04 / Distribution Sprint
Offer that became findable
When the business is real, the referrals are real, and the search results say nothing at all, the problem is almost never the logo. Open one of the doors below and watch an empty result turn into a buyer who arrives already knowing what you do.
Before you open
What buyers actually do
Colours are not a brand
A palette and a typeface are worth having, but if nobody new can find you afterwards then what you bought was a costume.
Buyers type questions
Buyers type questions into a box, and a page written around what you wish they searched for loses every time to one written around what they actually did.
Rank where the buyer pays
The queries worth ranking for are the ones a buyer types just before they buy, not the ones with the biggest numbers, and those are exactly where an empty result costs you most.
Question Door
Type what buyers ask. Open the path.
Five sample queries, chosen because they carry intent instead of volume. Whichever question your buyers ask closest to the moment they are ready to pay is usually the first page I build.
Empty search · Line 01
Buyer query
Buyer looking for someone who ships ops systems in NL / EU.
Operators tired of agency slide decks.
Behind the door
A brochure site with no page for this query, so search has nothing to attach the business to.
After the door
Start from the questions buyers type.
Every Distribution Sprint starts from the questions your buyers are already typing and the silence they currently meet. A line about what you do that you can say out loud, a site that turns the visit into an enquiry, the technical and written search work behind it, and a publishing plan for the 30 days after I have gone.
The sequence
How being found actually changes
5 steps over 5 weeks, and if discovery has not moved by the end of them the redesign was theatre.
Offer
Say what you finish, in the words your buyers already use when they go looking for it.
Site
Pages built so that a visit can become a fit call, which is a separate craft from a brochure and reads that way.
SEO + AI answers
Technical and content search together, aimed at Google and at the answer engines that now read your pages before a buyer ever does.
Publish
A publishing plan for the 30 days after I leave, aimed at real questions, which you keep and can run yourself.
Measure
Enquiry volume and enquiry quality together, because traffic that never asks you anything is a number worth almost nothing.
FAQ
Questions about getting found
What is Question Door?
An interactive sample of buyer queries. You open a door from an empty search result onto the path that ends in being found: what you say, the page, the search work, AI answers, enquiry. The queries are illustrative, and the rankings behind them are nobody's live data.
Do you only work these sample queries?
No. Any sprint starts from the questions your buyers already type and the gaps those questions currently fall into, both on your own site and in the results sitting above it.
Is this just SEO?
Search work is one layer of it. What you say you do, the pages that turn a visit into an enquiry, a publishing rhythm you can actually keep up, and being ready for the AI assistants all travel together, because ranking for a search you cannot convert is an expensive way to be visible.
How does a page get cited by ChatGPT or Perplexity?
By being quotable and being crawlable, in that order. An assistant needs a self-contained passage that answers the question in its first sentence or two, a clear entity behind the page, and permission in robots.txt to read it at all. Most sites fail the first of those and blame the third.
Will you redesign our colours?
Not as the product. A palette is part of the work when the work needs one, but if you are no easier to find and the enquiries are no better by the end of it then the redesign was a costume, and that is an engagement I turn down.
How long is a Distribution Sprint?
5 weeks, agreed in writing before the first day, covering what you say, the site, the search work, and a publishing plan for the 30 days after. You leave holding that plan, which matters more than it sounds: the compounding happens in months 2 through 6, and I am gone by then.