The challenge
The US Army now scores soldiers on the Army Fitness Test (AFT). Soldiers search for a fast way to score the five events, check the standards for their age and MOS, and see what their score means for promotion points.
I built aftpass.com to serve those searches, and to prove I can take a new domain and rank it with the same methods I use for clients.
What I did
- Built the site in Next.js, with the AFT calculator as the main tool on the homepage.
- Matched pages to search intent: separate pages for the score chart, AFT standards, squad grader, score tracker, promotion points and body composition calculator.
- Wrote titles, headings and meta descriptions around how soldiers search, for example “AFT Calculator: Army Fitness Test Score Calculator 2026”.
- Answered common questions in an on-page FAQ, and linked every tool and reference page from the menu and footer.
- Added a blog with training and scoring guides, and based the scoring on official Army data with a clear note that the site is unofficial.
The outcome
In the last 3 months (July to early October 2026), Google Search Console shows 51K impressions, 2.35K clicks, a 4.6% click-through rate and an average position of 15.8.
That growth came from on-page SEO alone. An off-page campaign has now started, aimed at moving the main pages from page 2 into the top 10.
Running my own sites lets me test what moves rankings today before I use it on client work.
