How it works
No discovery phase that quietly eats a quarter
Four stages, each with something you can hold at the end of it. If a week passes and you cannot name what arrived, something has gone wrong and we would rather you tell us.
Process
What the first month actually looks like
No black box, no discovery phase that quietly eats a quarter. Here is the order things happen in, and what you hold at the end of each stage.
- 01
Week 1 — The audit nobody enjoys
We crawl what you have, pull what you already rank for, and read your three closest competitors line by line. You get a list of what is broken, ordered by what it costs you.
- 02
Week 2 — The keyword map
Every phrase worth targeting, clustered by intent, with the noise thrown out and marked as thrown out. You approve this before a single word gets written.
- 03
Weeks 3–4 — Foundation and first pages
Technical fixes land, schema goes on every route, the sitemap starts telling the truth, and the first two pages publish against their claimed keywords.
- 04
Month 2 onward — The loop
Publish, track, report, adjust. Same rhythm every week. The first report arrives at day thirty and every thirty days after that.
Deliverables
What lands, and when
Printed here so you can hold us to the dates rather than take them on trust.
End of week 1
Technical audit — every issue, ranked by what it costs you
End of week 2
Keyword map and skip list, for your approval
End of week 4
Foundation shipped, first two pages live
Day 30
First monthly report
Every week after
One or more pages published against a claimed keyword
Every 30 days
The report again — same shape, so months compare cleanly
The honest timeline
Including the month where it looks like nothing is happening
Every agency knows month one is flat. Most of them let you find out on your own. Here it is in advance, so you can decide now whether you can sit through it.
Month 1
Almost nothing moves. Pages are new and search engines are still deciding what they are. This is the month people quit.
Month 2
Long-tail phrases start appearing somewhere on pages two to five. Not traffic yet — evidence that the pages exist and are understood.
Month 3
The first pages settle into positions worth having. Usually the low-competition, high-intent ones. This is the earliest a fair judgement is possible.
Months 4–6
Compounding starts. Older posts strengthen while new ones publish, and internal links begin doing real work.
These are the patterns we plan around, not a forecast for your site. Competition, domain history, and how broken things are at the start all move the dates. What does not change is that month one looks flat — for everyone.
Get started
Start with the audit
Thirty minutes, no obligation, and you keep the findings whether or not you work with us.