--- title: "MaineLove Case Study — Rambling Media" url: https://ramblingmedia.com/case-studies/mainelove description: "A pure startup build: website from scratch, a cocktail and mocktail recipe engine scaled around a canned water product, and hub-and-spoke category pages that took top-5 positions for the category term inside twelve months." lang: en --- Case Study — Startup Launch Zero to top-5 for "canned water" in year one — non-brand search doubled in the final six months. Organic search clicks Day one 0 No site, no content, no links Non-brand growth 2x Final six months of year one Year one 10.8K Total organic clicks A pure startup build: website from scratch, a cocktail and mocktail recipe engine scaled around a canned water product, and hub-and-spoke category pages that took top-5 positions for the category term inside twelve months. ## Milestone Timeline 1. 0 Site launched from scratch Month 1 2. 1 hub Canned water category hub live Month 3 3. 9.8 Average non-brand position Month 6 4. 10.8K Total clicks, year one Month 12 ### Non-brand organic clicks through year one Non-brand clicks per month (estimated shape) MaineLove started as a pure startup: no website, no content, no links, and a canned water product in a category almost nobody was searching for by brand. Everything on this page was built inside the first twelve months. The build came first — the site itself, product pages and a crawlable technical base — then a recipe engine of cocktails and mocktails written around the product, wired into hub-and-spoke category pages so the brand had a real page to rank for "canned water" and its variants rather than a blog full of orphans. By the end of year one the site had 10.8K organic clicks and 288K impressions, top-5 average positions on the category terms, and authority built from zero to DR 35 across 497 referring domains. The number that mattered most was non-brand: 1.05K clicks and 225K impressions from people who had never heard of the brand, roughly doubling over the final six months. Monthly curve values are shaped to the reported trend; totals and positions come straight from Search Console. ## Search performance Search Console, first twelve months. Non-brand figures are the same window filtered to non-branded queries. 10.8K Total clicks 288K Total impressions 3.8% Average CTR 9.9 Average position Lower is better ### Non-brand: the real growth story Search Console filtered to non-branded queries A new brand starts with no brand demand, so non-brand search is the only honest measure of whether the content is working. MaineLove's non-brand curve sits flat at zero, switches on once the recipe content and category hubs are indexed, then roughly doubles across the final six months of the year — 225K non-brand impressions in a category the brand had no presence in twelve months earlier. 1.05K Non-brand clicks 225K Non-brand impressions 0.5% Non-brand CTR Broad discovery queries 9.8 Non-brand position Lower is better Work with us ## The same playbook, as a service A launch with no brand equity, no ad budget and a year to prove itself. That is programmatic SEO doing the heavy lifting, wrapped in the monthly growth package so content, site and search all move together. If you have writers already, the roadmap is available on its own. Programmatic SEO: https://ramblingmedia.com/services/programmatic-seo Growth Package: https://ramblingmedia.com/services/growth-package Content Strategy Consulting: https://ramblingmedia.com/services/content-strategy-consulting ## Category Breakout ### Brand vs non-brand, year one Clicks and impressions, total search versus the non-branded slice - Non-brand clicks Position 100.0 → 9.8 Share 1,050 - Brand clicks Share 9,750 - Non-brand impressions Share 225,000 - Total impressions Share 288,000 ## Query Breakdown ### Top queries earning clicks in year one Share of search demand captured by query in year one — non-brand category terms separated from brand terms Non-brand category & recipe terms 46% of the mix - canned water 59 %of group share - water from maine 12 %of group share - water purely from maine 9.8 %of group share - best canned water 7.8 %of group share - does seltzer water hydrate you 5.9 %of group share - strawberry basil mocktail 5.9 %of group share Brand terms 54% of the mix - maine love water 52 %of group share - mainlove 20 %of group share - maine merch 20 %of group share - maine sweatshirt 8.2 %of group share ## Hub & Spoke Architecture Category hub Canned water Sub-hubs - Cocktails - Mocktails - Seltzer & hydration Recipe spokes - Strawberry basil mocktail - Blueberry spritz - Summer gin cooler Product pages - Canned still water - Canned sparkling - Variety pack The category hub links down to drink-type sub-hubs, then out to individual cocktail and mocktail recipes, and across to the product pages that convert. ### Category terms in the top 5 Average position for the terms the category hub was built to own — start of year one versus year end - canned water Unranked #3.1 - best canned water Unranked #4.6 - water from maine Unranked #2.8 - water purely from maine Unranked #1.9 ## Execution Roadmap 1. 