The methodology, published in full
Most agencies show you results and hide the process. We do the opposite. Here is exactly what we audit, what we build, and what lands in your hands — so you can evaluate the work before you spend anything on it.
- 01 Diagnostic Find what is broken
- 02 Foundation Make the data agree
- 03 Architecture Make expertise legible
- 04 Verification Prove it moved
Three commitments
These shape every engagement, and they are the reason some firms are a poor fit for us.
Infrastructure, not decoration
A redesign that looks better but says nothing machine-readable about who you are will not change what a search engine recommends. We treat local visibility as a data problem, because that is what it is.
Only claims you can check
Every number we report traces to a source you can open yourself — your own analytics, your Business Profile, a live query. We do not report impressions as though they were clients, and we do not guarantee rankings. Nobody credible can.
One firm per market
We work with a single practice in a given specialty and service area. Optimizing two competitors for the same query means being paid twice to cancel out our own work. When a market is taken, we say so.
The engagement, phase by phase
Every engagement starts at Phase 01. If the diagnostic says your visibility problem is not one we can fix, we tell you that and you keep the findings.
Diagnostic
Fixed fee, credited in full toward the build if you proceed within 14 days.
A structured audit of how machines currently read your firm. You get the findings in writing whether or not you hire us for anything further.
- Entity audit. Every place your name, address, and phone number appear across mapping services, directories, and legal or medical registries — and every place they disagree.
- Structured data coverage. What schema exists on your site today, what is malformed, and what is missing entirely.
- Crawl and index review. Which of your pages search engines can actually reach, render, and store.
- Performance baseline. Core Web Vitals measured before we touch anything, so later changes are attributable.
- Answer-share sample. We run the questions your prospective clients actually ask through current AI search tools and record who gets named.
You receive: a written findings document, a prioritized roadmap, and the raw baseline data.
Data foundation
Nothing above this layer holds if this layer is wrong.
Search systems decide how much to trust an entity by how consistently it describes itself. This phase removes the contradictions.
- Canonical record. One authoritative version of your firm's name, address, phone, hours, and practice areas — then propagated everywhere.
- Citation correction. Stale listings, duplicate profiles, and old suite numbers reconciled or removed.
- Business Profile configuration. Categories, service areas, attributes, and practitioner entries set deliberately rather than by default.
- Semantic schema architecture. Linked structured data describing the organization, its practitioners, its services, and its service area as one connected graph rather than disconnected tags.
Platform note: this layer maps onto WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, and Shopify without a rebuild. A migration is sometimes worth doing — but it is a separate decision, not a prerequisite.
Content architecture
Structuring what you already know so a machine can quote it.
Your firm already holds the expertise. The work is arranging it so an answer engine can locate the relevant passage and attribute it to you.
- Topical clusters. Deep foundational pages for each practice area, supported by pages answering the specific questions clients ask before they call.
- Answer-shaped pages. Question, direct answer, then the reasoning and evidence. That ordering is what makes a passage extractable.
- Explicit hierarchy. Clean heading structure, defined terms, and structured lists so systems can chunk the page reliably.
- Internal linking. Connecting the cluster so authority accumulates on the pages that matter commercially.
Verification
Measured against the Phase 01 baseline, not against a blank page.
Work that cannot be checked is indistinguishable from work that was not done. This phase closes that gap.
- Technical validation. Structured data tested against the validators the search engines publish, not against our own opinion of it.
- Performance re-measurement. The same Core Web Vitals tests from Phase 01, re-run and compared directly.
- Answer-share re-test. The same client questions from Phase 01, re-run, showing where you are now named and where you are not.
- Handover. Documentation of what was changed and why, written to be usable by whoever maintains the site next — including someone other than us.
What we do not do
Stated plainly, so you can disqualify us early rather than three months in.
Guarantee rankings
No one controls a search engine's output. Anyone promising position one is either misinformed or counting on you not checking.
Bill for vanity metrics
Impressions and follower counts are not client acquisition. If a number cannot be tied to enquiries, it does not belong in a report you paid for.
Hold your assets hostage
Your domain, your hosting, your Business Profile, your content. Accounts stay in your name, and you can end the engagement without losing them.
Work for your competitor
One firm per specialty per market, for the duration of the engagement and stated in the agreement.
Questions we get asked first
- How long before anything changes?
- Data corrections propagate at the pace the receiving platforms allow — some within days, some over several weeks. Content and authority signals move slower than that. Any firm quoting you a fixed date for a ranking change is quoting a number they cannot control.
- Do we need a new website?
- Usually not. The structured data layer that does most of the work fits onto the platform you already run. We recommend a rebuild only when the existing site actively blocks the work — and we will say which of those two situations you are in during Phase 01.
- Who actually does the work?
- Piper Moretti. CiteWave is deliberately small, and the person who runs your diagnostic is the person who implements the fixes. There is no account manager relaying messages to someone you never meet.
- What if the diagnostic says you cannot help?
- Then we say so, you keep the findings and the roadmap, and there is nothing further to buy. A firm whose real constraint is capacity or pricing does not have a search problem, and selling them one would waste both our time.
Start where every engagement starts: the diagnostic.
You get the written findings, the baseline data, and a prioritized roadmap — yours to keep whether or not you go further. The fee credits in full toward the build if you proceed.
100% credited toward any engagement signed within 14 days