Realistic build timelines, and what makes them slip

Week 1: the inspection, then the page list agreed and priced. Weeks 2 to 3: copy, then build against the agreed pages. Week 4: build in progress, staged pages to review. Day 30 to 45: launch, sitemap submitted, redirects verified. After launch: indexation resolved, then the baseline.

Indexation is after launch, not part of it, which is why the monthly plan starts at indexation or day 45. Google's page indexing report is where that gets confirmed, and it is a fact about the site rather than a claim about the project.

Copy. A common cause, and in our experience ours to chase and yours to approve. A build waiting on three service descriptions is a build that is not late for a technical reason.

Approvals with no named decision-maker. Two people with different opinions and no tiebreak adds a week per round.

Access. Registrar, hosting, analytics and Search Console. Gathering these in week four rather than week one is the avoidable one.

Scope added mid-build. Four more pages is four more pages, at the same rate — $300, or $400 with custom artwork. Priced the same, it still takes the time.

And a migration nobody mapped. If old URLs exist, the map is a deliverable per Google's site move guidance. Discovering it at launch costs a week and costs rankings.

What should not move it: design rounds. A layout produced before the page list is settled is a layout produced before anyone knows what the site has to say.