What the first 10 days after your site launches actually look like
Your site is built, tested, and live. The next ten days are where it starts getting found. We wire it into Google and Bing, put your business facts into code that AI engines can read, and set a baseline so that in 60 days we can tell whether it's working instead of guessing. You own every login. We're a user on your accounts, not the other way around.
Who owns what on day one?
You own all of it, and we set it up that way before anything else gets touched.
Four accounts go in your name, with us added as a user:
- Google Search Console, as a domain-level property
- Bing Webmaster Tools, imported straight from Google
- GA4
- Vercel Analytics
The sitemap goes to both engines the same afternoon. If we ever part ways, you change one password and we're gone. I've talked to more than one owner who couldn't get at their own search data because an old agency held the keys. I don't want to be that agency.
How do the engines learn who you are?
Days two and three are spent telling Google and the AI assistants what your business is, in a form they can't misread.
Day two is on the site. We add structured data for your organization, your location, you as a person, and each service you offer. When a crawler hits your homepage it reads "plumber, Lakeville, these hours, this phone" from code, not from a paragraph it has to interpret. We also add an llms.txt file, which is a plain index for AI crawlers, and a robots.txt that explicitly lets in GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and Google-Extended. Then we run the whole thing through Google's Rich Results Test and keep going until it shows zero errors. That whole layer is what we mean by AI search optimization.
Day three is off the site. Google Business Profile verified. Bing Places imported. Apple Business Connect. A LinkedIn company page. All four use one description and the exact same name, address, and phone, down to the punctuation. Each profile URL then gets added to the site's markup so the engines treat them as one business instead of four strangers with the same name. Keeping those profiles straight is a standing part of local search work, not a one-time chore.
Most shops skip this step. It's also the one AI assistants check before they'll recommend anybody.
What are we measuring against?
Day four is the baseline, and there's no baseline until we draw one.
We start tracking 30 to 40 keywords, your services crossed with your service area, and three competitors. We pick 20 questions a customer might ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, or Google AI Overviews, and record whether you show up. We export your domain authority and backlink count with the date on it.
Expect zeros. You can't show progress without a starting point, and a lot of what passes for "SEO results" is somebody quietly skipping this day so the first report looks better than it should.
| Day | What happens | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Search Console, Bing, GA4, Vercel set up | Four logins, all yours |
| 2 | Structured data, llms.txt, robots.txt | Zero errors in Rich Results Test |
| 3 | GBP, Bing Places, Apple, LinkedIn | One entity across all four |
| 4 | Keywords, competitors, 20 AI prompts | A dated baseline |
| 5 | Indexation fixes, IndexNow, PageSpeed | Nothing Google refuses to index |
| 6 | GA4 key events, AI-referral segment, UTMs | Leads you can trace |
| 7 | Top service page rebuilt | A page ChatGPT can answer from |
| 8 | One citable article | Something for AI to quote |
| 9 | Reviews and directories | Outside proof |
| 10 | Looker Studio dashboard | Monthly report, written thresholds |
Days five and six are plumbing. We read the indexation report and fix or remove whatever Google won't take. IndexNow gets wired into the deploy pipeline, so every change you make is pushed to Bing within hours instead of whenever it gets around to crawling. PageSpeed runs on the home page and one service page, and red items get fixed. Then conversion tracking: form submissions fire on the thank-you page, not when the form loads. We build a saved segment for traffic from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com, and Copilot, and write down a UTM convention so every email and social link can be traced back to where it came from.
Why rebuild a page we just built?
The page you approved was built for a person. Day seven makes it work for a machine too.
We take your highest-value service page and restructure it. Direct answer in the first 80 words: what you do, who it's for, starting price. Headings phrased as questions. A comparison table. Five real FAQs with markup. A visible last-updated date. Then the test. We paste the URL into ChatGPT and ask what you charge and who you serve. If it answers correctly from that page alone, day seven is done. If it doesn't, it isn't.
We did this for a small business in Lakeville. When they saw their own company come up in an AI search, with the right details, they were more excited about that than about anything in the ranking report. I understand why. Seeing your business come out of a chatbot's mouth feels different than watching a line move on a chart.
Day eight builds on that. One article around a question your customers actually ask, with a named author and publish and modified dates. AI engines quote specific passages, so we structure it for that: answer first, one idea per paragraph, numbers in tables. If you'd rather not write them yourself, that's what the blog content plans cover.
What about reviews and directories?
Day nine. We ask three to five real customers for Google reviews and suggest they mention the service they bought. We get you listed on the directories AI engines pull from for your category. And we make a call on Reddit or YouTube. The answer is usually no. It's only yes if you'll keep it up, because a dead channel reads worse than no channel at all.
How will you know if it's working?
Day ten is the dashboard, and it's what keeps us honest.
Looker Studio, fed by Search Console and GA4: impressions, clicks, average position, key events, AI-referral sessions. The 20 AI prompts get checked weekly and reviewed with you monthly. We also write decision thresholds down before there's anything to argue about. If nothing ranks in the top 50 by day 60, the problem is content, not the tech, and we go fix content.
We won't promise page one in a week. In our experience it takes 60 to 90 days before organic movement means anything. AI mentions tend to show up sooner, and they're the better early signal anyway.
Common questions
Do I really own all the accounts?
Yes. Search Console, Bing, GA4, Vercel, Google Business Profile, all under your email. We're added as a user. If you fire us on day 11, you remove one user and keep everything.
What is an llms.txt file?
A plain text index at your domain root that tells AI crawlers what your site is about and where the important pages are. It's a sitemap written for a chatbot. It costs nothing and takes about an hour.
Why let ChatGPT and Perplexity crawl my site? Isn't that giving my content away?
They'll describe your business whether you let them in or not. Blocking them means they describe it from other people's pages instead of yours. Letting them in means they quote you.
Can't we skip the baseline and get to the work faster?
You can, but then the first report has nothing to compare against and you're taking our word that things improved. The baseline takes one day. It's the cheapest insurance you'll buy.
What if I already have a Google Business Profile?
Good. We check that it's actually verified, match its description and contact details to the site exactly, and link it in the site's markup. Most existing profiles have a slightly different phone format or address than the website, and that mismatch costs you.
Why does the form need to fire on the thank-you page?
Because a form loading isn't a lead. A form submitting is. Track the wrong one and every visitor who scrolled past your contact section counts as a conversion, so your numbers look great and mean nothing.
When do I see the first report?
Day ten, then monthly. The first one is mostly zeros with a date on it, which is exactly what it should be.
One last thing
Ten days of setup doesn't bring customers on day eleven. It gives you a business the engines can read, accounts you control, and a number you can hold us to in 60 days. If whoever built your last site skipped this part, most of it can still be done on a site that's been live for years. If you want to know which parts yours is missing, tell us and we'll check.