01 ### Website build Stand the whole thing up: brand site, product pages and a technical base search engines can crawl on day one. - Site built from scratch with the brand launch - Product and collection pages structured for search - Clean URLs, titles and internal navigation - Analytics and Search Console from launch day 2. 02 ### Recipe content engine Scale cocktail and mocktail content written to actually be made from, not thin blog filler. - Original cocktail and mocktail recipes - Full ingredients, measures and directions - Recipe schema for rich results - Seasonal and occasion-led publishing cadence 3. 03 ### Category hubs Build the hub-and-spoke skeleton around the category term the brand needed to own. - "Canned water" hub and drink-type sub-hubs - Recipes interlinked up to their hub - Hubs linking across to product pages - Keyword mapping by category, not by post 4. 04 ### Authority & conversion Earn the links that make a new domain competitive, then push the same discipline to buy-intent pages. - Link acquisition from zero to 497 referring domains - Buy-intent meta data on product pages - Non-brand query tracking as the health metric - Continuous expansion of ranking recipe set ## Growth Drivers ### Original recipe content Cocktail and mocktail recipes built around the product, written well enough to be cooked and shared from rather than skimmed. ### Category hub architecture A dedicated canned water hub with sub-hubs and recipe spokes, so authority concentrates on the term the brand had to win. ### Recipe schema Structured markup making the recipe pages eligible for rich results and more SERP real estate than a new domain would otherwise get. ### Link acquisition A deliberate authority build from nothing — DR 35 and 1.7K backlinks across 497 referring domains inside the first year. ## Key Insights - A brand new domain reached 10.8K clicks and 288K impressions in twelve months with no legacy content to lean on. - Non-brand clicks doubled over the final six months of year one — the clearest sign the content engine, not the brand name, was doing the work. - "Canned water" alone produced 24.3K impressions, the category term the hub was built to own, at a top-5 average position. - Recipe content pulled in demand the product pages never could: strawberry basil mocktail and hydration questions both earned clicks. - Non-brand CTR reads low (0.5%) because the non-brand set is dominated by broad discovery impressions — volume arriving before intent narrows. ## More Case Studies Programmatic SEO ### Career Vault From 10K to 220K monthly organic traffic in eight months. https://ramblingmedia.com/case-studies/career-vault Search Growth ### Cruise Parking From a standing start to 31.5K clicks and 2.04M impressions. https://ramblingmedia.com/case-studies/cruise-parking Programmatic SEO ### WAY Local-intent programmatic pages built at scale across gas, parking, car wash and insurance. https://ramblingmedia.com/case-studies/way Content SEO ### Crowd Cow Non-brand organic search up 63% year over year — 76.8K to 125K clicks. https://ramblingmedia.com/case-studies/crowd-cow SEO & ASO ### Big Fish Games Organic traffic +50% year over year, app installs +35% — and a 1M+ pre-registration launch. https://ramblingmedia.com/case-studies/big-fish-games Programmatic SEO ### VRAI Faceted jewelry pages, original content and a review engine built for high-intent search. https://ramblingmedia.com/case-studies/vrai Short-Term Rental Marketing ### Arnold Haven Bought the house, ran the remodel, built the marketing — a Superhost listing running three-plus years on big-group pricing, not high occupancy. https://ramblingmedia.com/case-studies/short-term-rental Talk about your growth plan (https://ramblingmedia.com/contact) ## Structured data ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Organization", "name": "Rambling Media", "url": "https://ramblingmedia.com", "logo": "https://ramblingmedia.com/__l5e/assets-v1/35567819-0ee4-4f42-bf21-eb2960a6d173/Horizontal-Blue.png", "sameAs": [ "https://www.facebook.com/RamblingMedia", "https://x.com/RamblingMedia", "https://www.instagram.com/ramblingmedia/", "https://www.youtube.com/@ramblingmediaoriginal" ], "slogan": "Where Stories Roam", "telephone": "+1 (206) 462-1798", "email": "ramblingmedia@gmail.com", "address": { "@type": "PostalAddress", "streetAddress": "100 N Howard St", "addressLocality": "Spokane", "addressRegion": "WA", "postalCode": "99201", "addressCountry": "US" } } ```