think it provides a lot of value and I don't think I have to do much more when it comes to making this listing more

valuable for each of these parks. And

so, that is one of my favorite things about this website. And despite the orphan pages and the 404 errors, I am somehow getting referenced by ChatBT for three different LLM queries. And I'm

ranking for 28 keywords. Obviously, not

a lot of traffic at all, but look at these keywords that I'm ranking for.

Again, this directory is probably 50 or 60% finished, yet I'm still able to rank for some of the individual dog parks. It

just goes to show how low competition these keywords are when it comes to ranking for them. And if I just put a little bit of effort to make sure that the onpage SEO is perfectly clean, then I can actually see this getting a lot

more traffic than it is getting right now. I would definitely have to build

now. I would definitely have to build back links. But just looking at the

back links. But just looking at the entire landscape again and just kind of quickly looking at dog park near me. I

would say the niche itself is absolutely possible to go and rank and create a directory that monetizes off display ads, but I don't think it's going to make a whole lot of money. 15,000

monthly visitors, US-based traffic, that might be $300 to $500 a month passively.

So, in terms of next steps for this project, I would rebuild it with AI coding tools. I would have to build a

coding tools. I would have to build a couple backlinks, but I just wouldn't put it at the top of the list in terms of my priorities. I think the lack of commercial intent makes this less appealing. But, it's really appealing

appealing. But, it's really appealing for someone who just wants to maybe get a little bit of passive income coming in. And so, I'll probably put this in

in. And so, I'll probably put this in the middle of the list or maybe middle back as far as all of the ideas that I want to go and pursue when it comes to building directories in 2026. Now, the

second directory that I built is comic bookstores.co. And this is definitely in

bookstores.co. And this is definitely in my opinion my favorite full bootup video that I did using Geo Directory. I think

it's the most complete video that I made and it's probably around 80% finished in my opinion. Here are the stats from

my opinion. Here are the stats from Hrefs. We can see that I am kind of

Hrefs. We can see that I am kind of climbing in the DR department which means I'm getting back links and we are ranking for some keywords and we do have a little bit of traffic. It says I'm getting 100 monthly visitors but I can

just show you right here that I am getting a little bit more. So, we can see that in the last 28 days, 624 total clicks in the last 3 months around 2,000. Uh, there is a small dip here. It

2,000. Uh, there is a small dip here. It

could be the holidays, but I also suspect that it could be due to the recent Google Core update in December, which always makes things a little bit more volatile, but we'll have a clearer picture after the holiday season. But

the December update did start around December 11th, and that's kind of when we see this draw down. But with that said, for a six-month directory, it's definitely showing a lot more promise than the dog parks directory. So, if we take a look at some of the technical

issues first and the challenges, there are some things that I can clean up. I

mean, a lot of these are kind of minor, even though I do have some 404 page errors I should go and fix. All this

stuff is so easy to fix in AI coding tools. I could literally just export all

tools. I could literally just export all of these issues, hand it to Claude Code, and tell it to figure out what the solution is, and it'll go and do that.

So, this is bad, but I don't think it's so bad that it's affecting the entire performance of my website. Overall, I

would say that there are definitely more redeeming qualities than negatives with this directory build. The first one that I want to point out is the actual backlinks. I clicked on this here and I

backlinks. I clicked on this here and I didn't notice, but I did get a backlink from comicbook herald.com. It is a no follow backlink, which is kind of unfortunate, but just the fact that I'm getting this natural backlink from a

very, very relevant website is a great sign. It means that I'm creating content

sign. It means that I'm creating content that is linkw worthy when people stumble upon it. Now, when we look at the

upon it. Now, when we look at the keywords that I'm ranking for here, it is also showing some promise here. a lot

of low competition keywords that could start to add up in terms of traffic. I'm

ranking on the first page for several of them right over here. And they're all kind of branded keywords, but what I'd really like to go and rank for is like comic book store Los Angeles. Those

types of location-based keywords are definitely where I would get the bulk of the traffic in my opinion. So, I think the game plan with this is that if I wanted to continue building this out, I would definitely want to drive back links to those location pages. The

listing pages also look pretty good.

