Client-education resources for agencies
Why it takes time. What you control and what nobody does. Why rankings move. What the first ninety days actually contain. Thornfold writes them once, cites every claim to Google’s own documentation, and licenses them for you to rebrand and hand to your client.
The four conversations
Each resource is independently useful. In sequence they are the system a retainer actually runs on.
01 · week one
Your client expected results in thirty days. It is month two. You have had this conversation before, and you will not bill for it.
The kickoff conversation. Hand it over in week one, before the first 'where are the results' email exists.
02 · kickoff to day 90
Three months in, your client cannot see what they are paying for, and you cannot show them a ranking yet.
The working plan. Signed at kickoff, it runs the first quarter's checkpoints, evidence, and reviews.
03 · every review
Your client blames you for a competitor's investment, an algorithm update, and their own unanswered emails.
The alignment system. Brought to every review so issues land in a responsibility zone, not in an argument.
04 · when the screenshot arrives
Your client checks rankings daily and panics weekly at movement that means nothing.
The panic antidote. Sent the morning a screenshot arrives, before anyone reacts to one day's reading.
The set
The four conversations every retainer repeats, in the order you have them.
The set adds what no single resource can: the collection map, delivery order and use guide, collection branding guide. Four documents arrive branded together, in the order the conversations actually happen.
Ours, then yours, then your client’s
A DOCX with real heading styles, or a deck that imports into Canva with its text still editable.
Logo, accent colour, typeface, and the prepared-for line. The branding instructions name every zone you may change, and the ones you may not.
Hand the finished document to your client under your own name, inside paid work if you like. Keep the credit.
Swap the logo, the accent colour, and the typeface. The argument, the figures, and the sources stay exactly where they are. Then you send it to your client under your own name, and you may charge for it. The two largest template marketplaces forbid delivering an editable file to a client. This licence is written for it.
Why an agency can put its name on these
Official documentation and a named employee’s statement are different kinds of evidence. Most of the industry blurs them. We print the difference on the page, so your client can weigh it themselves.
When something we cite moves or changes, we publish the correction: the resource, the version that carries it, and what changed. Nothing is silently patched.
2026-07-14
Source removed.
No ranking promise. No traffic number. No universal timeline. No claim of insider knowledge of anyone’s algorithm.
Nobody can guarantee those, and a document that pretends otherwise is worth less than nothing the moment you put your name on it and hand it to a client.
Start free
6 pages, free, with the correction and the citation for each myth. If it does not change how you explain your work, nothing else here will either.
No email address. No cookies. No tracking of any kind.