SERVICES · NEW YORK

Three disciplines.
One team that ships.

Media operations, growth & SEO, and web development — all in-house, all production-tested across the four publications we operate. We don't outsource. We don't white-label. You talk to the people who build.

Start a project → Read the FAQ
01
— Media Operations

Newsroom systems, end to end.

Editorial CMS, publishing workflows, cross-site syndication, scheduled distribution, and the boring infrastructure that lets a small team look big.

We build the kind of editorial tooling that publishers usually pay enterprise vendors $50K+/year for — but tighter, faster, and tuned to how your newsroom actually works. No 47-tab admin. No 3-day setup wizards. Just the fields editors need, the workflows that match how stories actually move.

  • Custom editorial CMS built on WordPress or headless — author roles, section editors, embargoes, scheduled drops
  • Cross-publication syndication — write once, route to N publications with category mapping
  • Newsroom dashboards for ops: pipeline, drafts, performance, by-author analytics
  • RSS + IndexNow + email distribution automated on publish
  • Author / contributor systems with author bio, byline credit, payment tracking
Talk to us about media ops →
02
— Growth & SEO

Search performance that ships.

Technical SEO, structured data, AI crawler access, and the discovery infrastructure that gets your work read in 2026 — across Google, Bing, Yandex, and the AI assistants quietly replacing them.

Most agencies sell SEO like it's still 2019: title tags, keyword density, "10x content". We don't. Our work is upstream — fixing the data layer Google's parsers actually read, the schema AI assistants need to cite you, and the crawl infrastructure that gets new content seen in hours, not weeks.

  • Schema.org engineering — Person, NewsMediaOrganization, Article, FAQPage, ItemList — the kind that unlocks rich results
  • IndexNow + sitemap automation for instant Bing + Yandex discovery
  • AI crawler optimization — GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Applebot-Extended access + llms.txt design
  • Core Web Vitals tuned to actual editorial templates, not synthetic benchmarks
  • Search infrastructure audits — what's costing you crawl budget, indexation, and citations
Talk to us about SEO →
03
— Web Development

Custom platforms, by people who run them.

WordPress at the editorial edge, FastAPI / Python services in the middle, SQLite / PostgreSQL for data — built for media operations, on-call platform engineering, and tooling we'd want to use ourselves.

We've been on the receiving end of agency code that ships on Friday and breaks on Monday. We don't ship that. Every system we build, we run — same code, same uptime expectations, same on-call as our own publications.

  • WordPress & custom themes — editorial-first, not page-builder-first
  • REST API & headless integrations — Next.js, Astro, native iOS/Android consumers
  • FastAPI / Python services — admin platforms, ETL pipelines, AI workflows
  • SQLite + PostgreSQL data layer — operational, not just analytical
  • Performance & ops — Lighthouse 95+, edge caching strategy, observability
Talk to us about engineering →
How We Work

Four steps. Two weeks to first ship.

  1. 01

    Brief & scope

    30-minute kickoff call. We turn the conversation into a written brief, scope, and price within 48 hours.

  2. 02

    Audit or sprint

    Audits run 1–2 weeks and end with a written report + rollout plan. Build sprints run 2–6 weeks with weekly demos.

  3. 03

    Ship & iterate

    We ship early, ship often. Production code by week two on most engagements. Slack-ready feedback loop the whole way.

  4. 04

    Operate or hand off

    You choose: take over with documentation + training, or keep us on retainer for ops and ongoing improvements.

FAQ

The questions everyone asks.

Do you take on outside clients, or only your own publications?
Both. Roughly half our engagements are external — agencies, publishers, small media groups — and half are work on the four NYC publications we operate. Outside engagements get the same team that ships our own product.
What stack do you build on?
WordPress for editorial CMS, Yoast for SEO surface, Code Snippets for hot-patches, custom mu-plugins for performance-critical work, FastAPI + Python + SQLite/PostgreSQL for tooling and admin platforms, and a lot of Bash + Python for ops automation.
Do you offer monthly retainers or one-time projects?
Both. Single-project audits typically run 1–3 weeks. Retainers (newsroom ops, ongoing SEO, on-call infrastructure) start at month-three after a kickoff sprint. We're up-front about scope and we don't sell hours we won't ship.
How do you handle AI search visibility?
Schema.org @graph with Person / NewsMediaOrganization / Article entities, llms.txt with explicit AI crawler policy, Applebot-Extended + Google-Extended + 14 other bot allowlists, and on-page semantic HTML that AI assistants actually parse. We test against Perplexity / ChatGPT search / Claude citation surfaces, not just Google.
Where are you located, and do you take meetings in person?
New York, NY. We're remote-first but happy to grab coffee in Manhattan or Brooklyn for kickoffs. Most of the work happens async.
What does engagement pricing look like?
Audits start at $3,500. Quarterly SEO retainers start at $4,500/mo. Custom platform builds are scoped per project. We don't publish a price list — every engagement is sized to what's actually needed, and we'll walk away from work that isn't a fit.

Ready to ship something serious?

Most engagements start with a 30-minute call. Tell us what you're working on — we'll either be the right team or point you to who is.

Start a project → info@elephantny.com