Case Study · Cigar Lounge · Seguin, TX
Big Chief Cigar: a five-star reputation, and no website to send people to.
Launched September 15, 2026. Their first website: 8 pages on their own domain, and 125 visits from September 14 to 30. Here is what I built, and what three weeks can and can't tell you.
Pages, built from scratch
Visits from September 14 to 30
Searches on page 1 that don't use the shop's name
Their Google rating, earned before I showed up
28-day median rankings through September 28, 2026; Google Analytics U.S. visits, not counting known datacenter traffic. Verified 2026-10-01.
Who they are
The only cigar lounge in Seguin.
Big Chief Cigar Company sits at 111 N Austin St in historic downtown Seguin: a walk-in humidor, a lounge with leather chairs and exposed brick, and lockers for the regulars. It is locally owned and veteran owned by John Huerta and Danny Solis.
When I first looked them up in August, the hard part was already done. Every one of their 50 Google reviews was five stars. What they didn't have was a website.
What they started with
No website. Facebook and Instagram were the only pages they ran themselves
An empty website button. Their Google listing had the reviews and the photos, and nowhere to send the next click
Results owned by other people. Search the shop by name and every result was a page someone else controls
A closed shop still in the way. For “cigar shop Seguin TX,” a store that closed in 2024 still held 5 of the top 17 results
What We Did
Three jobs, done in order.
No ads behind any of this. Tobacco can't be advertised on Google or Facebook, so everything here has to be earned: a site worth visiting, a Google listing that leads to it, and content that keeps it current.
Build the first website
- Their own domain, bigchiefcigar.com, registered and set up for them
- 8 pages: the humidor, events, lockers, their story, a visit page with hours and directions, and a journal
- Designed around something John said about cigars: you have to sit down and relax, and it stops time
- Their real logo, lettered the way it is on the sign that hangs in the shop, and photos I took in the room
Connect it to Google
- The Google listing now links to their own site, so the reviews finally lead somewhere
- Search Console and analytics running from the first day, so there is a true starting line
- Structured data so Google reads it as a cigar lounge with an address and hours, not a generic shop page
- New photos of the shop uploaded to the listing
Keep it current
- A journal, starting with what a first visit to a cigar lounge looks like
- Events go up before the night and come down the morning after
- One fixed list of searches, measured before launch and measured again at 90 days
- One person to call when something needs to change
The Results
What three weeks changed.
Three weeks ago, searching for the shop led to pages other people control. Now there is a place of their own to land, and a starting line to measure from.
Three weeks is early, and these are small, local searches: mostly people nearby looking for a cigar shop. Reviews are not claimed here; they stood at 50 before launch and 51 on September 28, 2026. Rankings are 28-day medians from Google Search Console; counting searches that include the shop's name it is 17 of 21 tracked. Visits are U.S. visits from Google Analytics, September 14 to 30, 2026, not counting known datacenter traffic, verified 2026-10-01. Before-state from a search check on September 10, 2026, five days before launch. The same searches get measured again at 90 days.
The new site
bigchiefcigar.com, the homepage
bigchiefcigar.com/visit, hours and directions
Why the monthly exists
A partner, not a project.
Monthly fees make business owners wary, and they should. You've seen how it goes: somebody builds a website, hands over the keys, and disappears while the invoice keeps coming.
So here is what my monthly actually means. I'm committed to growing your business with you. The website is where we start, not what you're paying for. Every month I'm writing, tuning, watching where you rank and where AI recommends you, and putting a receipt in your hands that shows what moved. When something doesn't move, you read that too.
I won't build you a website and leave you with it.
Your turn
Want to see where your site stands?
Run the free visibility check and see what people find when they look you up. About 30 seconds, no sign-up. Or just call.
I reply within 24 hours, usually same day.