Will & Wind  ·  Recovery plan  ·  July 2026

First, we acknowledge.

Where we fell short, what is working, and exactly what changes from here.
Prepared for Anna and Joachim · Team Empathy

Nine months in, your confidence has slipped, and the concerns you raised are fair. So we have gone back to the data, and we want to walk you through what we found, including where we fell short and exactly what changes from here.

  • Backlink quality and toxic links
  • Results you cannot see
  • Site speed you thought was fixed
  • "Why do I need an agency for this?"
01 · The proof

The work is producing your biggest revenue channel.

+29%
Organic search revenue since we came on in October
+24%
More orders from organic over the same window
51%
Of your total revenue is organic, your biggest channel

And it is landing on your product and collection pages, the ones we optimise, not the blog. Organic now earns more than every other channel combined.

Source: Will & Wind GA4 + Ahrefs · since kickoff 24 Oct 2025 to 20 Jul 2026 vs prior year · AUD.

Where the revenue actually lands

Looking at revenue by landing page tells the same story. Across all traffic since kickoff, your product and collection pages carry the sales, and your 120 blog pages sit right at the bottom.

Landing pageSessionsRevenue (AUD)
Home9,542$27,698
Car seat towels (collection)6,635$17,409
Travel towels (collection)1,733$4,771
Hooded towels (collection)1,062$1,913
Gym towels (collection)412$1,370
Beach mats (collection)846$1,355
Ningaloo adult hooded towel (product)396$956
Hair wrap (product)202$758
Blog (120 pages combined)979$114
Your blog is 120 pages driving 3.4% of sessions and 0.15% of revenue ($114). The revenue engine is the product and collection pages, the ones we work on every month.

Revenue by landing page, all traffic (not filtered to organic), since kickoff 24 Oct 2025 to 20 Jul 2026. Source: Will & Wind GA4 · AUD.

02 · Your concerns, answered

Straight answers to what you raised.

Already handled

Toxic links

The links you flagged are already disavowed in Search Console, so Google has been told to ignore them. They only linger in Ahrefs because tools still show disavowed links.

Being straight

Link quality

Classic submission links are not the growth lever they used to be. Your results are coming from on-page and content, so we would rather redirect that spend to what is working.

We own this

Where we fell short

We did the work but did not clearly show you, so it looked unresolved. That reporting gap is on us, and it changes from here.

03 · The evidence

The DR dip is happening to the whole category.

Will & Wind Dock & Bay Tesalate
0 14 28 42 56 70 2026 Google updates 15 56 40 Mar '25 Jun Sep Dec Mar Jun Jul '26

Your Domain Rating dipped from its March peak, and it is worth seeing that next to the rest of your category. Over these seventeen months the established players went backwards: Dock & Bay from 61 down to 56, Tesalate from 55 down to 40. Yours is the only line on this chart that is up, 9 to 15. Domain Rating across the category has been deflating through the 2026 Google updates, so a dip back from a peak is not evidence of spammy links dragging you down.

Source: Ahrefs Domain Rating, monthly · Mar 2025 to Jul 2026 · verified 24 Jul 2026.

04 · The opportunity

Your competitors rank for products you already sell.

Every collection below already exists on your site. The volumes are triangulated across Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush and Ahrefs, and the positions come from the live Australian results this week.

Search termMonthly searches (AU)Who is winning itTheir DRWhere you are
gym towel11,000Cheeky Winx #2, Tesalate #313, 40Collection exists, outside the top 10
tea towel4,400Dock & Bay #556Collection exists, not ranking
kids hooded towel1,600Meander Wild #2, Sammimis #413, 18Collection exists, position 35
hair towel1,600Ugly Swan #316Hair wrap ranking 12, room to grow
beach blanket1,600Tesalate #440Collection ranking 10
Look at the DR column. On three of these five searches, the site sitting in the top four has a Domain Rating between 13 and 18. Yours is 13. Authority is not what is keeping you off these pages, which is why more links was never going to be the fix. The pages are.

Volumes triangulated across Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush and Ahrefs, median of the three, Australia. Competitor positions and Domain Ratings pulled from the live Australian results, 24 July 2026. Your positions from your June ranking report.

Keep what is winning (you hold top-10 spots for quick dry towel and quick drying towel)  ·  Add the gaps above  ·  Replace the targets Keyword Planner made look bigger than they really are.
05 · Site speed

What happened with speed, and the real fix.

Earlier · Wild Tree (your Shopify dev)

What was done

Wild Tree was brought in for structural Shopify work, and on speed they resized and re-uploaded your images, the item our audit surfaced.

That helped desktop. We then said speed was as good as Shopify allowed and stopped tracking it. That call was too shallow, and mobile stayed slow.

Now · Gil (Shopify performance specialist)

What is different

Gil looked at the render path: third-party apps and render-blocking JavaScript, the real mobile bottleneck we never touched.

That is why desktop looks fine while mobile still loads in 14 to 17 seconds, well over Google's 2.5 second target.

This is not a second supplier for the same job. It is a deeper, different piece of work, and it comes with a proper scope, a load-time target and a fixed price.
06 · The work we are bringing you

We have gone deeper on where AI and search are heading.

Alongside the recovery, we have rebuilt your whole keyword and AI-search picture from the ground up, so the plan targets real demand and your brand is the one ChatGPT recommends. It is all in one live workbook you can open any time.

Every keyword, re-triangulated

Your current targets plus an expansion set, checked across Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush and Ahrefs, not one tool. It corrects inflated numbers (Keyword Planner reads "towels with hood" at 1,900/mo, but triangulated it is closer to 30, because Keyword Planner groups near-identical phrasings under one figure) and surfaces the sand-free family, the category's biggest demand pool, which was never targeted.

97-prompt AI library

The real questions buyers ask ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI across your whole range, each with a directional volume and a priority, so we know which answers Will & Wind can own.

11-cluster content strategy

Every keyword and prompt mapped to a content territory, ranked by demand, proven page performance and whether you can uniquely own the answer.

AEO scorecard: 43 / 100

Your AI-search readiness scored against our four-pillar model. The on-site bones are genuinely good; authority (the links) is the drag, and it is exactly where the budget was going. Certified is 80.

Open the full research workbook ↗
07 · The plan

An honest re-plan.

  • Re-weight the spend. Less commodity link building, more on-page, content and technical, the work driving your revenue.
  • Sharpen your keyword targets. Go after the gaps your competitors own and you sell, gym, tea, hair and kids, and defend what is winning.
  • Fix mobile speed with Gil. A scoped job with a load-time target and a fixed price, not an open hourly rate.
  • Report by outcome, not activity. Your revenue and the thinking behind it, every month. No more silent work.
Next: we walk you through this together this week, and agree the priorities with you.