What does the first month with a web agency look like?

Week 1: the inspection — indexing report, field data, crawl, link graph — and you receive the findings, exported. Weeks 1 to 2: the page list agreed and priced per page, so you receive a quantity and a number. Weeks 2 to 3: copy and build against the agreed pages, delivered as drafts then staged pages. Week 4: build in progress, with staged URLs you can review. Day 30 to 45: launch, sitemap submitted, redirects verified, and the redirect map delivered as a file. After launch: indexation resolved, read off the page indexing report.

So the first month is not the launch. It is the inspection, the page list, and a build in progress — and a first month that produced a live site on day 28 produced something smaller than the page list implied. Launch lands between day 30 and day 45; indexation follows it, and the monthly plan starts at indexation or day 45, whichever comes first.

The dated commitments there are ours: builds launch between day 30 and day 45, and the monthly plan does not start until indexation or day 45. The week-by-week breakdown is how the work sequences, not a contractual timetable.

What should not happen in week one: design concepts. A layout produced before the page list is a layout produced before anyone knows what the site has to say, and it is the stage where projects acquire revision cycles nobody capped.

What you owe in week one, because the schedule slips here: access to the domain registrar, hosting, analytics and Search Console; your service list and pricing; photographs of real work; and one decision-maker who can approve copy.

Three records get named in writing before the build starts, or discovered at the end: the copyright assignment, the domain registrant field, and the account list. The defaults on all three run against the client unless the contract says otherwise.

The one worth insisting on in month one is Search Console in your name, because the measurement history is the baseline every later month gets judged against.

If a migration is involved, the redirect map is a month-one deliverable too, per Google's site move guidance. Old URLs that stop resolving during a launch are an expensive avoidable mistake in this sequence.

This is how the statute and the policies read; it is not legal advice, and a contract question is a question for a lawyer.