The 30-second read
Organic search is now Tulster's largest traffic channel and the one carrying growth: revenue is up 10.4% year over year on 11.6% fewer sessions, because organic conversions grew 38% and average order value rose 7%. The post-relaunch technical recovery is real and measurable — but the aggregate numbers are hiding two problems we've flagged in Priority Findings: traffic composition has shifted away from core money pages, and several GA4 tracking events broke in the relaunch.
The step-down after July 6 looks alarming in isolation — it's seasonal. The identical pattern appears in 2025 (post–July 4th slowdown), and 2026 is still ahead of last year in both halves of the window: +11.2% before July 7, +9.0% after.
Where the program stands
The March site relaunch broke five technical fundamentals — schema, page titles, page weight, tag management, and resource hints — and organic visibility paid for it through April and May. Over the last 60 days we diagnosed each regression at the code level, delivered engineering-ready fixes, and stood up real-user performance monitoring. Layout stability (CLS) has improved 83% in a month, Google began formally validating the Core Web Vitals fixes on July 8, and site health is holding at 93/100 while we work.
The channel is validated two ways: Search Console and GA4 agree with each other, Google clicks are ahead of last year despite the relaunch, and organic traffic from beyond Google — Bing, DuckDuckGo, AI search assistants — roughly 2.4×'d year over year. What's still in motion: recapturing the Q1 click baseline as the dev fixes land, and the ranking wobble of July 7–14 while Google re-evaluates the site. The detailed picture — including exactly which pages we're prioritizing for recovery — is in the tabs above.
Priority findings
These are the things in the data an executive should actually care about — not just the numbers, but what they mean for revenue and what we recommend doing. Ordered by severity.
Core category pages lost ~5,000 monthly clicks — and the aggregate numbers hide it
The relaunch silently broke GA4 ecommerce event tracking — funnel data is currently unusable
Google shows the site 44% more often — but clicks through 29% less
Average ranking position is slipping again in July
Meta Ads traffic barely converts — 12,000 sessions, 39 conversions
The revenue engine is getting more efficient, not just bigger
SEO performance — last 30 days vs. same period last year
June 21 – July 20, 2026 vs. June 21 – July 20, 2025. Traffic and conversion data from GA4; search visibility from Google Search Console; rankings from Semrush/Ahrefs.
Organic search channel (GA4)
Organic search was the site's largest traffic channel this period — and it grew while total site traffic declined ~12%, offsetting softness in paid and direct.
Google visibility (Search Console)
Cross-validation: Search Console vs. GA4 — the numbers agree, and the gap between them is good news
We validate every report by reconciling Google's click data against GA4's session data. They line up within expected bounds — GA4 organic sessions always run above GSC clicks, because Search Console only measures Google. The size of that gap is Tulster's non-Google organic traffic — Bing, DuckDuckGo, and increasingly AI search assistants — and it's the fastest-growing part of the channel:
| Organic source check | 2025 (per day) | 2026 (per day) | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google clicks (Search Console) | 956 | 976 | +2.0% |
| All organic sessions (GA4) | 1,025 | 1,142 | +11.4% |
| Non-Google organic (the gap) | ~69 | ~166 | ~2.4× |
Read together: Google held its ground through a full site relaunch — a period where most sites lose double digits — while organic demand from beyond Google roughly two-and-a-half-x'd. The SEO program is building visibility that isn't dependent on a single search engine, exactly where search is heading in the AI era.
The relaunch interrupted a strong Q1 (≈1,550 clicks/day). The important signal: the decline is over — clicks have held a stable floor since May, stayed ahead of last year, and Google's Core Web Vitals re-validation (July 8) is the gateway to recapturing the Q1 baseline as the dev fixes land.
Positions degraded from ~5.9 (March) to ~8 after the relaunch, recovered slightly in June, then dipped again during Google's Core Web Vitals re-validation the week of July 7–14. We're monitoring weekly.
Where clicks moved — top gaining and losing pages, year over year
Clicks, Jun 21 – Jul 20, 2026 vs. same window 2025, from each year's top-50 pages (renamed URLs matched across the relaunch's structure change). The pattern: new-product and blog content gained; legacy core category pages lost. Detail and dollar impact in Priority Findings.
