WatchTheStars.co.uk — Full Website Review (1 Sept 2026)

Verified against the repo and live site today. Prior audits (14 Aug, 9 Aug, 1 Jul) were cross-checked so this only lists what is still open or new.

GSC snapshot (pulled 2 Sept 2026, last 28 days, Web search)

Totals: 333 clicks / 35.6k impressions / 0.9% CTR / avg position 39.5. Last 90 days: 615 clicks / 64.5k impressions, so the last month is more than half the quarter — traffic is accelerating. 298 pages received impressions; 249 of them got zero clicks.

Where clicks come from

Page	Clicks	Impr.	Pos.
`/meteor-showers/`	172 (52% of site)	6,144	26.6
Roman launch how-to-watch post	63	1,320	5.2
Homepage	19	90	47
August eclipse guide	10	4,178	12.2
Everything else	69

By section: root pages 201 clicks, blog 115, equipment 15, skills 2, planets 0 (6.6k impr.), constellations 0 (2.7k), stars 0 (1.7k).

Top queries: almost entirely meteor-shower intent — "meteor shower 2027 uk" (p2), "next meteor shower uk 2027" (p2.3), "perseid meteor shower 2027" (614 impr., p9), "when is the next meteor shower uk" (192 impr., p11.7). Keyword themes across 1,000 queries: meteor 157 queries / 36 clicks; planet 140 / 0; telescope 56 / 8; venus 60 / 0; eclipse 55 / 0; mars 46 / 0; constellation 42 / 0; tonight 37 / 0; aurora, northern lights, ISS, geminids, orionids: 0 queries each (no page exists to rank).

What this changes in the priorities

Meteor showers are the business. One page is half the site's clicks at position 26. Splitting into per-shower pages (Perseids, Geminids, Orionids, Draconids, Leonids, Quadrantids, Lyrids) plus a "next meteor shower UK" evergreen answer block is the single biggest growth lever, and it needs an equipment card yesterday. Geminids (December) is the next spike — build that page this month.
Planet/constellation/star pages get 11k impressions and zero clicks at position 60–70. Queries are generic ("mercury planet", "diameter of earth", "orion's belt"). They're ranking for encyclopedic terms against Wikipedia/NASA. Either re-angle them to UK-observing intent ("how to see Mercury from the UK this month", "Orion's Belt: how to find it tonight") or accept they're link equity, not traffic.
Eclipse guide: 4,178 impressions, 0.2% CTR at p12. Rewrite the title/meta to the current intent (retrospective + next UK eclipse) as well as the body.
Striking-distance pages (p4–12, 100–600 impressions, near-zero CTR): fifth UFO file release (568), Perseid guide (495), planet parade (477), AARO FY2025 report (315), Bagram (262), Gulf of Oman (235), Brazil 1963 sphere (223), lunar eclipse tonight (207), Varginha (172), Puerto Rico 1964 (163). UAP deep-dives rank well but titles/metas aren't earning the click — rewrite those 10 titles for CTR first.
Confirms the tool gaps: "tonight" (37 queries, 0 clicks), "dark sky" (105 impr., p84), "best telescopes" (p58) all show demand the current pages aren't converting.

0. Do these first (highest impact, lowest effort)

#	Action	Why	Effort
1	Fix the stale August eclipse guide (`blog/_posts/2026-07-solar-eclipse-august-2026-uk-guide.md`) — still says "order today", "order by Monday", "forecast nearer the day". Rewrite as a retrospective, link the 13 Aug recap at the top, bump the byline date	Biggest cited/impressioned page on the site; AI answers are grounding on wrong copy	30 min
2	Add `equipmentCard` to the 8 root pages missing one: `meteor-showers`, `stargazing-for-beginners`, `stargazing-tips`, `uk-dark-sky-sites`, `astronomy-events`, `constellations`, `halleys-comet`, `uap-research` (+ homepage)	`/meteor-showers/` alone is ~5.7k sessions/month with zero monetisation	1 hr
3	Pull a fresh GSC performance export (clicks/impressions by URL). `gsc-indexing-audit.xlsx` is from April, pre-dates 150 posts, and has no click data	Everything below should be prioritised by where traffic actually lands	15 min
4	Create `/eclipse-glasses/` (currently 404, ~130 impressions at position 11, commercial intent) as an equipment page with FLO/Amazon cards	Free commercial traffic already knocking	1 hr
5	Backfill FAQ blocks on the 80 older posts still missing them (Feb–Jun backlog)	Directly tied to the 200+ never-cited pages; new posts already do this	Batchable with a script + review
6	Delete ~26 MB of junk in `images/blog/` (`sgl-photos.zip`, `sgl-photos (1).zip`, `sgl-tmp/`)	Repo hygiene / build time	5 min

1. SEO and GEO

Already solid (don't touch): clean titles/metas/canonicals across 350+ pages, hreflang, WebSite+Organization graph, FAQPage on 255+ pages, Product schema on equipment pages, per-crawler Content-Signal in robots.txt, IndexNow, security headers, immutable asset caching.