There's nothing too terribly wrong with the on-page SEO here. I think it's more so the location pages that leave more room for improvement. This is the Los Angeles location page. I don't even have

a header one for comic book stores Los Angeles. So, massive missed opportunity

Angeles. So, massive missed opportunity there. I will say in my experience using

there. I will say in my experience using Geo Directory is a little bit hard when it comes to targeting and optimizing location pages. And so usually when I

location pages. And so usually when I run into this issue, I'll create a static location page kind of like I did with the discover plasma website where this is also using geodirectory. But I

created these static location pages here and these just rank so much better for those city locationbased keywords. So

what do we do with this? Well, I think the niche itself is solid, mainly because there's a massive community for comic book collectors, and I think that if I can tap into that, become known as

the better source for truth, I think that there is some opportunity here. The

challenge is that the existing comic book store directory, comic shop locator here, has been around for a very long time, and it's kind of widely received as the go-to place to learn about comic

book shops, even though it's outdated, even though it looks pretty bad. And

apparently they didn't even update their SSL certificate, which is why I'm getting this connection not private message. This could be a good sign to

message. This could be a good sign to continue forward, but I think this is just the big challenge, which is everyone knows comic shoplocator.com by name to overtake them and win the hearts

of the comic book fans out there. I need

not only great SEO, but I need a solid reason, some value in my directory to win them over and habitually get them thinking about my directory instead.

Will I keep this one around? I think so.

I don't think I have to kill this one off just yet. But at the same time, I don't really feel like creating a bunch of static location pages to target those keywords. And so, I would probably want

keywords. And so, I would probably want to rebuild this with AI coding tools just so I can do that within a few prompts and it'll generate all of these optimized pages for me. I think getting the natural backlink shows that there's

inherent value and there's an engaged community, which means that I should probably keep this around and just try to improve it. Again, it's not really going to be super super high on my priority list. Mainly because I don't

priority list. Mainly because I don't know how much money I could realistically make. Definitely above the

realistically make. Definitely above the dog parks directory. Although, it would be really nice to kind of establish myself as the main comic book shop directory, especially because of this situation and then just passively earn

from display ads. And I think that could be a play. Now, the third directory that I built this year is scratchentlocator.com.

scratchentlocator.com.

This is by far the most successful and hightraic website directory that I built this year and it's also the first project that I fully built with AI coding tools using cloud code. If I had to talk about the challenges and the

opportunities for improvement here, I would say that there aren't many challenges from an SEO and a technical SEO perspective. It's more later stage

SEO perspective. It's more later stage monetization because it's getting traffic and I just haven't really put serious effort into cold outreach or cold email which I think has to happen if I want to monetize this effectively.

Um, I have it pending for Mediaine. I've

already applied and so I hope to get accepted there to get some passive income kind of flowing through some display ads. I do think this is a good

display ads. I do think this is a good contender for potential featured listings or just selling leads, but I do have to start measuring the amount of leads and the phone calls somehow and then basically sell those featured

listings via cold email. Now, looking at the Google Search Console, we can see I've gotten 10,000 clicks in the last 3 months. This directory is only roughly 5

months. This directory is only roughly 5 months old. And again, we do see this

months old. And again, we do see this dip right here. Kind of starting that Google core update around December 11th.

So, I do have to see after the holidays if this bounces back up or if I need to go and build more trust signals, build more backlinks, and then have this right back up to 7 to 8,000 monthly visitors,

which this was getting just before this little dip happened. Now, look how clean this HF's web master tools shows us for this directory. It looks like I do have

this directory. It looks like I do have a canonical point to redirect. So, that

is really, really easy to fix.

Everything else is pretty minor. all the

blue and yellow kind of tags here. But

overall, this is looking very, very clean. The href's data doesn't really

clean. The href's data doesn't really show the correct amount of traffic here, but it does tell us the types of keywords that we're ranking for. All of

this is good stuff, and we're right on pace to rank for the keywords that we want on the first page, right? Scratch

and dent, store near me. All of these are great signs. I think at this point, I honestly just need to build some backlinks because this is basically backlinkless. There's nothing really

backlinkless. There's nothing really going on here, yet it's still able to get a good amount of traffic. So, this

one's pretty easy for me. I'm definitely

keeping this around. I think it was a great playground to learn AI coding tools. But, there are some things that I

tools. But, there are some things that I need to improve. For example, I've been getting a lot of inbound emails for this directory from appliance repair companies. And so, one of the ideas that

companies. And so, one of the ideas that I had was to basically add a another section to this directory for appliance repairs. And that way I have scratch and

repairs. And that way I have scratch and dent appliance stores and then the repair shops because for some reason all of the emails and the requests to add a store are coming from appliance repair

stores. So I think that could be a play

stores. So I think that could be a play there just to get more traffic and potentially sell leads to the appliance repair stores as well. Now why do I think that this performed so well so quickly? Well, I think that I am the

quickly? Well, I think that I am the only directory around scratch dent appliances. There's thousands of people

appliances. There's thousands of people looking up this keyword in their city.

