How an engagement works
We don't skip ahead to recommendations. Each stage depends on what the one before it uncovered.
We crawl the site, check indexation, review Core Web Vitals, map existing content, and note where the architecture helps or hurts. Nothing gets recommended until this is done. For a six-month-old site, this usually takes the full two weeks because early sites tend to have gaps that are easy to miss from the outside.
With the audit findings in hand, we prioritize technical fixes that unblock crawling and indexing, then build a topic map that reflects what the startup actually offers. This stage is where most of the leverage sits for a young site, since search engines have little history to go on yet.
Once content and structure are in place, we connect pages with internal links that reflect topical relationships, then set up monthly check-ins to see what's changing. The goal is a site that keeps making sense to search engines as new pages are added.
Where we focus
A site under six months old rarely needs everything a full-service agency offers. It needs these four things done well.
Crawlability, indexation, page speed, and mobile rendering. If search engines can't reliably reach and read your pages, nothing else on this list matters yet. We check robots directives, sitemaps, canonical tags, and how your JavaScript framework renders content for crawlers.
We map the topics your startup is positioned to own and identify where content is thin, missing, or competing with itself.
Pages that stand alone rarely rank well. We design a linking pattern that tells search engines how your content relates.
Every recommendation traces back to something we found during the audit. If we can't point to evidence for a suggestion, we don't make it. This keeps the engagement focused on your site's actual condition rather than a standard template.
A closer look
Switch between the tabs to see how we approach each part of an engagement.
When a startup launches quickly, technical gaps are common: an unfinished sitemap, a noindex tag left over from staging, images without alt attributes, or a rendering setup that hides content from crawlers until JavaScript executes. We review server response codes, canonicalization, structured data, and how the site performs on mobile connections.
For sites under six months old, this stage often produces the most noticeable change, simply because there was little standing in the way before.
Instead of publishing individual posts based on keyword lists, we group related topics into clusters that reflect how a visitor would actually explore the subject. A pricing page, a comparison page, and a how-it-works page might all belong to the same cluster, each linking to the others in a logical order.
This matters more for a young site because there isn't yet a large body of content to lean on. Every page needs to earn its place in the structure.
When a startup's blog grows without a linking plan, pages end up isolated. A guide about onboarding might never link to the pricing page it's actually meant to support. We design link paths between related pages so that authority and relevance flow through the site rather than sitting in individual posts.
This step comes after topic mapping, since links only make sense once the relationships between pages are defined.
The audit reviews crawl behavior, indexation status, Core Web Vitals, existing content inventory, and competitor topic coverage. We document what we find in plain language, then only after that document is complete do we move into recommendations.
This order exists because startups often receive advice from agencies or freelancers that assumes a level of technical maturity a six-month-old site doesn't have yet.
A typical arc
Every site is different, but engagements generally move through this rhythm.
Weeks 1 to 2
We crawl the site, check how search engines are currently indexing it, and inventory existing pages and content. No changes are made yet.
Week 3
Findings are translated into a prioritized list, ordered by what's likely to unblock the most crawling or indexing issues first.
Weeks 4 to 6
We identify the subject areas your startup can credibly cover and organize them into clusters with a clear internal hierarchy.
Months 2 to 3
Links are added between related pages following the cluster map, so that relevance signals move through the site as intended.
Ongoing
We review indexing status and site structure as new pages get added, adjusting the plan if the site's direction shifts.
A look inside the process
We start every relationship the same way: by looking closely before saying anything. If your site is under six months old and you want to understand where it stands, the next step is a short conversation.
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