What Should an SEO Retainer Include?
Ask most businesses what their monthly fee buys and they cannot tell you. That is extremely common and it is the root of nearly all dissatisfaction with this trade. This page gives you the vocabulary to ask what you are actually purchasing.
Most Retainers Are Not Specified
A great many businesses paying a monthly fee could not describe what it buys beyond a general sense that somebody is working on their website. That is not unusual, it is the ordinary condition of this arrangement.
How it happens. Nobody wrote it down.
The conversation covered outcomes, the proposal covered ambition, the agreement covered price. The actual quantity of work was never stated by anybody, because neither side thought to raise it.
Why it is the root of the problem. Nothing can be assessed.
Without a specification there is no standard to compare a month against. A quiet month and a busy one look the same. Any complaint becomes a matter of impression rather than of fact.
Why agencies do not volunteer it. Flexibility.
An unspecified arrangement lets a firm allocate effort where it is most needed, which is a real advantage. It also lets a firm allocate effort elsewhere entirely. You cannot tell which is happening.
What this page gives you. The words to ask.
Not a template to impose. The vocabulary to have a specific conversation about what your fee represents, which most businesses have never had.
What Should Be In It
Six areas. Deliberately not a checklist, because confirming that six things exist without asking how much of each is exactly the mistake block one describes.
Ongoing technical attention. Usually small and continuous.
Checking that nothing has broken, that new pages work and that problems are caught early. Modest in most months, occasionally the whole month when something serious appears.
Content production. Normally the largest share.
Writing and publishing. The quantity is worth establishing, because this is where most of the money goes and where the difference between arrangements is largest.
Local listing management. Small but constant.
Profile accuracy, consistency of details and responding to what appears. Little effort each month, noticeable when neglected.
Link and reference work. Where appropriate.
Not every business needs this and some should not buy it. Where it is included, ask specifically what the activity consists of.
Measurement and reporting. Part of the work.
Producing the monthly picture and the commentary. This is included rather than an extra, which block six covers.
Time to actually think about the account. The one nobody lists.
Reviewing, deciding and adjusting. It has its own block below because of what happens to it.
Hours Or Outputs
A retainer can be specified as an amount of time or as a set of things produced. Both are legitimate and each has a genuine disadvantage.
Outputs. Easier to check.
A stated quantity of work produced each month. You can verify it without expertise, which is a real advantage for somebody who cannot assess the work itself.
What outputs cost you. Everything unlisted.
Anything not on the list stops being anybody's job. The agency is measured on the items, so effort flows to the items. The unlisted work quietly disappears.
Hours. More truthful about capacity.
A stated amount of time, applied to whatever matters most. This describes what you are buying accurately, since a fee is essentially time multiplied by cost.
What hours cost you. Verification.
You cannot readily check whether the hours happened or whether they were used well. It requires more trust, which is uncomfortable in a trade with this trade's record.
What usually works. Some of each.
A minimum of the things that matter most to you, plus a stated overall allocation of time. That gives you something checkable without making the checkable items the only work that happens.
The Thinking Time Is The Part That Vanishes
Reviewing what happened, deciding what it means and adjusting the plan is the most valuable thing an agency does. It is also the first thing squeezed when a firm is busy. A retainer specified entirely as outputs removes it by design.
Why it is the most valuable part. It decides everything else.
Producing content is straightforward. Deciding which content, in what order, based on what has happened so far, is where the expertise sits. The same effort directed well and directed badly costs identical amounts.
Why it goes first. Nobody notices.
When an agency has too much on, the deliverables still ship because their absence would be visible. The review that should have preceded them does not happen. Nothing about the month looks different from outside.
How output specification removes it. Structurally.
If the agreement lists items and nothing else, an agency meeting the list has met the agreement. Thinking is unbilled and unmeasured, so a busy firm has every reason to skip it and no obligation not to.
How to tell whether it is happening. The plan changes.
An arrangement where the work responds to what was learned has thinking in it. One where the plan is identical every month does not, whatever anybody says.
What to ask for. It named in the arrangement.
Ask for review and planning time to be explicitly part of what you are buying. Naming it is what stops it being the flexible part.
