PROCESS // STANDARDS
How we work: founder-led, a written plan, and a month-by-month timeline.
Every WynterIX engagement starts with a written 12-month roadmap in week one, then runs in four phases: foundations, activation, compounding, and defend and expand. You get one measurement report and one call every month, direct access to the people doing the work, and a ninety-day minimum stated in writing before you sign.
Week one: the roadmap
Week one opens with discovery: what you sell, what a client is worth, how leads reach you now, and where they are lost. We then agree the measurement definitions, including what counts as a qualified opportunity for your business. A qualified opportunity is an inquiry your team would actually quote.
By the end of the week you receive the written 12-month roadmap: the pages to build, the pages to fix, the search phrases targeted, and what is measurable each month. Access is set up on accounts you own, including analytics and Search Console, the free Google tool that reports how your site performs in search.
The four phases
MONTH 1
Foundations
Technical fixes, tracking, content architecture, first builds.
MEASURABLE: Crawl health, indexation, baseline citations
MONTHS 2 TO 3
Activation
Pages live, entity and schema work, first AI citations, first ranking movement on long-tail terms.
MEASURABLE: Impressions, first page-two and page-one entries, first AI mentions
MONTHS 4 TO 6
Compounding
Head terms move, citation share grows, automation is fully wired, leads are attributed.
MEASURABLE: Qualified leads per month and cost per qualified lead
MONTHS 7 TO 12
Defend and expand
New markets, new service lines, more of what worked.
MEASURABLE: Growth against the month six baseline
Month one is foundations. We fix what stops search engines from reading the site: crawl errors, indexing gaps, speed, and structured data (code that tells machines what each page is about). Tracking goes in, so every call and form can be tied to a page.
The first builds start in the same month. What you can measure is crawl health, indexation, and a baseline of AI citations, so later movement has a fixed starting point.
Months two and three are activation. New pages go live, entity and schema work lands, and the first AI citations appear. An entity is your business as search engines understand it: one name, one set of facts, everywhere.
Rankings move first on long-tail terms, the longer and more specific searches. The measures are impressions, first page-two and page-one entries, and first AI mentions.
Months four to six are compounding. Head terms, the short and competitive searches, begin to move. Citation share, the portion of AI answers that cite you, grows.
Automation is fully wired and leads are attributed to their source. From here the report leads with qualified leads per month and cost per qualified lead.
Months seven to twelve are defend and expand. We protect what ranks, add new markets and service lines, and build more of what worked.
Growth is measured against the month six baseline. Floors and minimum terms for each package are on the pricing and commitments page.
What you receive every month
One measurement report: what moved, what did not, and what changes next. It covers rankings, impressions, AI citations, calls, and form leads by page, with the raw AI prompt results attached rather than summarized away.
One call to walk through it, and direct access by email to the people doing the work, with a reply within one business day. Client acquisition engagements add a quarterly strategy review.
What we will not do
- Buy spam links or promise link counts.
- Promise rankings, page one, or a mention in any AI engine.
- Run fake reviews or write reviews on your behalf.
- Hide reports behind a dashboard you cannot export.
- Lock you into terms that renew automatically into a new fixed period.
- Keep your accounts, website, or data hostage when you leave.
- Take a client we cannot help.
This list is part of the offer. If a vendor will do any of these things for you, they will cut the same corners on everything else. See who we work with, and who we turn away.
Communication
We work by email and scheduled calls, and clients receive a direct line once an engagement starts. We do not publish a phone number before that, because every engagement starts with the application and we pre-screen for businesses that can use and afford what we build.
There is no chat-app, on-call expectation. Every message gets a reply within one business day, from someone who works on your account.
When we end an engagement
After the minimum term, either side can end the engagement with 30 days written notice. You receive a final report, full handover documentation, and the transfer of any account still in our hands.
The website, content, and automations are yours and keep running without us. Exclusive market partnership properties are the one exception: WynterIX owns them, as the partnership terms state.
Apply to work with WynterIX
The application takes two minutes. We reply within one business day with a yes, a no, or a short list of questions.