Still open from prior audits

Items 1, 4, 5, 6 in the table above.
robots.txt still has Disallow: /*.md while Cloudflare's Agent Readiness flags markdown negotiation as the one missing quick win. Either drop the rule or serve .md variants deliberately.
Named AI-crawler groups (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot…) lack Disallow: /downloads/ — each group is evaluated alone, so those bots can still index the subscriber lead magnet.

New gaps

No Event schema anywhere (High). tonight.njk and astronomy-events.njk list dated meteor showers, oppositions, conjunctions and eclipses with no structured data. A templated Event loop is the cheapest big GEO win on the site: dated, factual, structured content is exactly what AI answers cite.
CSP is still Report-Only in _headers (Medium). Three weeks of reports is enough; promote to enforced.
HowTo schema is accidental (Low): only cetus and orion constellation pages carry it. Move it into constellation-enhanced.njk so all 18 get it, and consider it for the 14 /skills/ guides.
Site search (Pagefind) is fully scoped in SEARCH_FEATURE_PLAN.md and unshipped. With ~380 pages this is now an engagement/internal-linking issue, not a nice-to-have.
Author E-E-A-T: confirm author.njk and About carry Person schema with sameAs (Instagram, Linktree, any SGL/BAA profile). Cheap trust signal for both Google and AI engines.
Confirm GSC is verified by DNS/domain property (no google-site-verification meta in head.njk).

GEO-specific

Structured, dated fact pages get cited (the Dwarf 3 page's ~25% citation share is the model). Apply that pattern: short "key facts" table near the top of every tool/event/planet page, dates in ISO, one-sentence direct answers under each <h2>.
Keep llms.txt current with the new tool pages below; it's cheap and Bing/Perplexity read it.

2. Monetisation

Current state: FLO affiliate (primary, all via products.json, rel="sponsored" correct), Amazon UK (12 products, tag live), 100% of blog posts carry a card and disclosure. No display ads. Newsletter is real plumbing (Turnstile → Supabase → Resend weekly send) with one lead magnet. The eclipse-2027 travel affiliate plan in docs/AFFILIATE_PROGRAMS.md shows no evidence of having been applied for or linked.

Gaps and quick wins

Cards on the hub pages (table item 2) and the homepage.
Apply for the 2027 eclipse travel programmes now (Booking.com, GetYourGuide, Discover Cars, a tour operator, travel insurance). One £4k tour booking ≈ £160; this beats hundreds of gear clicks and the booking window is already open. Pair it with a dedicated eclipse email sequence, because 7–30 day cookies won't survive a 12-month planning cycle but the list will.
Check the Amazon account isn't dormant (Amazon closes accounts with <3 sales in 180 days) and that disclosure text is present on every Amazon-linking page.
Link the six "Complete Setup" pages (£85–£4,600, highest order value on site) from relevant posts, not just the equipment hub.

New ideas, ranked by value ÷ effort

Head-to-head comparison pages (Seestar S50 vs Dwarf 3, Heritage 130P vs Evostar 72ED, Celestron vs Sky-Watcher beginner scopes). Comparison intent converts far better than roundups and the site has none.
Newsletter sponsorship / classifieds. Once you know the subscriber count (Supabase), a single sponsored slot from FLO, Rother Valley or Widescreen Centre is realistic at a few thousand subscribers.
Direct deal with FLO rather than the standard affiliate %: a negotiated rate or flat monthly sponsorship once traffic is provable from the fresh GSC export.
Raptive (threshold now ~25k pageviews/month) is the realistic display-ad route; Ezoic's threshold rose to ~250k users, and Mediavine now wants existing ad revenue. Track monthly pageviews and apply the month you cross 25k. Test on a subset of pages; don't stack ads on top of cards and the signup on tool pages.
Seasonal gift guides (Christmas telescope guide, "best astronomy gifts under £50/£100") — strong Q4 affiliate intent, low effort, annual refresh.
Digital products: a paid printable UK 2027 sky calendar / eclipse planner PDF, sold via Ko-fi or Gumroad. Small but 100% margin and reuses existing content.
Astronomy insurance / dark-sky holiday cottage affiliates for the dark-sky-sites pages (Awin has Sykes, Hoseasons etc.).

Risks: indexing rather than conversion is the current cap (per the April audit); ad clutter will hurt CWV and the "honest guides" positioning; the eclipse window is time-boxed.