Paying On Results
Paying only when something improves sounds like the fairest arrangement available. It changes which work an agency chooses to do. Those changes run against your interests in ways that are hard to see.
The first effect. Whatever moves fastest.
An agency paid on movement will pursue the searches that are easiest to move rather than the ones that matter commercially. Those are rarely the same. The reporting will look excellent.
The second effect. Necessary work gets avoided.
Technical maintenance, fixing what is broken and keeping things current produce no short-term movement. Under performance pricing they are unpaid work, so they stop happening.
Why this connects to the previous block. It is the same mechanism.
Performance pricing is the most efficient way ever devised to remove thinking time from an arrangement, because judgement about the long term has no measurable payoff this month.
What it is not. Bad faith.
Nobody has to intend any of this. The incentive does the work, which is why the structure matters more than the character of the firm.
Where a results element can work. As a component.
A modest performance element on top of a proper fee for the work is different from payment entirely on results. The pricing page covers the charging models in full.
What Should Not Be In It
Three things that get billed inside monthly arrangements and should not be. Each is common enough that businesses accept them without question.
Charges for access to your own accounts. The clearest one.
Your analytics, your search reporting and your business profile belong to you. Being charged for access is being charged for the right to see your own information. It is one of the four things we commit against.
Tool licences billed as deliverables. The subtler one.
An agency's software subscriptions are its own operating costs, in the same way its office is. Presenting them as something you are receiving converts overheads into line items.
Reporting as a separate service line. The common one.
Reporting is part of doing the work rather than an addition to it. A firm charging separately for telling you what it did has divided one service into two and charged for both.
What is reasonable to charge separately. Genuine extras.
Work outside the agreed scope that you requested, quoted and agreed in advance. That is ordinary and it is quite different from billing for administration.
How to spot them. Read the line items.
Anything on an invoice that is not work done on your behalf is worth a question. The contract page covers the rest.
It Should Change Over Time
The first months and the twelfth month should not contain the same work. A retainer delivering identical activity throughout is not responding to anything.
Why the early months differ. Different problems.
Early work is establishing, fixing and building foundations. Once those are done, continuing to bill for them is charging for work that has already been completed.
What later months should look like. Deeper rather than repeated.
More considered content, work on areas that early activity revealed, plus attention to whatever the measurement is showing. The shape shifts from building to developing.
What identical months indicate. A package.
If the activity is the same in month twelve as in month two, the arrangement was decided in advance rather than in response to your site. That is a subscription. It is the same warning the model pages give.
What should stay constant. The quantity.
The amount of effort should be stable even as its direction changes. Work that is both identical and diminishing is a different problem entirely.
How to check. Compare two distant months.
Put a recent report beside one from a year ago. If you cannot tell them apart, that answers the question.
Ask What You Would Lose
You should be able to say what would stop happening if you cancelled tomorrow. Being unable to answer is not a gap in your knowledge, it is the diagnosis.
Why it works as a test. It requires specifics.
A general sense that things would get worse is not an answer. Naming what physically stops, what nobody would be doing next month and what would gradually deteriorate requires you to know what is happening.
What a good answer sounds like. Concrete and immediate.
Content would stop being published, nobody would be watching for technical problems, the listings would drift and there would be no monthly picture. Specific, checkable and easy to say.
What a poor answer sounds like. Consequences rather than activity.
Saying that rankings would fall describes a possible outcome rather than work ceasing. That answer means you know what you fear rather than what you are buying.
Who to ask first. Yourself, then them.
Answer it yourself, then ask your agency the same question and compare. A gap between the two answers is the specification you never agreed.
What to do with the gap. Have the conversation.
Most agencies will happily specify the arrangement if asked, since the vagueness usually reflects nobody raising it. The full series is on the hiring an SEO agency guide.
What would stop
if you cancelled
tomorrow?
Answer that yourself, then ask whoever you currently pay. If the two answers differ, that gap is the specification nobody agreed. We will set out what a month with us actually contains, including the review and planning time, before you commit to anything.
What we commit to in writing:
Local £350 a month fixed. National £1,550 a month. Published rather than quoted on request.
Every guide.
One practice.
What an agency is, whether to buy at all, which model suits you, how to vet one, what things cost, what should be in a contract and how to work with them afterwards.
