How do I find a trustworthy vendor for this?

Ask for references from businesses your size — not general testimonials. Require a 30-day pilot before signing long-term contracts. Get full pricing in writing, including all fees. Ask: what does it cost if this doesn't work? Vendors who can't answer that clearly are a red flag.

What should I realistically budget for this?

Start with the minimum viable spend to test the concept. Most implementations don't need to cost more than $200–500/month to start. Scale spend only after you have proof it's working. Avoid large upfront investments before seeing it operate in your actual environment.

How do I know if it's actually working?

Define success before you start: a specific metric (hours saved per week, revenue per lead, fees reduced) with a 90-day target. If you can't measure it, you can't manage it. Any vendor who resists defining metrics upfront is protecting themselves from accountability.

KROMEON · GROWTH PROPOSAL

Heirloom SEO

A full-stack growth engagement, not a vendor line item.

Prepared for Oscar · Heirloom · May 2026

The Structure

SideGuy is a Kromeon branch. PJ runs it. The SEO playbook, the GSC toolchain, the substrate work, all of it sits inside Kromeon. Heirloom does not need to evaluate two vendors. This is one team, one accountable engagement, with SEO as one capability of several.

Which means Heirloom can access something no outside agency can offer: SEO that closes the loop with the product itself.

The Closed Loop

Outside SEO vendors work from keyword data alone. Kromeon already owns the other half.

INPUT 01

Search Console

What people Google before they know Heirloom exists. The exact language of the problem, in their words, at the moment of intent.

INPUT 02

Product Analytics

What those same people do after signing up. Which features stick. Where activation breaks. Which SEO queries bring users who actually convert.

INPUT 03

User Testing

Phase 1 transcripts and SUS data. The emotional phrasing that resonated. The feature scores (91% to 74%) that map to where to invest content depth.

A Concrete Example

PJ's Cluster 3 (pre-crisis caregivers, queries like "my parent was just diagnosed how to prepare") maps almost exactly onto the "Now What?" experience from the 1/27 kickoff.

If that cluster delivers high-volume search traffic, it is not just a content signal, it is a product signal. The "Now What?" flow should be a first-class onboarding experience in Phase 2, not buried. SEO data shaping product roadmap. That is the loop closing.

Current Status

Marketing site mylifeheirloom.com is live — an early-access landing page, with emotional copy already aligned to the caregiver and pre-crisis search clusters.

Product app Currently on heirloom-web-rho.vercel.app; will eventually move to a subdomain (likely app.mylifeheirloom.com). Not an SEO blocker.

GSC access Not yet granted to SideGuy on the marketing domain. This is the only operational blocker on starting the audit.

Interim path SideGuy can run a parallel test build on its own domain to validate cluster angles while Heirloom GSC access is sorted — no time lost.

How SEO Makes the Product Better

The traffic is a byproduct. The real value is the data SEO generates — and what Kromeon does with it inside Heirloom.

We learn what users want before they know Heirloom exists.

Search queries capture the exact emotional state and problem framing people use at the moment of intent. That is primary research user testing cannot generate, because user testing samples people already in the product.

FOR HEIRLOOM Whether the dominant entry point is "estate planning checklist," "digital legacy vault," or "what to do after a parent dies" shapes which feature becomes the hero on the homepage.
Query volume becomes a feature prioritization signal.

Phase 2 prioritization currently runs on user testing scores from 10 participants. Search Console adds demand data from thousands of real users every month, ranked by intent and volume.

FOR HEIRLOOM If 2,000 people / month search "organize passwords for family after I die" vs 80 / month for "digital legacy planning," that decides which framing the onboarding flow uses.
User language becomes product copy.

Empty states, button labels, email subject lines, push notifications. Every word in the product can be informed by the actual phrasing users type into Google, layered on top of the emotional language captured in Phase 1 transcripts.

FOR HEIRLOOM Onboarding stops saying "Configure your digital asset inventory" and starts saying "Make sure your family can find your accounts when you're gone."
We measure which traffic actually activates.

With analytics live in Phase 2, every SEO entry point can be traced through signup, vault setup, and trusted-contact invitation — the real activation moment for Heirloom, not just signups.

FOR HEIRLOOM We learn that pre-crisis caregiver traffic completes onboarding at 4x the rate of generic estate-planning traffic. That tells the team where to double down and where to stop spending.
The "Now What?" experience becomes self-validating.

