30,500+ citations in Bing AI answers within 3 months of relaunch (Jul to Oct 2026, Bing Webmaster Tools).
The client
An independent publisher in Lake City, Colorado, founded in 1996, offering ghostwriting, editing and publishing under one roof. westernreflectionspublishing.com
The brief
Replace a dated site carrying hundreds of spam posts with a fast, credible website that presents dozens of services clearly, captures quotes and manuscripts, and gets found in search.
What I did
I own this project end to end, from the design to the traffic.
- Redesign and rebuild. Redesigned and rebuilt the full site with zero downtime: 30+ service pages across writing, editing, publishing, marketing and design, plus a blog, a library, portfolio, events, pricing, a publishing directory and a manuscript submission flow.
- Author tools. Built 19 free author tools, including a Royalty Calculator, Spine Width Calculator, Cover Template generator, ISBN Checker, Manuscript Formatter, Readability Checker, Line Edit Report, Audiobook Estimator, Query Letter Builder and a KDP Keyword Planner.
- Author resources. Wrote 20 in-depth guides in five sections: writing, editing, publishing, marketing and the business of being an author.
- Content writing. Wrote the site copy and service pages, rewrote 470+ blog posts and consolidated and interlinked the blog archive.
- SEO. Technical SEO, on-page optimisation, site architecture and internal linking, Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools setup.
- Backlinks. Link building and business profile listings for the domain.
- Social media. Manage the brand's Facebook and LinkedIn accounts.
- Marketing. Ongoing marketing alongside the SEO work.
Technical SEO clean-up
The old blog carried hundreds of spam posts. Clearing them is why Bing and AI answers trust the site now.
- 699 doorway-spam posts removed with 410 responses.
- 489 blog posts consolidated and interlinked; cannibalised posts merged with 301s.
- Duplicate H1s and meta tags fixed site-wide.
- 16 state location pages, 20 B2B service pages and a 3-tier publishing directory built.
Results
I redesigned and rebuilt the site, which relaunched in July 2026, and cleared 699 spam posts left on the old blog. Within three months Bing became its main search channel, with daily clicks rising from about 2 in August to nearly 13 in October and impressions passing 580 a day. AI search moved even faster: Bing's AI answers cited the site 30,510 times by mid-October, from up to 99 different pages a day, and ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews have started sending visibility too.
| Month (Bing, 2026) | Clicks per day | Impressions per day |
|---|---|---|
| August | 2.2 | 105 |
| September | 5.3 | 324 |
| October (to the 18th) | 12.7 | 588 |
Since launch Bing has sent 456 clicks from 23,647 impressions, and GA4 shows bing / organic as the largest search channel (488 sessions against 183 from google / organic, 1 Jan to 21 Oct 2026).
Proof in the gallery above: Bing Webmaster Tools AI Performance (citations and citation share by query, 6 months) and Search Performance (456 clicks, 23.6K impressions since launch), screenshots taken 21 Oct 2026.
Bing rankings
The Bing keyword report (October 2026) lists 1,519 queries: 1,501 of the 1,508 non-branded ones average page one, 540 sit in the top 3 and 197 at position 1. Most are author questions answered by the guides and tools.
| Keyword (Bing) | Avg position |
|---|---|
| publishers that accept unagented submissions | 1.5 |
| different types of white papers | 2.6 |
| types of white papers | 3.0 |
| how many words are in the average book | 3.8 |
| how many words does the average book have | 4.4 |
| canadian publishers accepting submissions | 4.8 |
| how many words in a 300 page book | 4.9 |
AI search
Bing's AI answers (including Copilot) cited the site 30,510 times from late July to 18 Oct 2026, reaching about 800 citations a day in the last week.
- Breadth: up to 99 different pages were cited on a single day (13 Oct 2026), so this is the whole content library, not one lucky page.
- Topics: Bing groups the citations under Independent and Self-Published Books, Creative Writing, Books, E-Books and Kindle, Literature and the Publishing Industry, the site's core offer.
- Main source: 83% of AI answers for "children's book publishers accepting submissions" and 50% for "how many words is a 300 page novel" cite the site.
- Google and ChatGPT: 67 Google AI feature impressions across 39 pages since 13 Jul, and 62 GA4 sessions from chatgpt.com this year: early, but started.
| AI query (Bing) | Citations | Citation share |
|---|---|---|
| how to write a biography of a person | 562 | 21% |
| what is direct characterization | 418 | 19% |
| how to get an isbn number for my book | 329 | 9% |
| how to write a book dedication | 290 | 13% |
| book planning | 260 | 34% |
| children's book publishers open submissions | 247 | 45% |
| how to plan a book | 231 | 39% |
Citations count how often an AI answer used the site as a source. They show visibility, not visits.
Google is still early for this domain: 80 clicks and 4,258 impressions from 7 Jul to 18 Oct 2026, across 762 queries and 377 pages. The brand search "western reflections publishing" ranks 5.2 and a few local terms such as "colorado book publishers" already reach page one.
Backlinks and listings
Listed on BBB, Trustpilot, AllBusiness and D&B, with links from 11 independent sites including Wikipedia and the Colorado Encyclopedia.
Stack and architecture
Built with: PHP · WordPress · Python · Cloudflare · Schema.org
A redesign and SEO rebuild: a static PHP main site with a shared-component architecture plus a WordPress blog, launched with zero downtime and a rollback path.
| Layer | What it runs on |
|---|---|
| Main site | PHP with templated includes, page generators and shared components; HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript; a custom editorial design system (Newsreader and Public Sans) |
| Build tooling | Python build scripts and a markdown-to-page pipeline, Bash, WP-CLI |
| Blog | WordPress with Elementor Pro, custom plugins and mu-plugins for 301/410 redirect maps, site fixes and an FAQ block; MySQL/MariaDB |
| Hosting | OpenLiteSpeed, LiteSpeed Cache, .htaccess rewrites, Cloudflare CDN, Let's Encrypt |
| Integrations | Flexform CRM API for lead capture, tawk.to live chat, Open Library API and the Wayback Machine for catalogue data, GA4 and Search Console |
| SEO engineering | Service, FAQ, Review and Organization JSON-LD; hub-and-spoke internal linking; canonicals and crawl-budget fixes |
What's next
Growing Google visibility, tracking leads (quote form, manuscript submissions and calls) and filling in the remaining social profiles.
Sources: Bing Webmaster Tools (search performance, keywords and AI Performance), Google Search Console and GA4 exports. Figures shown with the client's permission.
