A 12-month authority blueprint for your category — Central Entity definition, topical map, Source Term Vector specification, internal linking architecture, publishing roadmap, and technical entity infrastructure. Delivered as a complete system your team or ours can execute against. This is the strategic foundation everything else builds on.
Seven deliverable components ship across the engagement. Each one is a defined artifact — not a vague "we'll think about it" promise. The complete architecture document is the binding artifact; the supporting deliverables are the operational instruments your team uses to execute against it.
A locked, written definition of your site's Central Entity — the single concept everything else flows from. Single source of truth referenced verbatim across pages. Drift in this layer breaks every layer above it.
Your category's question space mapped into clusters, pillars, and supporting nodes. Each node justified, sequenced, and tied to buyer-stage intent. Visual map exported alongside the structured spreadsheet.
The vocabulary your site speaks — defined, locked, and enforced. Includes banned-phrase registry, canonical predicate forms, and editorial governance protocol. Eliminates semantic dilution at the publishing layer.
A structured map of every attribute that defines your Central Entity, with coverage scoring per page. Source of truth for content briefs — every brief references this matrix before production.
Predicate-clean linking specification — anchor governance, hub-and-spoke architecture, contextual reinforcement rules. Engineered so every link signals entity relationship, not generic relevance.
A prioritized, sequenced publishing plan with velocity calibration. Cluster sequence justified, batch sizing scoped to your team's capacity, decision points called out for cycle reviews.
Schema specification, structured data plan, URL hierarchy, technical SEO layer — all tied directly to entity recognition, not generic technical hygiene. Implementable by your developers or ours.
Below: the engagement compressed into 6 active components, shown in two states. Building mode shows the engagement mid-flight (representative state at Week 06). Outcome mode shows the same engagement at handoff. Toggle to see both.
Architecture engagements produce real outcomes for businesses ready to commit to authority compounding — and frustrate businesses that want quick wins. The fit map below is honest. If your business is in the right column, the audit or content production engagements are likely better starting points.
The architecture engagement runs in 4 phases over 8–10 weeks. Pre-engagement audit (recommended but optional) precedes Phase 01. Production engagements typically begin Week 11 if continuing with us — your internal team can begin Week 11 if executing independently.
Architecture engagements are custom-scoped — final pricing depends on site complexity, vertical depth, multilingual scope, and content production capacity. All pricing locked at kickoff — no scope creep, no surprise additions. The audit is a productized $3,500 entry point if you want to validate fit before committing.
Scoped during the strategy call. Pricing depends on site complexity, vertical depth, multilingual scope, and team capacity alignment. Audit fee credited toward architecture if started within 60 days of audit deliverable.
Book Strategy CallArchitecture engagements are the highest-commitment service we offer. The questions below come up most often during scoping calls.
Architecture pricing varies by 5–10× across engagements depending on site complexity, vertical depth, regulatory layer, and multilingual scope. Publishing a flat number would either price out small clients or undercharge enterprise ones — both produce bad outcomes.
If you want a price-validated entry point, the $3,500 Semantic Audit is fully productized. Audit fee is credited toward architecture if you proceed within 60 days.
No. The architecture deliverable is fully self-contained — your internal team or another vendor can execute against it. The blueprint, governance manual, and roadmap are all written for execution by anyone trained on them, not just by us.
Many clients keep us on for production cycles because the methodology is easier to maintain with the architecture team — but it's not a contractual lock-in.
The audit diagnoses — entity coverage gaps, predicate inconsistencies, semantic dilution, AI citation gaps. Output: prioritized issue map. 2–3 weeks. $3,500.
The architecture builds — Central Entity, topical map, governance, roadmap, technical infrastructure. Output: 12-month authority blueprint. 8–10 weeks. Custom-scoped.
Audit answers "what's broken." Architecture answers "what to build." Most engagements run audit first, then architecture — but architecture can run standalone for sites confident in their diagnostic.
Material time commitments: Phase 01 stakeholder interviews (3–4 hours total across 1–2 sessions), Phase 02 entity validation reviews (2 hours), Phase 03 governance review (2 hours), Phase 04 final handoff session (90 minutes). Roughly 8–10 hours of stakeholder time across 8–10 weeks.
Access requirements: GSC, GA4, CMS read-only access, brand guidelines, and any prior SEO documentation.
The architecture itself is a one-time, productized engagement with a defined deliverable and end date. Once the blueprint hands off, the architecture work is complete.
What's not one-time is the production work that follows — content briefs, content production, internal linking maintenance, distribution. Those run in continuous monthly cycles. You can run those internally or with us, but they're scoped separately from the architecture itself.
Most content strategies start with keyword research and back into "topics." This architecture starts with entity definition and back into queries — which is the inverse of generic content strategy and the opposite direction of keyword-first SEO.
The architecture also produces governance artifacts (Source Term Vector spec, banned-phrase registry, predicate framework, anchor governance) that generic content strategies don't include. Those governance artifacts are why the architecture survives Google updates and AI retrieval shifts that flatline generic content strategies.
Architecture is the highest-leverage decision in your authority strategy. Get the foundation right, every cycle compounds. Get it wrong, every cycle leaks. Book a strategy call to scope your engagement.