Keyword movers worth knowing
| Keyword | 2025 clicks | 2026 clicks | Change | Read |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| tulster / tulster holster(s) (brand) | 3,973 | 2,809 | −29% | Brand demand softened; watch alongside paid spend |
| bodyguard 2.0 holster (+ carry comp) | 144 | 163 | +13% | New-product content capturing launch demand |
| canik prime radian / mc9 prime terms | 293 | 309 | +5% | Holding well through the relaunch |
| 9mm hollow point terms (blog) | 0 | 237 | new | Blog content ranking; informational intent |
| glock 48 holster | 235 | 29 | −88% | Core category loss — priority recovery target |
| ruger rxm holster | 287 | 27 | −91% | Core category loss — priority recovery target |
| glock holster / glock 19 / glock 43x | 545 | 124 | −77% | Core category loss — priority recovery target |
| taurus 605 / 856 holster | 175 | 197 | +13% | Rath series pages gaining |
June ranking & authority signals
| Measure | Result | Source |
|---|---|---|
| New keyword rankings (June) | 1,029 new keywords | Ahrefs |
| Backlinks (June) | 57 new / 19 lost | Ahrefs |
| Layout stability (CLS) | Improved 83% over the past month | SpeedCurve |
| Core Web Vitals fixes | Google validation in progress (began Jul 8) | Search Console |
| Site health score | 93/100, holding through fixes | Ahrefs Site Audit |
Site & revenue analytics — beyond SEO
Sitewide GA4 performance for June 21 – July 20, 2026 vs. the same window in 2025, across all channels.
The shape of the business right now
Fewer people are visiting, but the ones who do are buying more, more often. That's the profile of a brand whose demand quality is improving — organic search (up 38% in conversions) and Google Ads are pulling qualified buyers while lower-intent volume fades. AOV rising 7% alongside says merchandising and pricing are working with the traffic, not against it.
One caution: 93% of purchasers this period were first-time buyers. That's typical for holsters (long replacement cycle), but it means revenue depends on a continuous supply of new demand — which is exactly why the category-page traffic losses in Priority Findings matter more than the flat topline suggests.
Channel contribution (30 days)
| Channel | Sessions | Conversions | Conv. rate | Engagement | Avg. duration |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Organic, direct & other unpaid | 71,844 | 1,177 | 1.64% | 53.9% | 3:26 |
| Google Ads | 12,914 | 352 | 2.73% | 74.3% | 5:13 |
| Meta Ads | 12,012 | 39 | 0.32% | 59.9% | 2:18 |
| Other paid | 154 | 0 | — | 42.2% | 2:45 |
Channel grouping as reported by AgencyAnalytics (paid platforms split out; organic/direct/referral consolidated). The Meta Ads conversion gap is Priority Finding #5. GA4 revenue-by-channel attribution is available on request.
Tracking health scorecard
| Signal | 2025 (30d) | 2026 (30d) | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Purchases / revenue | 1,515 · $146.1K | 1,564 · $161.3K | ✓ Healthy |
| Add-to-cart events | 7,000 | 4 | ✗ Broken |
| Promotion views | 45,957 | 0 | ✗ Broken |
| Checkout events | 2,379 | 5,657 | ⚠ Over-firing |
| Pageviews / session | 2.49 | 1.46 | ⚠ Undercounting |
Full diagnosis and fix plan in Priority Finding #2. Revenue and purchase tracking are intact — every dollar figure in this report is reliable.
SEO work completed — last 60 days
May 21 – July 21, 2026. The period centered on one objective: recovering the organic visibility lost after the late-March site relaunch — diagnose exactly what broke, deliver engineering-ready fixes, and measure the recovery.
Diagnosis: code-level comparison of pre- vs. post-relaunch builds Delivered
Compared the February (pre-launch) codebase against the April build plus a live scan on May 22. Confirmed five technical regressions, each a direct ranking-signal loss — detailed in the table below.
Full SEO site audit Delivered
Page-by-page technical audit (1,919 pages) with prioritized critical issues: missing meta descriptions on blog posts, duplicate meta descriptions on interior pages, multiple H1s per page, no Open Graph/Twitter Card tags sitewide, and an About page invisible to crawlers.
SEO Performance Review + Developer Fix Specifications Delivered
A plain-language report explaining what happened and why rankings declined, paired with engineering-ready documentation for all five regressions — exact schema markup (BreadcrumbList, ItemList), title-template fixes, and implementation notes for the dev team.
CLS field-tracking specification Delivered
A GTM → GA4 implementation that captures real-user layout shift and identifies the exact page element causing it, so fixes target the true culprit rather than lab guesses.
