A client's site lost more than half its Google clicks. The first fix was not more content.

What happened to the site

In January the site had its best month: about 1,400 clicks from Google. Clicks were already slipping by May, then fell harder after Google's May 2026 core update.

By August it was at about 600 clicks a month. The client is anonymised here, and so are the site and its niche.

What the data showed

The usual reaction to a drop like that is to publish more. Before writing anything, I exported 16 months of their Search Console data and read it.

The biggest cause was simple: fewer people were searching for the brand. The rest was hiding in plain sight.

1. Most of the traffic they wanted to win back had never existed.

Generic, non-brand searches brought under 1% of all clicks over 16 months. Their main money keyword averaged a position in the 60s.

2. A page with over 4,000 impressions was switched off.

It sat around position 9, set to noindex as a "duplicate" of another page. That other page was never built.

3. robots.txt was blocking the site's own redirects.

Google can't follow a redirect on a URL it isn't allowed to fetch. So nearly 30 redirects had never been processed.

4. The pages answering "is this site legit?" had almost no internal links.

They had fewer than 5 links each. Boilerplate pages on the same site had over 250.

5. Two groups of searches with the same impressions had a 70x gap in clicks.

Each had about 6,000 impressions. One, at an average position of about 8, got over 1,000 clicks; the other, at about 11, got about 15.

6. Part of the drop in impressions looked like bots, not people.

In one day in August, impressions fell by over 90%. Clicks fell by about 15%.

None of these needed new content first. Each was sitting in data the site already had.

Why I made the playbook

Most AI SEO prompts skip that step. They jump to "write more" and invent search volumes and competitor moves to justify it.

These prompts don't. Each one asks you questions first, says what it may not make up, and ends with the first actions to take.

What is inside

11 prompts, each a full workflow. The plain-English job comes first, with the prompt's name in brackets.

• 1. Find searches you already show up for but aren't winning. (GSC Money Query Miner)
• 2. Find the smallest fix for pages on pages 1 and 2. (Position 3-20 Refresh Engine)
• 3. Decide which pages should link to your money pages. (Internal Link Capital Allocator)
• 4. Decide if two keywords need one page or two. (SERP Intent Splitter)
• 5. Plan the shortest page that answers a buyer. (Compact BOFU Page Builder)
• 6. Check a pages-at-scale idea before you build it. (Programmatic SEO Gatekeeper)
• 7. Find out if you need more content or more authority. (Topical Ceiling Detector)
• 8. Decide where your next link budget goes. (Link Portfolio Gap Analyser)
• 9. See which sites ChatGPT and AI Overviews cite in your market. (AI Citation Source Mapper)
• 10. Turn an SEO tip into a cheap, safe test. (SEO Experiment Designer)
• 11. Start here: it picks which of the other 10 you need. (SEO Operator Router)

Your first 10 minutes

• Export your Performance report from Google Search Console (last 16 months).
• Open ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini and paste prompt 11, the Router.
• Answer its questions and upload the export when it asks. It tells you which workflow to run next.

Rules every prompt follows

• It asks its questions first and waits for your answers.
• It never invents search volume, difficulty, conversion rates or what competitors are doing.
• It flags anything that needs a live Google search check.
• It never claims a change will definitely improve rankings.

Who it is for

• Site owners who lost traffic and don't know whether to rewrite, publish or wait.
• Freelancers and in-house marketers who want a repeatable first check.

It is not a "rank #1 in 30 days" trick. Nobody can promise that, and Google says so in its own guidance.

What I am not claiming

The findings above came from my own analysis of the client's data. The playbook packages that habit of reading first; it did not fix the site.

The recovery is still in progress, and I won't show you a chart until there's one worth showing.

Questions

Do I need paid SEO tools? Not for most. Several prompts start from a free Google Search Console export. The link budget prompt (8) works best with a backlink export, which usually needs a paid tool.

How do I get the Search Console export? In Search Console, open Performance, set the date range to the last 16 months, then click Export and choose CSV or Google Sheets. Workflows that need data ask for it.

Which AI should I use? Any recent AI that takes long prompts and file uploads, such as ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini.

I'm not technical. Will I understand the output? Each prompt asks you plain questions first, and ends with the first actions to take.

What do I actually get? One plain-text file (Markdown) with all 11 prompts and a short how-to at the top. Open it in any text editor, or copy a prompt straight into your AI.

Can I use it for client work? Yes, on your own sites and your clients' sites. Please don't resell or share the file.

What if it is not useful? Email [email protected] within 30 days and it is refunded. No form to fill in.