Our SEO process: how we work, and why each step is there

Four stages, in a fixed order, each with a reason. If you take nothing else from this site, take the sequencing.

The four stages

  1. Audit

    2 weeks

    A fixed-scope technical, content, and link audit with a prioritised issue list and a forecast of what fixing it is worth.

  2. Roadmap

    1 week

    A 90-day plan with owners, effort, and expected impact for every item. You can take it in-house or run it with us.

  3. 90-day sprint

    3 months

    We execute the roadmap with your team: fixes shipped, pages rewritten, links earned, reported every two weeks.

  4. Retainer

    Month to month

    Continued work on the next tranche of opportunities. Cancel with 30 days notice; you keep everything we built.

Audit (2 weeks)

Two people, two weeks, three areas, working from Google’s own Search Essentials and SEO starter guide as the baseline every site should meet before anything cleverer. The technical lead crawls the site, compares the crawl with server logs and Search Console coverage, tests rendering per template, and pulls Core Web Vitals field data. The strategist builds a keyword map of existing pages, finds cannibalisation and gaps, and reviews the link profile for risk and opportunity. Findings from all three areas go into one list, ranked by impact and effort, so a rendering fault that blocks fifty pages outranks a missing meta description.

The audit ends with a recorded readout call where we tell you which of three outcomes we recommend: continue with us, run it yourselves, or spend the money elsewhere. The audit is a fixed-price product and is credited against the first sprint month if you continue.

Roadmap (1 week)

The roadmap turns the findings list into 90 days of work with owners, effort, sequencing, and expected impact. Ordering follows dependency. Crawl and index blockers first, because nothing else matters until pages can be fetched and rendered. On-page work second, because links pointing at weak pages are wasted. Link acquisition third, once target pages are worth linking to. Independent quick wins are pulled forward, but not at the cost of the order.

The roadmap also states what we forecast each item is worth. The forecast is a range with the assumptions written down, and it is reviewed at the end of the sprint.

90-day sprint

The sprint executes the roadmap with your team. Technical SEO fixes are shipped as pull requests on platforms we support or as tickets with acceptance criteria on those we do not. On-page SEO work produces four to eight briefed and rewritten pages a month, each reviewed by your expert before it goes live. Link building runs at the volume the roadmap set, with the prospect list approved by you before outreach and every placement disclosed in the report.

Reporting is every two weeks and is per page: what we changed, what happened to its rankings and clicks, and what it produced in form fills or demo requests. The final report of the sprint compares results with the roadmap forecast.

Retainer

After the sprint, work continues month to month on the next tranche of opportunities, with the cadence set quarterly. Each quarter we re-audit the templates and pages we touched and re-run the roadmap against the new baseline. Retainers end with 30 days notice and you keep everything. Migrations are scoped separately because the risk is concentrated in one week and the work is front-loaded.

The full SEO services programme is this sequence end to end. Pricing is listed per stage, and the people who do the work are named on the team page.

The principles behind the sequence

Diagnose before prescribing
We do not propose work before the audit, because a proposal written before diagnosis is a guess dressed as a plan. The audit is priced so that you can walk away with it.
Sequence by dependency
Technical blockers before content, content before links. A page that cannot render will not rank however good the copy is, and links to weak pages waste the links.
Fewer pages, checked
Content output is capped at what your experts can review. A page nobody on your side has read is a liability under your brand.
Report what a board can use
Pages touched, rankings, clicks, and conversions per page. A site-wide traffic chart hides more than it shows.
Everything is yours
Briefs, code, spreadsheets, link lists, and reports are handed over in open formats. If you leave, you leave with all of it.
Say no in writing
When SEO is the wrong channel, when a page should not be written, when a link should not be pursued, we say so and record why.

Questions buyers ask

What are the four types of SEO?

Technical SEO (can search engines crawl, render, and index the site), on-page SEO (do the pages answer what people search for), off-page SEO (do other sites reference it, mostly through links), and local SEO (does the business appear for searches near it). Our process runs the first three in that order and adds the fourth for businesses with locations.

Can I do SEO myself?

Yes, if the site is small and someone has steady time for it. The audit and roadmap are built so that you can: every finding carries its fix, and every roadmap item carries an effort estimate. Where it stops being practical is server-log analysis, template-level fixes on a large site, and link acquisition, which need tools, developer time, and outreach hours most teams do not have spare.

Why 90 days for the sprint?

It is the shortest period in which technical fixes, rewrites, and early links can show measurable movement together. Thirty-day engagements produce activity reports; ninety produce evidence.

What if the roadmap forecast turns out wrong?

The quarterly review compares the forecast with what happened, item by item. Where we were wrong we say why, and the next roadmap is adjusted. Forecasting is imprecise; hiding the misses is the actual failure.

How much of our team's time does this take?

Roughly two hours a week from a marketing lead, one to two hours from a subject-matter expert for page review, and developer time that depends on whether we ship fixes or they do. The roadmap includes effort estimates for your side.

Do you use AI in the process?

For research, first-pass analysis, and QA, yes. Not for publishing. Every page is written or substantially rewritten by a named person and reviewed by yours.

Start with the audit.

Two weeks, fixed price, and a prioritised list you can act on with or without us. If SEO is not the right channel for you, the audit will say so.

Request an audit See pricing