By Andy Wu
What do SEO agencies do? They fix technical problems on your site, rewrite pages so they match what people search, publish new content, manage your local listings, earn links from other sites, and report what changed. That is the job. The problem is that most proposals describe it in words you cannot count.
Below is what each service should look like on paper, and eight tests to run on the proposal in front of you. If a line item fails the tests, you cannot check later whether the work was done.
What do SEO agencies do each month?
In a normal month for a small business, an SEO agency does four or five tasks, such as technical fixes, page rewrites, new content, listing updates and link outreach, with two or three people on the account. Those counts are my own estimate, not a survey figure.
The official job description is much wider. O*NET, the Labor Department’s occupation database, lists 36 tasks for this role. They include coordinating with developers on site structure, choosing KPIs, keyword research, placing links with editors and bloggers, and buying or negotiating local directory listings (O*NET).
The monthly mix should follow your site’s problems, not the agency’s standard package, and the people on the account are part of what to look for in an SEO agency before you sign.
The SEO services list, and what the proposal must count
SEO services cover seven areas: technical fixes, on-page work, content, local SEO, links, reporting and AI search, and the proposal must put a count, a cadence or a named list against each one. This table gives each service and what the proposal should say so you can check the work.
| Service | What it is | What the proposal must count |
|---|---|---|
| Technical fixes | Speed, indexing, broken links, redirects | A named list of issues found on your site, each with a month |
| On-page work | Titles, headings and copy on existing pages | Which pages, how many per month |
| Content | New service pages, guides, blog posts | Number per month, rough length, who writes and who edits |
| Local SEO | Google Business Profile, reviews, listings | Which listings, how many, how often the profile is updated |
| Links | Mentions and links from other real sites | A monthly or quarterly floor, and the methods used |
| Reporting | What was done and what changed | Metrics named, date each report arrives |
| AI search | Being cited in AI answers | What will be changed on your site, not a promised result |
SEO deliverables that pass this test can be audited by counting at the end of the month. “Ongoing optimization” cannot be counted at all. That is often the point of writing it that way. If your proposal is full of lines like that, ask the agency to replace them with counts before you sign.
Newer proposals add a line for AI search, and the GEO vs SEO split decides whether that line is new work or the same work billed twice.
The proposal checklist: 8 tests to run on the document
A good SEO proposal passes eight tests: it describes your site, every line is counted, month one lists work, the goals are leads, real people are named, every account is in your name, the exit terms are livable, and the price divides by the work. Run them in order on the document itself, not on what the salesperson said.
Test 1: Does the proposal describe your site, or any site?
A proposal written for your site names your real pages, a problem you already know about, and your actual competitors. Search the document for your business name. If it only appears in the header and the price table, nobody looked. Then think of one problem you already know about, such as a slow page or a missing location page. If the proposal misses it, doubt the problems it claims to have found. Check that your real competitors are named too, not “other businesses in your area”.
Test 2: Does every line have a number, a cadence and a “done”?
Every line in an SEO proposal should state how many, how often and what counts as finished. Compare “content creation” with “four service pages a month, about 1,000 words, topics agreed with you, published to your site”. Only the second can be checked. Where the proposal says “up to”, ask for the floor instead, in writing.
Test 3: Does month one of the proposal say what happens?
Month one of an honest proposal lists work, such as the audit, the first fixes and tracking setup, not ranking gains. Google says crawling a changed page “can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks”, so a month-one ranking promise is a sales line. Results are counted in months: see how long SEO takes.
Test 4: Are the SEO goals tied to leads?
The goal named in the proposal should be calls, form fills, bookings or sales from organic search, measured in your own Google Analytics, on search terms agreed at the start. Google’s hiring guide, “Do you need an SEO?”, tells owners to ask “How do you measure your success?”, and leads are the answer you can check yourself.
One clause makes the rest enforceable: ask that each monthly report put last month’s plan next to what was delivered. An honest agency loses nothing by agreeing. A vague one will push back, and that tells you something too.
Test 5: Are real people named on the account?
A named person runs your account, and the proposal says plainly whether any work is subcontracted. Google’s guide to hiring an SEO warns: “Be careful if a company is secretive or won’t clearly explain what they intend to do.” Not knowing who does the work is the first kind of secrecy.
Test 6: Is every account in your name?
Every account belongs to you, with access for the agency. Google’s Business Profile third-party policy says end customers “must retain ownership or co-ownership of their Business Profile at all times,” and the ownership clauses in an SEO contract are where the rest gets written down.
Test 7: Could you live with the exit terms on a bad day?
Fair exit terms are a short first term, then 30 days’ notice with no fee. Read the termination section as if the work has gone badly, because that is the only time you will read it again. The trap is the stack: a 12-month term that rolls month to month with 90 days’ notice means that leaving at month 12 still costs you months 13, 14 and 15.
Test 8: Can you divide the price by the work?
Divide the monthly fee by an average hourly rate and hold the hours against the deliverables list. The average SEO rate is $111 an hour (Ahrefs, 2024 survey of 439 providers), so a $1,750 retainer buys about 16 hours. List every fee on its own first: monthly, setup, platform and anything else. If the deliverables look like a quarter of those hours, ask what fills the rest.
What a good proposal is allowed to leave out
A good proposal can leave out a 40-page strategy deck, a tour of all 36 tasks on the O*NET list, and a chart of ranking forecasts. It needs counts, names, dates and a way out. If it opens with an audit, that audit should be a named document with a delivery date, priced like a one-time SEO audit, not an open-ended “discovery phase”. Firm terms are fine. Vague ones are the problem.
The proposal is only half the picture. The agency behind it matters too: the calls, references and checks that a document cannot show you.
Anything the salesperson said out loud is not a deliverable until it is in the file. Write down what you were promised on the call and look for each item in the proposal. Missing items go on your list of changes to ask for. If you want a second reader for that pass, get it audited before you sign: the report comes with an email you can send the agency asking for counts.