Onboarding Flow — Month 1

Good to know: aim for a quick win within a week, two at most. A win is 5–10 pages ranking on page 1, positions 1–5 — achievable even on a brand-new domain. See §1.7 Speed-to-rank for why.

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The month at a glance

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Guides this flow uses

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Before Day 1 — stand up the account

• Send the contract and invoice, and set up the Slack channels: <company>-synscribe (client) and internal-<company> (internal)
• Create the org and initialize Pi’s memory and soul; see Create a client org
• Create the client’s Linear project, hooked up to the internal-<company> channel
• Research the company and build the product bible, then populate the org profile from it; see Company research + product bible
• Plan the /uses (horizontal) and /feature (vertical) landing-page pillars; see Design a pillar
• Seed and expand the keywords, tagged Core / Fringe / <month> / Alternative; see Starting the first keywords
• Note the key assumptions and questions to clarify with the client

The sales-call transcripts carry most of the strategy — the client usually names focus keywords and areas of interest for month 1. Extract the seed keywords from them.

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Week 1 — Research & strategy

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Day 1 — Research call and onboarding document

• Clarify the open assumptions and questions with the client
• Draft, review, and share the onboarding document; see Create the onboarding document
• Get the feature inventory and access flowing; see Feature inventory sign-off
• Update Pi’s memory with the call transcript

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Day 2 — Build the execution strategy

• Create the /uses pillar (plan it with Pi, visualize in ASCII, sample a page, then create it) and generate the first 5 landing pages; see Generate landing pages
• Wireframe the page with fake data (Excalidraw); get assets from the client or use placeholders — don’t wait on assets
• Assemble the kickoff document — the client-facing strategy and timeline; see Create the kickoff document

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Day 4/5 — Strategy kickoff

• Walk the plan and get alignment
• Confirm the feature inventory is signed off, the invoice is paid, and access is granted
• Lock a recurring monthly review, with a reminder ≥3 days before to prep and review with Raymond
• After the call, dump the transcript into Pi and have it update the company/org info, product bible, refiners, and pillar prompts as needed; see Create the kickoff document

• Set up the company featured-image generator; see how-to: Set up image generator 🎥
• Set up refiners (refiner-management). Typical defaults: Brand positioning, CTA, FAQ, TLDR; see Set up refiners 🎥
• Generate the first 3 blog posts with the refiners, starting with listicles or BOFU how-tos
• Verify the 3 posts: keyword is high-relevance/high-intent · title contains the keyword · summary mentions the company · CTA present and not overflowing · FAQ present and correct · competitor links removed and company positioned first · all links (incl. CTA) work

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Week 2 — Publish & collect data

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Day 1 — Ship the first pages

• Publish the 3 blog posts and the first 5 pSEO pages (export the pillar to the client’s site first); see Publish and Export a pillar
• Run a technical SEO audit on every page, fix the non-optional findings, and re-audit; see Technical SEO audit
• Index the pages on GSC, and submit sitemap.xml to both GSC and Bing Webmaster; see Index on GSC

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Days 2–3 — Verify ranking

• Search the targeted keywords on Google and ChatGPT (a few variants each); screenshot ranked pages
• More than 5 pages ranking: share in the client Slack to celebrate. Fewer: run diagnostics with Raymond
• Publish the remaining pages, set up IndexNow, and hand the publishing cadence to the BPO teammate in #bpo (record a Loom if it’s a new flow); see IndexNow and Roles & handoffs

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Day 4 — Quality gate

STRICT: if we don’t have more than 5 pages on Google/ChatGPT by now, get Raymond’s attention immediately (high priority). This is achievable even for brand-new domains. See The Quality Gate.

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Week 3 — Set up analytics

• Connect PostHog and turn on session recording; see Connect PostHog
• Build the standard views — conversion actions, the Pages-with-AI-Traffic insight, and the sitewide + per-pillar funnels; see PostHog dashboard setup
• Check on day 3 that data is collecting; if not, debug and loop Raymond in (medium priority)

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Week 4 — Review & calibrate

• Prep the review materials and run the review; see Client-review prep and Running the client review
• Celebrate the wins with the client; note internally what to improve
• Propose next month: more keywords, the /feature pillar, content adjustments, better attribution
• If you hit SOP gaps this cycle, raise them and update the SOP

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Reference

SELECT properties.$current_url AS page_url, count() AS event_count
FROM events
WHERE event = '$pageview'
  AND (
    properties.$referrer LIKE '%chatgpt.com%'
    OR properties.$referrer LIKE '%perplexity.ai%'
    OR properties.$referrer LIKE '%claude.ai%'
    OR properties.$referrer LIKE '%gemini.google.com%'
  )
  AND timestamp >= now() - INTERVAL {variables.number_of_days} DAY
GROUP BY page_url
ORDER BY event_count DESC

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Next / Related

• 3.2 Monthly planning flow: every cycle after this one opens here.
• 3.6 The Quality Gate: the Month-1 ranking checkpoint this flow builds toward.
• 3.7 Preparing client-review material · 3.8 Running the client review.
• §1.7 Speed-to-rank: why the quick win is achievable.