The post-loss flow described in the 1/27 kickoff is currently a concept. SEO data tells us within weeks whether it has the demand to justify being a first-class product surface, a premium tier, or a standalone sub-product.

FOR HEIRLOOM "The team thinks this is a good idea" becomes "we have a 6,000 search / month demand signal for this feature." A different conversation with Oscar, investors, and partners.
Competitor pages reveal who Heirloom is actually competing with.

PJ's Cluster 5 (Heirloom vs Trust & Will, vs Everplans, vs GoodTrust, vs LastPass) is not just SEO content. It is live market research showing which competitor users seriously evaluate Heirloom against, and where Heirloom needs to win on features and price.

FOR HEIRLOOM If the Trust & Will comparison converts 5x better than LastPass, Heirloom is estate-planning-adjacent, not password-manager-adjacent. That changes positioning, partnerships, and roadmap.
Pre-crisis vs post-crisis demand becomes a strategic signal.

Heirloom is currently designed for the pre-crisis user. The kickoff notes also described a post-crisis experience. SEO surfaces the relative demand for each and answers a strategic question user testing cannot.

FOR HEIRLOOM If post-crisis searches outweigh pre-crisis 3 to 1, Heirloom may lead with grief support and use it as the entry to proactive planning. The opposite confirms current focus.

Price Comparison

Same output. 60 to 90 percent lower cost. The infrastructure carries what agencies bill humans for.

What You Need	Traditional Agency	Kromeon / SideGuy	Heirloom Saves
Initial SEO auditSignal quality, cluster map, ship plan	$2,000 to $5,0002 to 4 weeks · slide deck	$2503 to 5 days · structured report	$1,750 to $4,750
Full SEO engagementAudit, cleanup, 5 to 10 substrate pages, toolchain handoff	$15,000 to $50,0003 month retainer minimum	$2,00010 day onboarding · no retainer	$13,000 to $48,000
Monthly maintenanceDaily GSC monitoring, ongoing page ship	$3,000 to $15,000 / mo12 month retainer · auto-renew	$500 / moOptional · cancel anytime	$2,500 to $14,500 / mo
Year 1 Total	$53,000 to $235,000	$8,250	Up to $226,750

Pricing benchmarks sourced from SideGuy operator-honest pricing doctrine. Same playbook validated on a 200K-page operator substrate before being offered to clients.

What Kromeon Delivers

Marketing-site SEO foundation on mylifeheirloom.com

The real marketing surface is already live with strong emotional language that maps to PJ's cluster strategy. Step zero is verifying Google Search Console setup on mylifeheirloom.com and granting SideGuy read access so the audit can begin.
SideGuy SEO substrate — on Heirloom's domain and SideGuy's in parallel

Once GSC access is granted on mylifeheirloom.com, PJ runs the audit, cluster strategy, GSC cleanup, and ships substrate pages on Heirloom's domain. In the meantime, SideGuy runs a parallel test build on its own domain to validate cluster angles using GSC data it already controls. The Python toolchain (morning_lap.py and generators) is handed off so Heirloom owns it permanently.
Editorial content from user testing

Kromeon writes the high-emotion cluster pages using the actual phrasing from Phase 1 transcripts. The 65+ cohort scored 96.0 SUS — the language they used belongs on the marketing pages.
SEO insights feed Phase 2 roadmap

Search Console data flows into product decisions, not just marketing. High-volume queries we cannot answer yet become Phase 2 feature signals.
One accountable team

Oscar talks to one Kromeon team — JP, Toby, Katie, PJ — about product, marketing, and SEO outcomes together. No coordination tax, no vendor handoffs, no "who owns what" meetings.

The Value Prop for Heirloom

Kromeon doesn't just build Heirloom.

We run the full growth stack alongside the product.

SideGuy SEO + product analytics + Phase 1 user testing + Phase 2 build — all under one roof, with the data flowing between them.

That is something no agency and no outside SEO vendor can replicate, because they do not have the product context. It is structurally Kromeon's advantage — and Heirloom's upside.

Next Steps

Confirm SEO scope folds into the Kromeon Phase 2 engagement, with SideGuy as the execution arm.

Verify GSC setup on mylifeheirloom.com and grant SideGuy read access. This unblocks the $250 Operator Audit.

Schedule a 15-minute working session for Oscar with the Kromeon team (JP, Toby, Katie, PJ) to align scope before kickoff.