Hi Product Hunt Community 👋 When I launched my website, I had zero budget for SEO tools. The free versions of Yoast/Rank Math felt too limited, but their premium plans ($69+/year) weren't an option for me. So I made a choice: No SEO plugins at all. I decided to handle everything manually. Honest truth? For months, my site was invisible on Google. Almost zero organic traffic. Instead of waiting, I ran one targeted experiment: I manually coded and embedded JSON-LD FAQ Schema on my key pages. No plugins. Just raw markup. Here's what actually happened (and what didn't): Google says FAQ Schema is NOT a direct ranking factor. And that's true. My pages didn't magically jump to Page 1 overnight. But here's what *did* happen: 1. My search results started showing dropdown questions (rich results) 2. My listings became larger and took more space on the page 3. More people clicked because the result looked more trustworthy 4. Click-through rate (CTR) improved significantly 5. Google saw these positive user signals 6. Slowly, my rankings started climbing The numbers: - First: deep in search results (page 5+) - Then: slowly moved closer to Page 2 - Recently: a few queries hit Page 1 for the first time The numbers are still tiny. But as we say back home: The beginning of heavy rain is just one drop. Key takeaway: Schema won't save bad content. But if you have good content and poor CTR, manual FAQ Schema can be a game-changer. No premium plugin required. I'm sharing this not as an SEO expert, but as a solo builder who refused to let a small budget stop me. Would love to hear: - Have you tried manual Schema vs plugins? - What's a small win you're celebrating right now? 👇