Architecture recommendation: scope the Makeswift provider Delivered
Traced the 154% page-weight increase (553 KB → 1,407 KB) to the Makeswift page builder bundling component code into every page. Rather than a costly platform migration, specified scoping the provider to only managed routes. Larger architectural changes deferred until performance data requires them.
Monthly PDF performance report distributed Delivered
Semrush-generated performance reporting to the Tulster team; Google Business Profile June performance also reviewed.
Google Core Web Vitals validation underway In progress
Google began formally validating the CWV fixes in Search Console. CLS improved 83% over the past month (SpeedCurve real-user data). Position volatility during validation is expected; monitoring weekly.
Monitoring cadence Standing
Weekly automated site audits (Ahrefs) routed into the dev fix queue · weekly US keyword position tracking (Semrush) · real-user performance monitoring in SpeedCurve · weekly Wednesday 1:00 PM CT strategy meeting with Noah and team, plus same-week turnaround on dev questions and content approvals.
What the relaunch broke — the five regressions
| Issue | Severity | Impact |
|---|---|---|
| Structured data (schema) removed sitewide | Critical | Lost rich-results eligibility and entity signals |
| Brand name duplicated in every page title | High | Malformed titles; Google rewriting SERP listings |
| Page weight up 154% (553 KB → 1,407 KB) | High | Core Web Vitals degradation, especially mobile |
| Google Tag Manager absent from page source | High | Tracking and ad conversion data at risk |
| Preconnect/resource hints removed | Medium | Slower resource loading |
Technical cleanup — 60-day audit comparison
| Issue | May 20 | Jul 15 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5XX server-error pages | 49 | 1 | −98% |
| 4XX pages receiving organic traffic | 4 | 0 | Cleared |
| Pages linking to broken pages | 35 | ~8 | −77% |
| 404 / 4XX error pages | 8 | ~1 | −7 pages |
| Over-length title tags (indexable) | 421 | 325 | −23% |
| Slow pages | 231 | ~156 | −32% |
| Orphan pages | 127 | ~121 | −6 pages |
Ahrefs Site Audit crawl comparison, 1,919 pages, site health 92.5→93. The server-error cleanup is the headline: no error pages receive organic traffic anymore, preventing ranking loss from dead URLs.
Content & strategy advanced this period
- State pages: identified and specced mobile formatting fixes for state-level pages (e.g., Oklahoma Glock holsters) — button placement, text treatment, replacement header image.
- Timely content: new blog topic approved covering the Maryland Glock ban (Senate Bill 334, signed May 26) — a high-relevance search opportunity.
- FAQ expansion: FAQ additions contributed measurable impression growth in Search Console.
- Geometry guides: design direction selected (dark-mode concept); guides in development.
- In the pipeline: Glock location pages and a ladies-focused carry page.
What happens next
Sequenced by revenue impact, informed by the findings in this report.
1 · Land the dev fixes where the money is
Ship schema restoration, title-template correction, and GTM verification — prioritized on the ten category pages that lost the most clicks (Glock 43/43X, Glock 48, Glock hub, Ruger RXM, Sig P365 family, H&K CC9, Canik MC9 Prime). Include the high-value Streamlight accessory pages and resolve the duplicate Sig AXG Legion pages. These pages get weekly recovery reporting against their February baselines.
2 · Restore full ecommerce tracking
GTM/dataLayer audit to bring back add-to-cart and promotion tracking, dedupe checkout events, and fix SPA pageview counting — so funnel analysis works again and ad platforms optimize on clean signals. Legacy Creative delivers the spec; dev implements; we verify.
3 · Complete Core Web Vitals validation & close on-page gaps
Confirm Google's CWV validation completes in Search Console. Close the remaining audit items: meta descriptions on 637 indexable pages, multiple H1s on 103 pages, and the remaining 325 over-length titles (the CTR recovery lever).
4 · Keep the content engine shipping
Publish the Maryland Glock ban post while the topic is hot, continue the state-page rollout and geometry guides, and move the Glock location pages and ladies-focused carry page through the pipeline.
5 · Monitor the July position dip to resolution
Weekly position tracking through Google's re-evaluation, with an escalation checkpoint in mid-August if average position hasn't re-stabilized. Weekly Wednesday strategy meetings continue as the working cadence.
Questions on anything in this report
jason@legacy-creative.co — or bring it to Wednesday's strategy meeting.