And all of these keywords that I'm targeting and that I've researched are very low competition. And that's part of the reason why niche selection is so important. The fact that it's AI coded

important. The fact that it's AI coded also can't be totally ignored. It's not

that WordPress doesn't rank well. It's

more just that using AI coding tools and creating this really taught me that I can use AI coding tools and not have to worry that I did poor on page SEO. It

kind of eliminates this massive obstruction that I see happen with a lot of directories, which is because the on-page SEO is so lackluster. You just

didn't give it a chance to succeed in the first place. And with AI coding tools, literally so so easy to make sure that all the URL slugs are optimized, your headers are on point, the page

structure is solid, and that all of the information is formatted in a mobile friendly way. The list goes on, and

friendly way. The list goes on, and that's why I think AI coding tools are so appealing. I think this is definitely

so appealing. I think this is definitely higher in priority compared to the comic book stores and yeah, there's definitely some promise here. Now, the fourth directory that I built this year is haunted hotels of america.com. This is

kind of a funny one because it's kind of a different directory. The main

competitor that I modeled off of is not really a directory and they have all of these sort of descriptions and stories of why a haunted house is haunted. The

opportunities for improvement here, starting with the technical SEO isn't too crazy. Like I do have an orphan page

too crazy. Like I do have an orphan page here, but it's manageable. But if we go over to the Google Search Console, we can see some data around the last 3 months. I remember there were some

months. I remember there were some issues getting this indexed and so there are 45 pages that are crawled but currently not indexed. And these are important pages. These are the pages

important pages. These are the pages that will target the keywords that I kind of strategize for. So, the fact that these are crawled but not indexed tells me that either I need more trust signals, more backlinks to basically

prove to Google that these are valuable pages or I just need to make sure my internal linking strategy is set up correctly, which I think it is. It's

possible that Google is just taking its sweet time to index these because this was very slow to index. I was kind of shocked. It took about it took about 2

shocked. It took about it took about 2 or 3 weeks just to start indexing the proper pages here. Obviously, it's not finished yet. But what I'm afraid of

finished yet. But what I'm afraid of here is that Google sees these as lowquality content pages. I don't think that's really the case because these other location pages are pretty much using the same template. So that's why I

think it may just be kind of slow. This

is a weird one because I actually do think that there is opportunity in this niche because looking at some of the competitors that are ranking at the very top of the keywords that I want to rank for, like this one for example, which is

ranking at the very top for haunted hotels San Antonio, the page isn't that different. The content isn't too far off

different. The content isn't too far off from what I have to offer and they just have basic kind of internal links here.

I will say that the way that I structured this probably is not the best for engagement. This is a massive table

for engagement. This is a massive table of contents. So on mobile, this must be

of contents. So on mobile, this must be a terrible experience. It shows I'm only ranking for five keywords, but if you look at the types of keywords they're mapping out correctly. Haunted hotels in Florida, haunted hotels in Arizona. It

should be more city-based. These are the state-based keywords, of course. But I

think that this even though it's very very tiny, it means that we are at least directionally correct. But I will say

directionally correct. But I will say this is pretty disappointing in terms of how long this directory has been around and how slow it's been to index. And I

don't even know if recreating it and rebooting it through AI coding tools would be worth the time. So I would probably place this in terms of my priority list underneath dog parks. And

that's the truth. Now the fifth website that I created is not a directory. It's

a boring tool. It's called

widescreen.ai. And you may have heard me talk about how I built this in 24 hours using AI coding tools, but here are the stats. And we can see it's very, very

stats. And we can see it's very, very dead again after that kind of core update passed December 11th. But it's

literally a couple months old. And so

this is obviously not what we want to see. But I am not conclusive with this

see. But I am not conclusive with this kind of downturn here. So we can wait to see what happens and look past that for now. This is kind of an experiment into

now. This is kind of an experiment into boring tools and kind of one-page websites like calculator websites and stuff like that. But this functionally doesn't really operate any differently than the other competitors that are

getting half a million monthly visitors.

I think if anything, mine looks and feels a lot better. With that said, I knew going into this it was a backlink game. And we can see the stats right

game. And we can see the stats right over here. It shows that I have 721

over here. It shows that I have 721 backlinks, but a lot of them are spam backlinks. If they're not already tagged

backlinks. If they're not already tagged with spam, they kind of are spammy by nature because there's a lot of linked domains just on this kind of referring page right here. A lot of them are also

just basically DR0 with no real traffic.

