Running ads and getting found online

Paid advertising (Google, Facebook, Instagram, or similar) isn't something your co-founder can set up for you yet — it's coming, but it's not available today. If you ask about running ads, your co-founder will tell you plainly rather than pretending to launch a campaign that never runs.

What actually works today

Two things drive traffic to a new business right now:

• Organic search. Your website is built with good, on-page content and basic search-engine practices in mind, so it can be found when people search for what you offer. Your co-founder also registers the site with Google Search and proves that you own it, so Google can start indexing it — that ownership check can take a day or two. If it still hasn't confirmed after a few tries, your co-founder will say so in chat and keep looking into what's holding it up.
• Sharing your link directly. Your website address (see "Finding your website's address") is yours to hand out — social posts, your email signature, texting it to referrals — and sending marketing email to your own contact list (see "Sending marketing email to your list") reaches people who've already opted in.
• Prospect research. Your co-founder searches the open web for businesses that match who you serve and hands you a shortlist to approach yourself — see "Finding people to reach out to". Once your site is live and you've emailed your own list, I can also introduce you to businesses you haven't met — see "Emailing businesses you haven't met yet".

What to expect when ads do arrive

When paid advertising launches, your co-founder will be able to help you set up and run campaigns the same way it handles everything else — through a conversation, with your approval before any money is spent. In the meantime, ask about the channels above; they're real and working today.

Checking how your site is set up for search

You can ask your co-founder how your website is doing for search — try "how's my SEO?" or "is my site set up to get found on Google?". It reads your live site and gives you a straightforward grade from 1 to 5, broken down into a few areas: the technical basics (the behind-the-scenes bits search engines look for), your content (whether there's enough of it and whether it speaks to what your customers are searching for), and how well your pages link together.

Alongside the grade you'll get a short list of specific things worth improving and a clear next step — sometimes that's a quick fix, sometimes it's a heads-up that only you can supply the missing piece (your story, your real services, customer proof), and sometimes it's an offer to make the improvements for you. The grade looks at how your site is built, not how much traffic it's getting — that's a separate thing.

If your site isn't published yet, or a change to it is still going live, your co-founder will let you know it's not ready to grade rather than guess.

Your co-founder checks this on its own, too

You don't have to remember to ask. When there's a quiet moment, your co-founder gives your live site an SEO once-over on its own — and again whenever you publish a change to it — so your search setup keeps up as your site grows. What it does with what it finds depends on the site:

• Small tweaks — it just tells you the handful of improvements worth making, no action needed from you.
• Something only you can provide — if the site is thin on real substance (your story, your actual services, the areas you serve, a happy-customer example), it asks you for it in chat and keeps a gentle reminder on your "Waiting on you" list until you have a moment. Nothing happens to your site until you reply. Your co-founder asks one question at a time — where you serve customers, what you offer, any credentials, and a customer quote — and you can skip any of them. Answer in chat and it saves what you said with your business details and says it back so you can correct it; if it got something wrong, tell it again and it replaces what it saved. It only saves what you tell it: it never makes up a credential or writes a customer quote for you, and a quote is saved only when you say the customer agreed to be quoted. The reminder comes off your list once all four are answered or skipped (see Answering my questions about getting found on Google). Saving what you told it isn't the same as changing your site, though: that still takes a website update, which your co-founder will describe before it makes one.
• Fixes it can build — if there are concrete improvements it can make for you, it asks first: you'll see an approve-or-skip note, and it only builds the changes once you say yes. It never rebuilds your site behind your back.