This is my first web project, so please assume I know nothing. I'm learning in public and I'd love your recommendations.
I built a solar savings calculator for Spain, plus 95 static pages generated by a single Node script (live site). No framework, no CMS, no Google Analytics (I track the funnel with simple Cloudflare KV counters).
What I've done so far (following docs and guides):
- 1 script builds all 95 pages: 52 province pages with real radiation data (PVGIS), 19 regional subsidy guides, plus long-tail guides.
- Sitemap + robots + canonicals, JSON-LD (FAQPage, Dataset, HowTo, Speakable), llms.txt with one .md version per page.
- Each page's lastmod comes from a content-hash manifest, so only really-changed pages look "fresh".
- Small pages (~40KB), decent Core Web Vitals, IndexNow pinged on every deploy, Search Console verified.
Where I am (Search Console, checked today):
- 49 pages indexed, 7 not. Indexing itself seems... okay?
- But Search Performance shows 0 clicks, ~1 impression. Nobody sees me.
- Zero backlinks. No custom domain (stuck on
*.pages.dev, tight budget — that's just my reality right now). - When I try "Request indexing" manually, Google says "quota exceeded" most of the time.
My honest doubt: with no money to spend, what actually moves the needle first? A few things on my mind:
- Is it simply "new site + no links = wait months", and I should relax and keep publishing?
- Is there any free tactic you'd prioritize on day one — the one thing you wish someone had told you with your first site?
- Does the
*.pages.devsubdomain hurt me in a real way, or is that a distraction from the actual problem? - Am I missing something basic and technical? I can share any header, robots.txt, or page source. Googlebot gets full HTML with 200s, no JS wall, no stray noindex (checked with its real user agent).
Any recommendation is welcome — especially the "I was exactly where you are" kind. I'll report back what I try and what happens to the numbers. Thanks for reading this far.
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