So pretty meaningless when it comes to backlinks. And just to show you what

backlinks. And just to show you what HF's web master tools shows me, there's no issues. This is the cleanest

no issues. This is the cleanest technical and on-page analysis that we've seen out of all the websites and directories so far. Not much to say here other than that this is a backlink game and it always has been from the start.

There's no concern from an indexing perspective or an on-page SEO perspective. The keywords that I'm

perspective. The keywords that I'm currently ranking for are mapping out perfectly. Right? We have widescreen,

perfectly. Right? We have widescreen, just the very broad keyword. We have tip interface, which is kind of cool. I'm

ranked six on the first page for that.

For this one, I think I'll be building US-based backlinks just from kind of like English or American publishers to try and capture as much US traffic as possible because I am going to be displaying ads for this if I monetize.

We'll see. This is kind of a fun little experiment and I only spent a day building this. So, totally fine if it

building this. So, totally fine if it ends up being a dud, but we'll see and time will tell. Last but not least, this is the sixth directory that I built and I just recently published this. I made a video around this. So, it's honestly way

too new to really talk about this in too much depth. This is a directory around

much depth. This is a directory around carpet cleaners where the concept was a blog forward directory. You know, I was really unsure about this entire niche selection because if we look at the

research and look at what's ranking for carpet cleaners in San Diego or Los Angeles or whatever, they're not getting that much traffic. And so going into this project, it's more of a personal

experiment to see how easy a firstdraft AI generated blog could rank on Google.

And so we can see that these are the stats. I literally published this less

stats. I literally published this less than 3 weeks ago. But look at this.

We're already starting to see some organic keyword rankings. One of them is a branded keyword for a specific carpet cleaning company in San Diego. But check

this out. I am ranking for how to get rid of peace smell in carpet which is one of the three blogs that I wrote just fully AI generated and this is pretty much the same keyword how to get peacemail out of the carpet. It gets

3100 monthly searches kind of just goes to show you you can fully AI generate something with claude code or just claude or chatbt and get it to rank if it's low competition enough. So we'll

see how far this goes. But this index pretty quickly and we can see that from the Google search console we have 72 pages indexed 17 not indexed and we can see that the index pages are a lot of

the geo directory pages it seems. So here's one of the blogs how to get dog poop out of the carpet. There's the P one right here and there's the other P1 right here. Do I expect this to become

right here. Do I expect this to become anything? Honestly, not at all. And I'm

anything? Honestly, not at all. And I'm

just going to be honest again a personal experiment to see how leads can flow through a form on every single listing page. So, if it just stays this way,

page. So, if it just stays this way, then there's a good chance that it will join haunted hotels ofamea.com in the graveyard of directories eventually. But

again, we'll see and time will tell. So,

hopefully that was valuable and I just wanted to kind of share some of the biggest takeaways here. Um, I think the obvious big mistake here was just creating a website directory in two

weeks or even one week in some cases and expecting it to succeed. That's not of course how you do things. I think the biggest question that I have is that I spent 15 to 20% of my time just building

these directories out in multiple niches. Would it have been better if I

niches. Would it have been better if I just focused on a singular directory and just gone way deeper? And there's a really good argument for that. When I

built my first three directories, they all succeeded and they're still cash flowing to this day. And none of them have really been hit by the Google core updates. So, they're very solid assets.

updates. So, they're very solid assets.

And looking back at how I built those, I was just way more observant. I cared so much more. I dove into social listening

much more. I dove into social listening way deeper to understand the problems of the people I was trying to serve. And

there's just no business that you can build in two weeks, do nothing, and expect it to flourish. And this video demonstrates what would happen if you did that from a directory and SEO angle.

I think it makes a lot of sense to go into 2026 taking these lessons and applying them to go deep into one or two maybe three if I really create a super

solid structured approach for SEO and backlinks and sales and monetization and make sure if I'm building something I eliminate any of the obvious reasons why a directory wouldn't work like poor on

page SEO orphan pages like really simple stuff right and that's where I think AI coding tools is going to have a massive advantage in 2026 I can just build something have the piece of mine that

it's clearly not the on-page SEO and the page structure should work because I found an existing competitor where they're doing it the same way. So, those

are my thoughts and with that, I just hope you have a great holidays. I

appreciate you supporting me this year and I'm honored to have earned your attention. So, thank you so much again

attention. So, thank you so much again and happy New Year's. I'll catch you in the next video. See you.