I'm a solo developer, and I'm trying to compete with calculator.net using pure SEO. This is a long-term SEO experiment, and I have no idea if it will work.
A Little background
So I got bored one day and started going through my old stuff. I found some math equations from when I was like in 11th or 12th grade.
Back then, I'd go straight online and look for calculators.
Out of curiosity, I searched for them again (Wolfram Alpha, Desmos, and Calculator.net)
And yeah, Calculator.net is still there.
I'm a little surprised since none of the ui seemed to change, even after all those years. Not because it's bad, I mean it clearly works, but it made me think:
What if I make my own calculator list app.
The early stages of development
So the initial plan was:
- a cleaner UI
- faster performance
- better UX
- better SEO
My first idea was, "A calculator for literally anything", so I named my app EveryCalc. A calculator which has every calculator.
I went to Google Trends and searched calculator, took the first 10 I can find, and made those.
After a while, I finished my first 10 calculators and tried finding a domain for everycalc. I looked in porkbun and .com was not available. So I got curious and searched "everycalc", and there it is an app already called "EveryCalc". Same functions, same ideas, etc.
And then I searched again for other calculator names, and there they are, calculators with the similar idea as mine. To be honest it was crushing at first, but I took it as a challenge.
I wanna know if I can compete with already existing apps, try to at least get in the first page of Google upon searching a calculator.
I decided I should have a niche or something. So I wanted to have calculator for games (Minecraft, Roblox, Factorio, Rimworld, etc), for everyday life, something that only astronauts use maybe, etc. A Literal Calculator Universe or CalcUniverse, where every calculator exists. A little ambitious, but I really wanna test my limits :P
After deciding what I want
100+ free calculators across finance, health, math, and utilities. Each one is its own SEO page targeting a specific keyword.
1. I targeted the most searched queries in Google Trends
- “BMI calculator”
- “age calculator”
- “percentage calculator”
- “loan calculator”
- and many more
2. The technical SEO setup
- SSG for every page
- Unique meta title + description per calculator
- JSON-LD structured data
- Dynamic OG images
- Category hub pages
- XML sitemap + robots.txt
3. Volume Over Perfection
Instead of perfecting one tool, I’m doing:
50 good calculators > 5 perfect ones
Because in SEO:
More pages = more chances to rank
4. After creating at least 200 calculators, I'd start having weird expansion
As mentioned earlier, I’m planning to add literally anything:
- game calculators
- weird/fun calculators
- ultra-specific tools people still search for
Basically:
If someone searches for it, I want a page for it.
Where I'm at now
I literally just launched, and I feel like it would really be challenging (maybe even impossible) to go up against calculator pages like Calculator.net. But then again, it would still be a milestone if I get shown in the same page in Google as calculator.net is.
But here's my progress so far:
- 100 calculators
- All pages have proper og images, faq section, all functional, etc
- I thought ads would really help with SEO, but I mostly learned it's not, so I get a small traffic, nothing crazy yet - but it’s a start.
- Around 95 new users according to Google Analytics (but maybe it's not too accurate since some of those could be crawlers)
The Reality Check
Competing with Calculator.net is not easy.
They have:
- insane domain authority
- years of SEO advantage
So I’m not trying to beat them overnight.
The goal is:
Win the long-tail first.
Why I’m Posting This
Most people only post results after they succeed.
I want to document:
- what works
- what fails
- how long it actually takes
What’s Next
- I already have 101 calculators
- But I'll add 50–100 more calculators
- Improve internal linking
- Target low-competition keywords
If you’ve worked on SEO-heavy projects before, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Or if you think this idea is dumb, tell me that too :D
I'm open to any ideas since I haven't done anything like this before, posting about a project is new to me and I wanna try new things
Here's my calculator app if you wanna check it:
I’ll keep updating this as I go (if I have the same confidence as I have not later lol)
Cheers everyone!
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