3. Missing tools and pages that would drive traffic

The site's one interactive asset, the /tonight/ Sky Score, is good but is a composite. The queries people actually type are single-purpose, and single-purpose tools rank. Most of the maths already exists in tonight-sky.js, so these are extractions more than builds. All run client-side or via a small Cloudflare Worker cache.

Priority	Tool / page	Target queries	Data	Build
High	ISS + Starlink pass predictor	"ISS pass tonight UK", "Starlink train tonight"	CelesTrak TLE + satellite.js, or N2YO	Client-side; postcode → passes with time/direction/brightness; per-city variants
High	Aurora forecast	"aurora forecast UK tonight", "northern lights tonight"	NOAA SWPC Kp/Ovation JSON, cached via Worker	Live status page with colour alert; the existing aurora skill guide has nowhere to send readers
High	Interactive UK light-pollution / dark-sky map	"light pollution map UK", "dark sky sites near me"	Existing `getLightPollution` logic + Leaflet	Postcode → nearest sites sorted by distance; upgrades the static list
High	Moon phase tonight / next full moon	"moon phase tonight", "when is the next full moon"	SunCalc.js	Trivial; distinct from `full-moon-names`
High	"What planet is that?" sky identifier	"bright star in the south west tonight"	Existing ephemeris in `tonight-sky.js`	Direction/altitude picker; mobile device-orientation mode later
Med	Per-city stargazing pages (30–50 UK towns)	"stargazing near Manchester"	Bortle + nearest dark site + sunset/moonrise + club	Build-time static pages from a towns JSON
Med	Individual meteor-shower pages (Perseids, Geminids, Quadrantids, Lyrids, Orionids…)	"Perseids 2026 UK", "Geminids tonight"	Existing events data	Each has its own seasonal spike; umbrella page splits the intent
Med	"Night sky in [Month]" evergreen pages (12)	"night sky September"	Events calendar	Refresh yearly; link from weekly `night-sky`
Med	Astrophotography exposure calculator (NPF/500 rule)	"500 rule calculator"	Pure JS	Cross-links skills guides + camera/mount cards
Med	Opposition / conjunction countdown pages	"Jupiter opposition 2027", "Venus Jupiter conjunction"	Ephemeris	Evergreen-refreshed rather than lost in weekly posts
Med	UAP sightings map	"UFO sightings map UK"	Pre-plotted from the 45 incident pages	Static Leaflet map; becomes the UAP hub linking page. Avoid live user reports (moderation)
Low	Sunrise/sunset/twilight	fold into per-city pages	SunCalc
Low	Comet tracker	event-driven		Better as posts per bright comet

4. Other ways to build the site out

Content series not yet in FUTURE_POST_IDEAS.md: kids/half-term stargazing activities; GCSE/A-level astronomy revision (student intent is distinct and underserved); "what did the sky look like on the night of Rendlesham/Roswell/Varginha" (bridges UAP and astronomy with real data); Apollo landing sites you can see through a telescope; space-weather explainers (flares, CMEs, solar cycle) as the companion to the aurora tool; UAP synthesis pages (UK vs US disclosure timeline, black-triangle cases compared) built from existing deep-dives; annual "best time to see Saturn/Jupiter/Mars from the UK" refreshers.
Turn the newsletter into the moat. It's the only asset that survives cookie windows and algorithm changes. Add a second lead magnet (2027 eclipse planner), put the signup on every new tool page, and report subscriber growth monthly.
Community/UGC lite: reader photo of the month (submitted by email, curated), or embed the SGL thread activity you already engage in. Cheap E-E-A-T and repeat visits.
Programmatic hub structure: tools → per-city pages → dark-sky sites → clubs → equipment. Each new tool should link into that chain; the internal-linking rule already exists, so extend docs/INTERNAL_LINKING.md with the new targets.
YouTube/short video: the youtube-launch/ folder exists; even 60-second "what's up this week" clips embedded in night-sky.njk add VideoObject schema and a second discovery channel.
Wikipedia/Wikidata presence (guide already in repo): get the site cited on relevant incident articles for authority and referral traffic.
Housekeeping: the repo root holds ~30 daily SGL/news-digest markdown files and several old audits. Move them into docs/archive/ (they're excluded from the build, but they clutter every session and every audit).

Suggested 30-day order

Week 1: table items 1–6, Event schema, CSP enforce, robots fixes, eclipse-travel applications. Week 2: moon-phase tool, aurora tool, /eclipse-glasses/, comparison pages ×2. Week 3: ISS/Starlink predictor, per-shower pages, Pagefind search. Week 4: dark-sky map, first 20 per-city pages, gift guide draft for Q4, review fresh GSC data and re-prioritise.